FYI College text book pricing

[The Girls' Mom]

I would love a suggested reading list in any of my classes. I actually wish more professors did something like that.  

 

I do not love, however, required texts that cost me an arm and a leg.  Nor do I love being required to buy the latest custom edition when one from 5 years ago would work just as well.  I think that is the beef most people have.  When you shell out $200 for a book that you did not need, it is very frustrating.  (And then, you cannot even resell the book later because it was a custom edition that they only used for one year, or has some code with it that can only be used once.)

[regentrude]

This is a sad comment but has a ring of truth.  As I probably have recalled before, after I learned to try to accomodate my classes by using a book for homework, I had a student upbraid me for correcting a problem they had presented erroneously, on the grounds that the student had taken the answer straight from an online answer book, so it must be correct.  I consulted this answer book, written by a grad student at Princeton, located his error and explained it to the student.  I was gobsmacked that a student would not only take work from a cheat sheet, but use that fact as an argument against having it found incorrect.

 

That is chuzpe, indeed.

 

Did I tell you guys that a representative of chegg.com, a subscription based cheating website that publishes solution manuals for all major textbooks, contacted me and asked whether I could put a link to their page on my course website???

[mathwonk]

boy things have changed.   regentrude, that is an amazing story.

 

in my day, they did not reissue the same book every year or two with trivial changes just to jack up the price.  Or maybe some did, but my professors did not use those books.  If you compare popular calc books llike the one by George B Thomas, it has gone through lots of editions and the new ones are expensive and the old ones are not.  But the books they used in honors classes at Harvard, like the books by Apostol, and Courant, have not been rewritten essentially at all.  They are now very expensive however, as outlandish academic book pricing has become normal practice by greedy publishers.  I bought my used copy of Courant for about $6 in 1960 and it can be found now for well over $100, and I saw an ad today for Apostol for over $200.  Nonetheless when I tried to sell my own copies of my books to a used bookstore charging these prices they offered me $4 or less for my books, even in new condition for some books I had not yet read, and most of the time nothing at all.

 

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_16/175-6008475-4772258?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=apostol+calculus+vol+1&sprefix=apostol+calculus%2Cstripbooks%2C263

 

interestingly here are copies of courant for a low price, maybe not quite kosher:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Differential-Integral-Calculus-Vol-One/dp/4871878384/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1447801279&sr=1-1&keywords=courant+calculus+vol+1

 

here is a reasonably priced collection of copies of spivak's calculus:

 

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=spivak+calculus+

 

maybe it's the publisher of apostol that is out of line, who is that?  hmmm... wiley.

 

but this exercise shows one does have options, i.e. use courant or spivak instead of apostol.  (to boost my own university's math major, i donated copies of all these books last year to the undergrad math tea room library.)

 

Some business people discovered that we academics do value highly good books and just raised the prices enormously in recent decades.  Research level monographs of small distribution from Springer used to sell for $4 that now go for way over $100, for thin paperbacks.

 

A thin paperback I used in an intro to proofs course , worth maybe $15, now goes for $140.  The ownership of Springer publishing has apparently passed from a man dedicated to being of service to academics, to the hands of someone bent only on gouging money from them.

 

But as we have said before, there are usually good used copies of excellent books out there that can be viable alternatives to the exorbitant ones.  You do have to communicate to the prof who got his copy free what is going on, and in my experience most profs will make an effort to accomodate you.  Of course some of us are tempted to get on this bandwagon and supplement our salaries by publishing our own books and selling them.

 

There is an argument that a really excellent and unique book deserves a higher than average price, and in the case of the excellent book Calculus, by (my friend) Michael Spivak, who is not in academia as a salaried professor, the sales of his book pay for his living.  So we might make a distinction between outstanding books that command a high price by virtue of their quality and demand, versus books that are intellectually worthless but are popular because they are considered easy to read, or are cynically required for a course.  Even the second category may receive some argument as to merit of a pedagogical variety.  The ones which are reissued in new editions frequently just to make the others go technically out of date  are inexcusable.  I might mention however that my friends who write such books say that these new editions are demanded by the publisher as a condition not to let their books go out of print.

