With the rise of smartphones, I figured I was part of the last generation forced to buy these overpriced TI calculators. It's so sad to see this racket going strong today.
You spend $100 ( a lot of money to most people ) on a useless device that you don't ever use again. Never once in college or thereafter have I used my TI calculator.
Our exams in engineering school took into account we could solve 5 equations/unknowns problems with our TI-92 Plus (at the time).
Can't imagine students with Chromebooks during exams (edit: or maybe I'm just from a different time)
What bothers me is that the device is a hard requirement for students, which means TI and Casio get to charge unreasonable amounts of money for these calculators that are not reflective of what they'd otherwise be worth. I brought up the Chromebook not so much as a suggested alternative, but as a benchmark for what sort of hardware you can get for the same money when your market isn't completely tied to your product.
For the price of a calculator[0] you can instead buy an entry-level Chromebook[1]. You would get a general purpose-ish computer instead of a highly specialised, highly limited, woefully underpowered device. It feels like a weird case of regulatory capture.