College textbooks....where do I start?
1. If they are so expensive, why buy them? Don't give me the "it's required" argument either. There's not a professor I know who runs around dorms checking who bought the textbook and who didn't.
1A. People buy textbooks because they consider them a helluva lot more convenient way to acquire certain information than the alternative. They don't want to spend the time looking for cheaper copies. Or doing the extra work of figuring out what is missing from old editions. Most importantly, they don't want to spend the time looking and evaluating and interpreting all the information that the textbook author and publisher have distilled down for you for a couple hundred bucks or less. Neither would I. Because that would cost a shitload more than the couple hundred bucks you pay for a high end chemistry or economics text.
1B. There's not a textbook used in university classrooms that, if the student put in sufficient effort to figure out what it says and means, doesn't yield value far greater than the price.
2. "But the professor never uses the book." It's not the professor's book. It's your book. *You* are the one who is supposed to use it.
2A. Okay, your professor is an asshole and incompetent besides. (Well, I told you not to take my class, but that's another discussion). What has that to do with your textbook's value. You can only get value from a book if someone tells you what to highlight and memorize and quote on the Fox network? It's called "reading."
3. "But I'm only going to read it this semester and the bookstore is going to screw me on the resale price." You buy a book for its resale value? What? If you're trying to find an investment, go to the financial times online or call your broker or figure out a way to buy some of that cheap real estate sitting unsold. Oh, I forgot, that "flipping real estate" idea isn't working so good now either, is it?
4. If you think you're college education is overpriced, I'm with you. But it's not overpriced because of book costs. Its overpriced because too many of your professors haven't got a clue, and because colleges have gone away from their core competencies (yes, we do have some) and tried to compete in markets where they can't compete without conning the government and donors out of money -- i.e., health club-level facilties for the college community, professional sports teams, restaurant-level food service, suburban apartment quality living spaces, golf-course level groundskeeping, corporate HQ architecture for their administrators, etc.
4A. Frankly, IMO, I think a lot of students would be better off by tripling their book budgets and cancelling their tuition fees. And then get a dishwashing job, and spend their free time finding a basement or attic apartment reading for a couple years.
5. I rarely ask my students to buy mega-buck, new-edition-every-year textbooks. Not because those books lack value greater than their price, though. Because I can find a set of "non-textbook" books that give even more value. Assuming I can persuade my students to put in the effort to draw the value out of them by reading, taking notes, thinking of hypotheticals, doing discussion questions, re-reading, etc.
5A. And the same goes for those "50 cent" DVDs. Yes, it only costs 50 cents to make the physical DVD. But it isn't the seller's cost that matters in determining the price -- its the value a buyer expects to get. Consider your music collection and what's in it and what's not. If you don't like an artist, you won't pay 50 cents for their CD. If you think the artist is the greatest thing since Nightwish or Elvis or the Beatles, you'll pay full CD price.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)