 

 

University libraries are major victims of this price gouging since they try to keep collections of all the needed books.  Researchers do the research while on university salary, and submit it to journals for free, or are even charged "page charges" for the privilege.  Then the journals publish the research and sell it back to the universities at a high price.  Some journals, especially springer and Elsevier I believe, charge so much that there is an organized movement by researchers to boycott them and not submit articles to them.  it has over 15,000 signatories including some Fields medalists.

 

http://thecostofknowledge.com/

 

 

Individual researchers are also victimized and charged for access to articles.  After years of computers going down and moving from place to place, I do not even have copies of all my own articles that I myself wrote.  When I go online to see them at the journal's website I am frequently asked to pay $20 or more for a copy of my own article, from a journal to which I have granted the copyright.  Sometimes I am blocked even from posting a copy of my own work on my own website.

 

here is a link to a springer website asking me to pay about $30 for a copy of my own work:

 

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2FBFb0075005

 

[elegantlion]

I would love a suggested reading list in any of my classes. I actually wish more professors did something like that.  

 

I do not love, however, required texts that cost me an arm and a leg.  Nor do I love being required to buy the latest custom edition when one from 5 years ago would work just as well.  I think that is the beef most people have.  When you shell out $200 for a book that you did not need, it is very frustrating.  (And then, you cannot even resell the book later because it was a custom edition that they only used for one year, or has some code with it that can only be used once.)

 

:iagree:  I've bought an abundance of books this semester that will be valuable resources in my field, none of them are textbooks. I don't like textbooks that are watered down resources that don't even make good reading material on the subject, much less worth keeping as a reference source. 

[Sebastian (a lady)]

well its raining here so i'm trolling old threads with comments.  this one interests me both as a former professor and student. i have already posted my professor comment so here is my ex student one.  i feel like a dodo in the sense of having extinct reactions, but i have a remark about objections to books that are not "used" by the professor.  in my day the idea was for the student to use the book by reading it, not for the professor to "use it" by assigning homework from it.

 

i.e. the textbook list in a course, at least at harvard in the 1960's, was a valuable resource where one could learn what were the absolute best books on a given subject.  You bought the book and were supposed to read it and benefit from it even though the professor often never mentioned it at all and never referred to it, and did everything in a completely independent way in class.  Having two different presentations of the same material was considered a plus.  I still own and treasure the great calculus book by Richard Courant that my professor (John Tate) recommended for us in 1960, even though he never assigned a single problem or reading from it, but created the whole course from scratch for us on the board from his vast expertise.

 

Indeed it was not unusual for students not enrolled in a class to show up on day one just to get a copy of the reading list, since that was considered one of the most valuable benefits of the class, just to find out what that famous scholar thought you should read to learn the subject.  ahhh,... those were the days, but perhaps this still rings a bell somewhere with someone.  ... of course books probably did not cost quite as much then.

 

Well in the example I think I posted of my roommate getting upset at books not being used, it would have been more like putting Chemistry books on a Physics class list, then saying that they were both natural sciences.  It wasn't a matter of not following the book closely enough.  It was a case of requiring students to purchase a half dozen different books that were never assigned or discussed.  This was a World Literature course that never moved out of Britain (in a department where there were separate courses for British Literature).

[Sebastian (a lady)]

 the undergrad math tea room library

 

It makes me unreasonably happy to know such a thing exists.

[MerryAtHope]

I would love a suggested reading list in any of my classes. I actually wish more professors did something like that.  

 

I do not love, however, required texts that cost me an arm and a leg.  Nor do I love being required to buy the latest custom edition when one from 5 years ago would work just as well.  I think that is the beef most people have.  When you shell out $200 for a book that you did not need, it is very frustrating.  (And then, you cannot even resell the book later because it was a custom edition that they only used for one year, or has some code with it that can only be used once.)

