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Who needs sex when universities continue fu***** students?

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Tornado Condor

Tornado Condor

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My friend was telling me that for his classes he needed to buy either his textbooks new that comes with codes to turn your homework in or buy the code separately (for around $40 bucks). Seriously? You need to buy a code to turn your fucking homework in?

wat
 
We need government regulations for universities. At least with how textbooks are handled. I bought like $600+ worth of textbooks. A few months later, they only wanted to buy a few back, and for $32 dollars... My GOD.

Your friend should try printing his homework and handing it directly to the prof in person, see what he does.
 
It's probably mastering chemistry or something like that. Had to do that last year. Sort of a khanacademy-esque online homework thing.
 
CrazyDude said:
Another tactic is buying specialized university versions of text books.
Click to expand...

Yep. My school started using a custom edition book this year for the math class I'm taking.
The old book covered three different levels of classes and you could use it three semesters in a row.

The new book is one book per class. $153 per book new, custom editions every year so no sellbacks in the spring.

For a spanish class I took, they had custom editions every SEMESTER. No sellbacks whatsoever since they were outdated and considered useless. 100+ bucks per book.
 
Kwixotik said:
$480 spent on textbooks this semester. $80 of that on an online pass to turn in my homework.
Click to expand...

You're shitting me right? Online Pass for homework? Most I've spent on mandatory textbooks in a semester was about 100 bucks, but even then I could've gotten the texts online from the profs.

Vipershark said:
Yep. My school started using a custom edition book this year for the math class I'm taking.
The old book covered three different levels of classes and you could use it three semesters in a row.

The new book is one book per class. $153 per book new, custom editions every year so no sellbacks in the spring.

For a spanish class I took, they had custom editions every SEMESTER. No sellbacks whatsoever since they were outdated and considered useless. 100+ bucks per book.
Click to expand...

I'm at a loss of words... wow, you guys get ripped off pretty bad.
 
I had one class where the Prof just photocopied all the pages he was actually going to use and sold copies for $27. So good.
 
yup DLC made its way to fucking textbooks

Its that bullshit mathlab, psylab, mylab etc . Codes to activate your account so you can actually do quizzes on them. So bad

I spent 250(1 book) + 45 for a code last semester . Amazon couldn't save my soul that time
 
We have shit like that for our Chems and Physics (STEM-only school, so everyone takes 'em.) Mediocre websites, easy to team up and ace everything for online assignments.

But yeah, I really wish textbooks weren't so costly. I guess, since buy back is terrible anyhow and I'm a Chem major, I've been keeping most of my Chemistry textbooks as references and stuff like that, but whatever.

Mumei said:
What is the name of the company he needs to purchase from?
Click to expand...

Can't speak for the OP, but we use Wiley.
 
One of my instructors in college actually wrote the textbook for our class... but it wasn't quite finished, so all of us had to purchase a 600pg manuscript and and a three ring binder. No resale value, no used copies, nothing. Thankfully, the book wasn't super expensive.
 
Mumei said:
What is the name of the company he needs to purchase from?
Click to expand...

My school is requiring my math teacher to use the online math ‘program’ by this company. Luckily, the math teacher seems to be a decent guy and warned us against buying the newest edition of the textbook, and recommends we just buy an online pass, and buy the pass directly from the website so we don’t pay the campus bookstore markup. The pass from the website is still 85 dollars.
 
Haven't had to buy a single book for my course (CS), thank god. Some of my housemates, like the ones doing politics or law get pretty shafted when it comes to this stuff.
 
There is a university near me that uses only specialized books. The amount of paper that is expended creating those new books with the slightest changes every year is astounding. There is no resell market on that campus. Every single text is outdated and useless the next year. Insanity. They also don't allow any kind of electronics for note taking, which in this day and age seems pretty crazy, too.


But paying to turn in your homework is even worse. Jesus. Because books and tuition aren't high enough, an extra tax to TURN IN YOUR WORK?
 
my chemistry class used one (mastering chemistry). i remember it being $50-$60 alone. absolutely atrocious in every way and pissed me off to no extent. the ONLY upside was that (mostly) all of the homework answers were online thanks to yahoo answers or some college/university websites posting them. that alone made it acceptable...barely.

this crap is just like the online pass in mortal kombat (surprisingly not in the komplete edition though, i wonder why) and other games. hate them with a passion. these assholes make too much money as it is, they dont need to extract any more from us. there is a reason the used market exists, and an online pass doesnt help one bit.

also, the bookstore is your enemy. i buy pretty much everything from amazon (unless its a university "exclusive" textbook or by some miracle they have it cheaper) or get it from friends. sometimes ive seen amazon actually accept used books and the rest i just sell on amazon directly. must have saved thousands (not even joking) over the years when i was still in college.
 
