Yeah well, 40 years ago that is what my textbooks cost. I was surprised by that quote that they were so inexpensive.
What I see is that the declining interest in the life of the mind that was already evident a generation earlier has accelerated, particularly during the COVID years. I see this as the reversion of a historical anomaly. In the postwar era, a number of things converged: the GI Bill allowed a lot of ambitious new blood to enter the university system, competition with the Soviets ensured generous funding, and many the finest brains of a generation of Europeans relocated to the US. This all started to come undone in the late 1960s, when the counterculture made the establishment start to question the value of the academy, the world war 2 GIs finished their educations, and the cream of 1930s Europe died off. Really, it’s surprising how long we’ve been able to sustain a decline since then.
Like I said in another post, the environment in these primary schools in the United States is just not set up for success. Their standards are low and they allow smart phones and distracting device devices in schools. Not to mention the overt focus on athletics over academics. However, the last point is not the biggest issue as that’s been a part of primary education in high school in the US for a century at least.
Assuming this https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college is accurate, tuition at the mid-level state university in the article is probably around $10k/year. That's more than it should be, but why would you play $10k/year for classes then not buy the books?
I attended university in the early 2010s. After my freshman year I stopped buying textbooks for most classes. More than just their cost, I found that most textbooks really were optional. Most professors never even referenced them throughout the course. I figured I could always buy a book later if I found out I needed it, but that never happened. The few books I actually did buy after my freshman year were all mistakes. I have not read any of them and I had no trouble with their associated classes.
It sounds like the professor who wrote this article actually incorporates the course material he assigns. Good for him. But in my experience that is quite rare.
I would, however, be thrilled to find a $35 text. The average cost of my upper division textbooks was closer to $200 each. Some courses would assign multiple books.
Imho that’s what makes the textbook overpriced: the usefulness in the course. In my academic years i’ve seen some textbook that are actually pleasant to read and that you could actually rely on, alone, to pass the course… and then so many books that where completely useless: either more of a reference than anything else or some poorly written text by the same professor holding the course.
At some point I resorted to ligben first, and then bookstore later and only if the book did deliver some actual value.
Textbooks can equally well be paid for with college loans, they aren't restricted to tuition-only.
Making the financial problem with study costs in the USA even worse, more cash to buy textbooks from credit means higher prices that can be extracted for the books, just like any other good which is mostly paid through easily achievable loans.
Plus, the idea that everyone should buy it is bonkers. There are or should be libraries in school that costs $10k a year. Or at least, there should be used book from last year or rhat one book 5 friends bought together. All these would be financially reasonable decisions.
I disagree that K through 12 is not part of the problem though. The presence of phones in schools, especially smart phones, has definitely had an impact on the learning skills of students. In the old days, if you will, people had to pass physical pieces of paper around in class secretly to communicate, which was riskier and usually a one or two time event. Smart phones are a Pandora’s box of distractions. I also blame schools for lowering their standards to accommodate the lower standards of the students entering their schools. The schools are simply passing these students down the down the river of eventual disappointment. There should be remedial courses and schools should dismiss students that are not willing or able to pass these courses in order to have the ability to perform at an acceptable level.
Taking their money and providing a degree when they haven’t actually learned the material is borderline fraud.
I know I’ll be flagged and downvoted for this but I don’t care.
This guy is a philosophy professor, so if he is assigning a book every 1-2 weeks, in a 14-week semester, let’s say that’s like 8 books.
Buying 8 books for under $100 is cheap. It does sound like he takes care to craft an affordable syllabus.
Of course, if you are taking 5 classes a semester it’s gonna add up, but this is really not on the egregious end of things.
And sure, there is more contemporary philosophy, and it's great he's keeping the books affordable. But if it's anything early 20th century or prior, don't be so surprised people are going to read what's in the public domain instead.
I mean, literally the same page — so if someone says “what did ya’ll think about this quote on p.156” I could actually get to it in time instead of scrambling to find the passage in whatever I printed out from Project Guttenberg.
For this reason my strategy to save book money was usually to get the assigned books from the library and camp out in front of the copy machine for an afternoon.
I know some of the early translations of e.g. Nietzche sometimes end up saying the opposite of what might have been intended, which is a downer.
The linked text is clearly announcing it's focused on the average student, not the top of bottom tiers.
I'm not sure about the opinion that the author implies about Harry Potter, but I'm confident the series is an easier read and still give you plenty of opportunity to discuss about philosophical and literacy topics.
Anyway, that's definitely an interesting reading, I forwarded it to my wife who teach as a physician, something I rarely feel like relevant to do with HN posts.
What's going on that the students have the resources for the tuition but not books at 5-10% of that cost (that's a 4 course load with books costing $100-150 per course)?
Parents cover the fees and give the kids an allowance for the rest; either the kids budget poorly or the allowance fails to really account for just how expensive the first few weeks are with all the books you're expected to buy?
Often times, professors would allow us to purchase earlier editions of the book for our coursework, which were a fraction of the cost of the most recent edition.
Worst case scenario, I could reserve the book at the school library, but I'd have to move fast as there'd only be a handful of copies available.
Since that ruling many independent booksellers in the US started importing those foreign editions and selling them through online marketplaces such as Abe Books and Biblio.
Here are some examples of the savings. Lets say you are a math student, and your introductory calculus is taught from the first volume of Apostol's Calculus, your multivariable calculus taught from the second volume, and you real and complex analysis class uses Rudin's Real and Complex Analysis.
The US editions of those will set you back around $220 for the first volume of Apostol, around $140 for the second volume, and around $240 for Rudin.
On Abe Books you can get the international editions of the Apostol books from a US seller for $24.39 for volume 1 and $23.40 for volume 2 with free shipping. There are several more US sellers with then in the $30-40 range.
For the Rudin book $22.06 will get it from a US seller on Abe Books with free shipping. There are few more US sellers in the $35-50 range.
Biblio isn't as good on these particular books. They are available at comparable price but only from Indian sellers with shipping from India.
I haven't seen the international edition of Rudin but I have both the US and international editions of both volumes of Apostol and the text is the same. It is the physical form that differs. The US edition is hardback printed on finer paper. The international edition is a paperback printed on rougher paper and the pages are smaller.
A single book in a non-literature class could easily go for more than that. CS was especially bad in this regard, for some reason.
The lack of understanding of economic realities just kinda stinks.
It was a long time ago now, but the biggest reason I ended in a local two-year college instead of a four-year university was I simply couldn't afford the $20 application fees. I only applied to two schools because it was all I could afford.
> Yes, I know some texts, especially in the sciences, are expensive. However, the books I assign are low-priced. All texts combined for one of my courses is between $35-$100 and they still don’t buy them.
The implication that for one course (of which they have multiple in a year, over four years), students can be expected to spend up to $100 for textbooks (and the author thinks this is low-priced!) is astonishing and shows a profound disconnect with the actual financial situation of students. Of course, many will just use libgen or get second-hand copies, but these things are thwarted by incremental releases with just enough changes to make them infeasible for use in the course.