 

Yes. I think there's also a difference between providing a suggested reading list, and presenting that reading list as required reading but never referring to or discussing any material at all. (If it's so valuable and important, why is it not worth the professor's time to discuss? And if it's valuable but not directly related--well, can't you tell a student that?) It's a matter of expectations. I appreciated the prof's who told us the difference between required and recommended lists (and I often bought the recommended books because they "sold" me on the book and why it was valuable/important to them.) But not every single class I took in college was one where I had a deep, abiding interest and wanted to know more. Sometimes I took classes because I had to, or because it sounded like the most interesting of the possible choices to fill the requirements. I worked my way through college as a waitress. I really didn't want to spend hard-earned money on books that didn't terribly interest me and weren't needed for the class. When books (often $100+) are listed as if they are required, and then you find out later that they aren't even necessary--yes, students will be upset about that. It's costly both in terms of time and money. If the book is background knowledge that a prof expects a student to understand in order to have a basis for the course lectures and content, but isn't going to be directly covered--why not say that as well? I don't doubt some students have cheating as an ulterior motive when they complain, but I wouldn't assume that's the only or even the main reason. Clear expectations and goals have a lot to do with it. 

[mathwonk]

in regard to recommended book lists, this link to the preface of a book celebrating excellent math writing includes a list of books on math and math education that i had never heard of, but that seem to be excellent.  see especially page xxiii.

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=dc7yZKRizNQC&pg=RA1-PR15&lpg=RA1-PR15&dq=mathematicians+remember+bill+thurston&source=bl&ots=svGvrEonHN&sig=5x1OEyFrjfW4pkIjoe9wQLkL39c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBmoVChMI8PC9vPmayQIVScljCh06eQPP#v=onepage&q=mathematicians%20remember%20bill%20thurston&f=false

 

heres maybe a better link for that introduction:

 

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i9821.pdf

 

 

i looked up one of them, math from three to seven, by zvonkin, and it did seem interesting, the account of a professional research mathematician who ran an experimental math school in his apartment for preschoolers.

 

in general the russian tradition in teaching math through interesting problems seems wonderful.

[G5052]

Well, I just priced books for my oldest as we prepare to register him. The materials for accounting, online math access, and English handbook carry over.

 

I've got to buy another math book (probably rent from Amazon), an English readings book (about $30 used), and an Excel book and online access, which is the most expensive by far. I'm figuring about $300, so that's better than last semester. We'll resell his business and math books on Amazon and get back about $100 or so.

 

His speech class uses all Internet sources and is considered a model for "no textbook" classes there.

 

I don't have access yet, but the online class I teach is being reworked, and I hear that they're going to require one reference handbook that runs about $20 used in addition to the web resources they've lined up. That's reasonable.

 

Edited November 19, 2015 by G5052

[hillfarm]

Hi,

(Back after a long hiatus)

 

My dd did full-time, DE courses for her last 2 years of high school. The program is free to us, all the money changes hand at the state level, we never even see it. However....

when we go to the community college bookstore to pick up her books, they do give us a receipt showing the cost of the books with a -0- balance due. Her last semester, for books for 5 cc classes, the total bill was $1,128.75.

 

The biggest offender was a paper back, medium sized book, Small Business Management, which would have cost her $298.00, had it not been for the post secondary program. The instructor covered the material, and tested the students, on about half of the contents.

 

This is inexcusable! I nearly cried when I saw that receipt. It was free for us, but my heart was broken for the people in our community who had graduated from high school and were trying to better themselves by attending the cc. How can people handle these ridiculous prices? I realize that they can rent, buy used, etc., but this system has reached the point of insanity.

Edited November 24, 2015 by hillfarm

[FaithManor]

Hillfarm, I agree completely.

 

Ds's German text was $273.00. They will only get through half. All I can say is they better use the second half of this book for German 112 - he is in 111 now - or I am going to be an unhappy camper.

[Arcadia]

Ds's German text was $273.00. They will only get through half. All I can say is they better use the second half of this book for German 112 - he is in 111 now - or I am going to be an unhappy camper.

