Millennials have taken on at least 300% more student debt than their parents[1]. This is a staggering statistic that highlights the financial struggles that many young people in the western USA are…
I pirated old editions of most textbooks but I had a few professors that required a textbook that came with a code that you’d need to register for online quizzes. Answering these online quizzes was 30% of your grade in the course, so not buying the textbook was essentially taking a -30% penalty to your grade. If that wasn’t bad enough, one of the textbooks like that was solely written by the professor teaching the course. It was around 100 pages of basic facts and then a code for online quizzes and sold for $200. This guy taught a class of 400 first year students. What a racket.
Another laziness by the professors is using book questions instead of just writing their own.
When I taught I told my students that the book was a resource for studying the material from a different perspective than the one I gave in lectures. Not actually required for the course even though I didn’t have control over it being listed as required on the course listing. And I told them if they wanted to get it, they should find the cheapest copy they could. I’ve heard you can sometimes find very cheap electronic copies (wink wink).
It is funny to see the questions you write end up on Chegg though.
During my first two semesters i’ve genuinely had to buy 300$+ bundles of books, literally only because the online single-use code was conveniently placed under the wrapper, with no other way to obtain one
Every textbook today comes with a goddamn one-use code, and they’re made in such a way that they’re useless without it.
It’s theft and extortion. But what are we going to do about it?
Yeah, thought so.
Pirate last year’s edition. Works unless you have one of those DB professors that checks what edition you have.
I pirated old editions of most textbooks but I had a few professors that required a textbook that came with a code that you’d need to register for online quizzes. Answering these online quizzes was 30% of your grade in the course, so not buying the textbook was essentially taking a -30% penalty to your grade. If that wasn’t bad enough, one of the textbooks like that was solely written by the professor teaching the course. It was around 100 pages of basic facts and then a code for online quizzes and sold for $200. This guy taught a class of 400 first year students. What a racket.
Pirating the book won’t help if you need proof of purchase to turn in your homework via a single-use authorization code.
Another laziness by the professors is using book questions instead of just writing their own.
When I taught I told my students that the book was a resource for studying the material from a different perspective than the one I gave in lectures. Not actually required for the course even though I didn’t have control over it being listed as required on the course listing. And I told them if they wanted to get it, they should find the cheapest copy they could. I’ve heard you can sometimes find very cheap electronic copies (wink wink).
It is funny to see the questions you write end up on Chegg though.
During my first two semesters i’ve genuinely had to buy 300$+ bundles of books, literally only because the online single-use code was conveniently placed under the wrapper, with no other way to obtain one