What is it today with the price of text books? I remember when paying $80 was really steep for a text book, but what you got for that $80 was a 600 page monster full of colour and talk of object orientated analysis (or something like this when I was in tafe) and even when I started uni you would get these wonderful hard back full colour books (often oversized books too) for about $80.
Well what happened this semester???!?!?
If I had to buy all the books they wanted us to buy for my subjects this semester it would have cost me a total of $506, yeah thats five hundred and six dollars!!! (this is only for 4 'core' books, nothing else like lecture materials or secondary/supplementary texts), this is fucking ridiculous! We were lucky that the guy taking this international tax law subject took pity on us and said he would provide an online ocr'ed version of the $180 book we were going to have to buy (which will be out of date by the start of next year) and then tonight in my IT elective class the lecturer was gobsmacked that the book for his subject was $112, and after looking at it I can understand why, only just over 200 pages of black and white (low grade printing and paper) paperback text, no online component or anything fancy like that, just rehashed material about ecommerce (groan) and interorganisational systems and the like. Fucking bullshit, I spoke to him afterwards and he told me not to buy it and just use past texts or online journals to do my research. My mate in the class is thinking about photocopying the book (since it would be only just over 100 pages duplexed photocopying), I can't believe that text book prices are getting to the point where people who have never even considered copying a book like this are considering it as an option. What is going on in the academic book publishing world!
Well what happened this semester???!?!?
If I had to buy all the books they wanted us to buy for my subjects this semester it would have cost me a total of $506, yeah thats five hundred and six dollars!!! (this is only for 4 'core' books, nothing else like lecture materials or secondary/supplementary texts), this is fucking ridiculous! We were lucky that the guy taking this international tax law subject took pity on us and said he would provide an online ocr'ed version of the $180 book we were going to have to buy (which will be out of date by the start of next year) and then tonight in my IT elective class the lecturer was gobsmacked that the book for his subject was $112, and after looking at it I can understand why, only just over 200 pages of black and white (low grade printing and paper) paperback text, no online component or anything fancy like that, just rehashed material about ecommerce (groan) and interorganisational systems and the like. Fucking bullshit, I spoke to him afterwards and he told me not to buy it and just use past texts or online journals to do my research. My mate in the class is thinking about photocopying the book (since it would be only just over 100 pages duplexed photocopying), I can't believe that text book prices are getting to the point where people who have never even considered copying a book like this are considering it as an option. What is going on in the academic book publishing world!
posted by serp at 7:43 PM
6 Comments:
It's pretty bad. I don't know where they expect YA and Austudy people to pull that kind of money from.
my textbooks are generally around 100, and law texts are updated almost yearly, so it's hard to get second hand ones. i think my int'l law one is 130, which is probably the most expensive i've had ever at uni.
there are always libraries.
Heh yeah but don't try the school library, around here from the second week onwards they are constantly always borrowed until the end of semester. It would seem that someone 'borrows' (ie. never brings it back) for the entire semester.
at melb. uni and here they had this policy at the library where the class text books were on 2 hour loan only. for every hour that the book is overdue you get charged something like 10 dollars. i've seen someone rack up 200 dollars.
and if you don't pay the fine, you don't graduate. good incentive to return the book on time.
Dude. If you want any textbooks... you know where I work. You have my email.
The federal government could help with the price of text books... there was a huge push to retain the ETSS arrangements but they flatly refused when the closing date came about.
Law's the worst (especially taxation), 'cause your textbooks are superseded every six to twelve months!
I sure do know where you work, I watch you eat your lunch at your desk in the most south eastern cubicle on your level every day...
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