We were at Stanford's bookstore while waiting for the AMC8 to start last week. The Deutsch Na Klar current edition was so costly. I bought an older edition at a library book sale for 50 cents.

 

The prices (including rental prices) at the college bookstore were certainly eye opening for hubby.

Edited November 25, 2015 by Arcadia

[mathwonk]

Comment:  I have a friend who co - wrote a standard book for an advanced undergraduate class.  I assume he does use his own book in the class when he teaches it, because I think he believes it to be the best book for implementing his vision of how the subject should be taught.  He also told me he has never received over $1500 in royalties in any one year from this book, and that next time he thinks it would make more sense just to give the unpolished book away rather than work hard enough on it to have it published. In particular, he specifically discouraged me from bothering to write up any of my own sets of notes as a book.  Since I just checked on amazon that his book sells new for over $175, I would deduce that most of the profits go to the publisher.

 

Another friend who wrote a short entry level paperback book that sells for under $20 new said I believe that he receives about a nickel per sold copy, or it may have been another author friend whose book sold at the time for $5, so 1%.  The one acquaintance who seems to have made money off his book, wrote a freshman level book that was quite well written, well motivated, packed with interesting examples and applications, and full of challenging and instructive exercises.  He spent years writing it and then lots more time revising it to accomodate the publisher and the students who commented on it.  Basically the revisions were devoted to making it easier to read (possibly simplifying the language), and added new and easier problems, more computer oriented ones, and even removed some of the deeper scientific applications.  Hence although I myself preferred the first edition, it became and stayed popular for many years and sold widely.  Needless to say the prices of the newer editions are far higher than for the old ones, say over $100 versus under $5.  Had he not revised it regularly in accord with the publisher's wishes, the book would long ago have gone out of print and his income from it stopped.  He himself was not responsible for deciding whether his book would be used even in his own classroom, that duty belonging to a committee he did not serve on, and of course by far most of the sales were at other schools.

 

My advice to a student in a class using a book like this and wanting to save money, would be to use an old edition for learning and copy the problem sets from someone else or a library copy of the new edition, unless of course the student cannot read the more sophisticated prose in the earlier edition.  In such cases however there are usually so many different editions that a cheap version of a recently rewritten one should be available.

Edited December 2, 2015 by mathwonk

[MarkT]

http://mfeldstein.com/how-much-do-college-students-actually-pay-for-textbooks/

 

look for comments from:

 

Laura Gibbs

John Kotz

 

to see different college instructor approaches

 

by the way John K  -  1.5 times inflation is more than a "bit"  

 

 

 

[Reefgazer]

This is exactly what I do.  I make my own assignments, provide thorough notes to my students, and tell them that any college-level, within-10-years book will do them just fine and to find one they like.  I do provide suggestions.  I'm so disgusted with the college textbook rip-off racket.

That is how we used books when I was a student. The profs never followed a book - they just gave a suggestion of useful books at the beginning of the semester, and you had to figure out which book presented which topic in a particularly good way. Lots of studying in the library, as most texts could not be bought. Homework was not taken from the textbook.

 

Edited February 24, 2016 by reefgazer

[TechWife]

My husband has co-authored a few books that have been used in university classrooms over the years. If he were teaching the class, of course he would use his own books - he and his co-authors are authorities on the subject. Why would he choose a book that he would deem of lesser quality? He  makes very little from books sales. The authors make the least of anyone in the food chain, honestly. Most people would be surprised at how little they make. Did you know if unsold books are returned to the publisher, the royalties for those sales are deducted from the author's account? Late in the publishing cycle, authors can actually run a negative balance. 

 

Our state flagship was using one of his books a few years ago and the professor teaching the course had a heart attack. The department head picked up the phone, called my husband and asked him if he could come finish teaching that particular course. There were two sections. My husband took one and one of his co-authors took the other. Due to compensation restrictions with my husbands employer, he was not paid to do this. He did it because he likes the professor and helping others is the right thing to do. 

 

Textbook authors are regular people. 