When I was in uni situation wasn't bad as they are now, you could buy most of the books used or with luck you could get them from library for free. Still, even those days towards my last years I couldn't get ridoff many of my books since there were new editions each year and old editions were obsolete. But this current shit is just crazy!
 
I know the values of higher education, it varies. In general, kids don't typically leave high school with enough education to be functional adults. The hope is college will increase their chances to become so. The problem is that colleges have become focused of employment and revenue generation for businesses and not the student but have been beating the drums of its own importance for decades. It's also gone a long way to lock-in the standards for employment so that it's intrinsic to the process.

Students have become nothing more than fuel for the machine. Based on my past being in a hiring position for a few years, I'm frankly not impressed with what college is outputting. While education is getting more expensive, I feel it's really failing the students.
 
I am knocking out some of my general requirement classes, and one of them is biology. I was thrilled that the professor told everyone that she only recommends the textbook, but we can all get by without it if we come to all the lectures. I've never had a professor be up front like that, and it saved me $200. Now, French on the other hand is costing me $200 because, like the OP's friend, it has a digital code bundled only inside new books and we need it to turn in assignments.

Universities like to pretend that they have all these general requirements attached to a degree because it makes a "well-rounded" student, but that is fucking horseshit. It's all about the money.
 
It's always interesting to see how these arrangements shift depending on what kind of course you're discussing. I taught an Intro to Public Speaking course, and the textbook—which was expensive—came bundled with the workbook featuring necessary information/worksheets/etc. In addition, of course, the workbook had been revised from the previous year, which meant students all needed the workbook. I'm teaching a different course now (where we rely on PDFs and cheaper textbooks, based on differences in approach/material), but they also released a new edition of the textbook since then, which completely kills the used market.

What made this all particularly interesting was that the person overseeing the course was the person who wrote the textbook, so it was interesting to hear about the economics (as the textbook, now on its 11th edition, has made him a wealthy man given its circulation) from within the system.

Long story short: textbooks are a racket. In fact, I had a student given a speech about textbooks being too expensive inspired by the textbook for the course. It was charmingly meta.
 
Jintor said:
My textbooks were over $500 this semester :/
Click to expand...
My enrollment fee for an entire year was $500. I love commie Europe.

But really, this system sucks. How long is it going to take before a politician in power realizes the current American university system is partially responsible for ruining the country.
 
A relative was kind enough to give me $1000 for books/homework codes last year (junior year). So I managed to get everything that I would need to buy for the rest of my undergrad. So I was lucky. It still disgusts me looking at the insane prices for online homework.

Some professors are nice enough to make the online homework be optional at least, as in you can substitute those points with your average score on your midterms/final.

FelixOrion said:
We have shit like that for our Chems and Physics (STEM-only school, so everyone takes 'em.) Mediocre websites, easy to team up and ace everything for online assignments.

But yeah, I really wish textbooks weren't so costly. I guess, since buy back is terrible anyhow and I'm a Chem major, I've been keeping most of my Chemistry textbooks as references and stuff like that, but whatever.
Click to expand...

Even if you don't team up, it's so easy to use google to cheat on webassign and masteringchem/physics and all that stuff. I'm not judging the people who do that, I do it too.

What really, really pisses me off is when a professor makes you buy a completely different textbook than last year's because it has his picture in it.
 
fabricated backlash said:
You're shitting me right? Online Pass for homework? Most I've spent on mandatory textbooks in a semester was about 100 bucks, but even then I could've gotten the texts online from the profs.
Click to expand...

Not only that, but the online homework pass is for my General Chemistry II class. I took General Chemistry I last year and was required to buy a different online pass for a different textbook that we only covered half of. Now I have a different professor who wants to use another textbook from a different company for the second half of the course, requiring me to buy a different online pass.
 
Homework codes?

What the fuck? We didn't have those when I went to school three years ago.
 
I just spent $359 in books. This is my first year in college too, so I can't wait to see what other shit I have to buy.

Edit: They were all new too :/
 
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