[FaithManor]

I was rather shocked at how little SWB makes off her Norton books. SHEESH! Publishing seems like it is quite a racket!

[Caroline]

I agree about textbook authors being regular people. My sister-in-law's father wrote a set of textbooks that are used at many engineering colleges in basic engineering courses. (I used them in college and he signed my set for me.) When he heard my DS was using the online version, he sent him a hard copy in case he ever needed it. Dr. Kraige is one of the nicest people in the world. So maybe he is better than just regular people...

 

My husband has co-authored a few books that have been used in university classrooms over the years. If he were teaching the class, of course he would use his own books - he and his co-authors are authorities on the subject. Why would he choose a book that he would deem of lesser quality? He makes very little from books sales. The authors make the least of anyone in the food chain, honestly. Most people would be surprised at how little they make. Did you know if unsold books are returned to the publisher, the royalties for those sales are deducted from the author's account? Late in the publishing cycle, authors can actually run a negative balance.

 

Our state flagship was using one of his books a few years ago and the professor teaching the course had a heart attack. The department head picked up the phone, called my husband and asked him if he could come finish teaching that particular course. There were two sections. My husband took one and one of his co-authors took the other. Due to compensation restrictions with my husbands employer, he was not paid to do this. He did it because he likes the professor and helping others is the right thing to do.

 

Textbook authors are regular people.

[swimmermom3]

It is disgraceful. Especially in subjects where absolutely none of the material has changed in the last 50 years - like introductory physics.

Unfortunately, the "solution" of open source textbooks still leaves to be desired because of quality. As an instructor, I do not have the time to carefully read several open source texts from different sources to make sure that the text has no errors and is pedagogically sound - I have to rely on some kind of quality control process done in the production of the book.

 

I am currently in the process of writing my own assignments for my entire course so that we no longer have to rely on problems from the book. This will allow my students to use any old edition of the textbook for the assigned reading, or possibly even choose between different texts. It is an incredible amount of work though - but I am so done with the publishers who btw are trying to convince me to use the new 14th edition of the book that is even heavier, has even more colorful distracting illustrations and costs more money. There is no reason an intro physics text needs to weigh 6 lbs and cost over $200.

 

I was in an AP teacher community a while back where they were discussing choosing new books because the test had changed. One teacher was upfront in admitting that her choice was partly influenced by the physical size of the text. She wanted something the kids would actually read.  Long, unwieldy, heavy texts are a pain to manage, literally.  

 

Regentrude, I shared with dh some comments you had on another thread regarding textbooks and students being unwilling to price shop or ask a professor if a different edition was okay.  We decided that one way ds would have "skin in the game" this fall would be for him to purchase his college texts out of his own earnings from his summer job.  He can be very frugal when it's his money and I have shown him how to shop for texts.  I am still blown away that a student wouldn't take the five minutes to ask the professor about another edition and save himself $100 or more. Besides, honestly, there are links all over the internet to many of the most recent texts.

 

[Reefgazer]

Just a quick FYI....Some schools (mine, for example) do not allow a professor to change the department-chosen books that are listed on the official course website.  I can opt not to use the book, I can recommend *additional* books, but I cannot change the book, tell the students to shop at Amazon instead of the bookstore, or tell them to buy an old edition.  I do tell them to buy the older editions and that I don't take homework from the book, but technically, I am not supposed to do that.  The textbook publishers want to protect their racket, and writing nonsense like that into their contract with the college is par for the course.  Most professors I know hew to the company line and won't deviate from it so as not to endanger their jobs, and many students are aware of this and so they don't even ask for that reason.

I was in an AP teacher community a while back where they were discussing choosing new books because the test had changed. One teacher was upfront in admitting that her choice was partly influenced by the physical size of the text. She wanted something the kids would actually read.  Long, unwieldy, heavy texts are a pain to manage, literally.  

 

Regentrude, I shared with dh some comments you had on another thread regarding textbooks and students being unwilling to price shop or ask a professor if a different edition was okay.  We decided that one way ds would have "skin in the game" this fall would be for him to purchase his college texts out of his own earnings from his summer job.  He can be very frugal when it's his money and I have shown him how to shop for texts.  I am still blown away that a student wouldn't take the five minutes to ask the professor about another edition and save himself $100 or more. Besides, honestly, there are links all over the internet to many of the most recent texts.
 

 

[regentrude]

Just a quick FYI....Some schools (mine, for example) do not allow a professor to change the department-chosen books that are listed on the official course website.  I can opt not to use the book, I can recommend *additional* books, but I cannot change the book, tell the students to shop at Amazon instead of the bookstore, or tell them to buy an old edition.  I do tell them to buy the older editions and that I don't take homework from the book, but technically, I am not supposed to do that.  The textbook publishers want to protect their racket, and writing nonsense like that into their contract with the college is par for the course. 

 

That is disturbing. Do the textbook publishers give kickbacks to the college for such a contract?

[swimmermom3]

Just a quick FYI....Some schools (mine, for example) do not allow a professor to change the department-chosen books that are listed on the official course website.  I can opt not to use the book, I can recommend *additional* books, but I cannot change the book, tell the students to shop at Amazon instead of the bookstore, or tell them to buy an old edition.  I do tell them to buy the older editions and that I don't take homework from the book, but technically, I am not supposed to do that.  The textbook publishers want to protect their racket, and writing nonsense like that into their contract with the college is par for the course.  Most professors I know hew to the company line and won't deviate from it so as not to endanger their jobs, and many students are aware of this and so they don't even ask for that reason.

 

That is ...obscene.  Wasteful. 

 

[Reefgazer]

I'm not sure that they give kick backs to the college, per se, but it is part of their contract, along with the usual things like not carrying old editions and not carrying a competitor's biology texts for the same class.  Our college bookstore is administered through Barnes and Noble (the students have to go to a Barnes and Noble to buy the text because Barnes and Noble *is* the college bookstore), so that may account for the funky "rules".

 

No one in administration has ever confronted me about violating that policy, but I am not sure if it's because the administration looks the other way, or because it hasn't been brought to their attention.  I would not be surprised if it is a standard clause in bookstore contracts and that it goes un-noticed by faculty, especially if the administration does not enforce it.  I didn't know that it was policy until I happened to be talking to an administrator about used texts in class one day and he mentioned it.

That is disturbing. Do the textbook publishers give kickbacks to the college for such a contract?

 

Edited February 27, 2016 by reefgazer

[G5052]

That is disturbing. Do the textbook publishers give kickbacks to the college for such a contract?

 

Colleges vary on these arrangements.

 

I know that locally the bookstore only leases space. That's the only income the college gets from them.

 

Professors are required to assign material from the textbook in class. Nothing more. That came from the deans and is a required statement in each syllabus.

 

That said, there's some variations in practice.

 

It didn't work when we went to a custom bind-up, but the reality was that when we used regular texts, previous editions worked fine. Buying used online worked fine too. I couldn't put that anywhere in writing, but verbally I helped students do that. If they emailed me asking, I set up a phone appointment.

 

My son took an art class last semester with an expensive book that I found as a cheap rental ($15) from Amazon. For financial and logistics reasons, I needed to have the books in place before the semester started. And the professor said in the first class that he considered it an optional purchase because a new professor at the main campus had picked it without consulting him. He said that "off the record," he didn't think much of it. It wasn't listed in his syllabus, and I guess he was just doing his own thing. So we returned it, and I was fine with that.

 

Of course you can email the professor or wait to buy your books too. We were working on DS's schedule over the weekend, and one class for fall has a $350 package required. Ouch. Definitely check on that!

[regentrude]

Professors are required to assign material from the textbook in class. Nothing more. That came from the deans and is a required statement in each syllabus.

 

Oh my goodness. Who is coming up with these ridiculous rules? Not professors, surely - because this will mean cheating must be rampant.

 

I was so fed up with students just copying the solution manual that I have written a complete set of assignments for the entire semester - that way, students have to do the homework, they cannot simply google it.

Why would the administration require assignments from textbooks only?

[G5052]

Oh my goodness. Who is coming up with these ridiculous rules? Not professors, surely - because this will mean cheating must be rampant.

 

I was so fed up with students just copying the solution manual that I have written a complete set of assignments for the entire semester - that way, students have to do the homework, they cannot simply google it.

Why would the administration require assignments from textbooks only?

 

I agree. In IT/CSC, there are people who do the textbook assignments and then post them online so that other students can just get the file and upload it as their own. When I was teaching locally, it got to the point that assigned those as pass/fall and then did my own thing on the tests and quizzes. That was supposedly was OK.

 

For so many reasons I don't work there any more though.

 

Now I teach more advanced classes in web design and multimedia online at another college, and they have to design and develop websites. That's a lot harder to game, and we use all web resources. 

[Reefgazer]

This.  I don't leave a paper or electronic trail for my rule-bending, LOL!

Colleges vary on these arrangements.

 

I know that locally the bookstore only leases space. That's the only income the college gets from them.

 

Professors are required to assign material from the textbook in class. Nothing more. That came from the deans and is a required statement in each syllabus.

 

That said, there's some variations in practice.

 

It didn't work when we went to a custom bind-up, but the reality was that when we used regular texts, previous editions worked fine. Buying used online worked fine too. I couldn't put that anywhere in writing, but verbally I helped students do that. If they emailed me asking, I set up a phone appointment.

 

My son took an art class last semester with an expensive book that I found as a cheap rental ($15) from Amazon. For financial and logistics reasons, I needed to have the books in place before the semester started. And the professor said in the first class that he considered it an optional purchase because a new professor at the main campus had picked it without consulting him. He said that "off the record," he didn't think much of it. It wasn't listed in his syllabus, and I guess he was just doing his own thing. So we returned it, and I was fine with that.

 

Of course you can email the professor or wait to buy your books too. We were working on DS's schedule over the weekend, and one class for fall has a $350 package required. Ouch. Definitely check on that!

 

[G5052]

This.  I don't leave a paper or electronic trail for my rule-bending, LOL!

 

Yes, the college I left had gotten really bad about checking on professors behind their backs that way. I uncovered several instances where they had called my students and asked specifically about rule-bending. I can see it for a new professor when you're monitoring their ability to teach and such, but the questions weren't focused on my teaching. They asked about how much I used the textbooks, how much I stuck to my syllabus, and whether I held class for the full period. They were also big on looking at ratemyprofessor.com and calling you on the carpet for what was said there.

 

Part way through the semester, I re-ran the numbers and figured it was time to quit. My gut was that I was being watched as a troublemaker anyway I miss the students, but not their take on what makes good education.

Edited March 1, 2016 by G5052

[MarkT]

Yes, the college I left had gotten really bad about checking on professors behind their backs that way. I uncovered several instances where they had called my students and asked specifically about rule-bending. I can see it for a new professor when you're monitoring their ability to teach and such, but the questions weren't focused on my teaching. They asked about how much I used the textbooks, how much I stuck to my syllabus, and whether I held class for the full period. They were also big on looking at ratemyprofessor.com and calling you on the carpet for what was said there.

 

Part way through the semester, I re-ran the numbers and figured it was time to quit. My gut was that I was being watched as a troublemaker anyway I miss the students, but not their take on what makes good education.

These folks have too much time on their hands (i.e. they provide no added value and should be fired). It is sad what higher education has devolved into and serious reform is needed.

 

The only thing that is important is whether you followed the syllabus, if multiple sections are taught by different instructors, which could be easily obtained with an end of class survey.

[G5052]

These folks have too much time on their hands (i.e. they provide no added value and should be fired). It is sad what higher education has devolved into and serious reform is needed.

 

The only thing that is important is whether you followed the syllabus, if multiple sections are taught by different instructors, which could be easily obtained with an end of class survey.

 

Oh boy. The stories I could tell. I've moved on, but so much time was spent on insignificant issues versus developing and supporting the faculty.