Of paper and of money.
I have yet to encounter an instance where a book I buy this term is actually still used by the same course the next term (regardless of what some WLU professors will tell you). This means there’s pretty much no resale value, and you’re stuck with a $100+ book per course, per term, that cannot be resold and generally won’t be looked at again anyway. If you are lucky enough to find someone willing to take on an older edition (i.e. someone who sees through the thin veil that says the course is completely incompatible with its materials 4 months prior), then you may not share the same concerns as most students.
Already people are struggling to pay just for tuition, but having course materials costing almost as much as half of your tuition some terms, you have to start wondering just how hard publishers have to lobby their books. In this respect, I have much respect for the University of Waterloo course coordinators (at least for my courses). So far, I’ve yet to encounter any course the requires a book costing more than $100 that wasn’t:
- also available for free and legally through an online version
- not mandatory
The “How to Design Programs” book for the PLT Scheme courses fits this description.
The only text that “breaks” this mold is the “Calculus: Early Transcendentals” used in first-year. The book was something like $120, but considering that it was used in both first and second Calculus and proved useful in the third Calculus course, this book cost maybe about $40 amortized per course.
All other courses so far have been based loosely on cheap books (around $20 – $60) and generally have not been mandatory. This is largely why I have actually failed to purchase any course packages, textbooks, or otherwise shameless cash-grabs after first term of first year. Sure some course notes are helpful, but it’s proven that people generally learn better and remember more when actually writing, with pen and paper, during lectures. This is what I do.
What’s better yet, the course I’m taking at the University of Waterloo offer their course notes online, for free, in eco-friendly PDF format for download by any student. This is way more efficient that telling students to find and buy an actual book. Plus, the university itself has full control over what content and terminology gets included and used, rather than being forced to adopt the terms and pick and choose from the content included by the publishers of the textbooks. This is good, if you believe your course coordinator genuinely knows more about the course than a random collection of people out there writing books to maybe fit your course, along with many other courses out there.
I can’t prove whether this happens, but I seriously wouldn’t put it past the fine business folk at WLU, or maybe any other university. I think it happens something like a lobbyist agreement. Some textbook company decides to “make a deal” with a university or a high-ranking person at the university, in exchange for promotion of that company’s books. Suddenly the newest edition (not being sold in the used book store) is mandatory in a core course, and they must be brought to class (as proof of purchase?) for “participation marks”. I get it, we need them for class activities, but then sharing a book between people would be fine. It’s not.
It’s apparently an act of academic and legal misconduct at WLU if you do not pay $30 for the course package for Organizational Behaviour, containing a whopping five (yes, countable on one hand) pages of white paper with some printing and “more materials to come later in the course”. It’s also illegal to photocopy those pages to split the ultra-low cost of $6 per sheet of paper between classmates. They never did come later in the course (sparing maybe four to five more single sheets), and of course I never paid for this sham. At what point do we start putting the intentions of the institutions we are customers of in doubt? I am told our professors are genuinely interested in our success—and I believe this for the most part. I just have to doubt whether the universities themselves or the people running them actually care about academia, knowledge, teaching, and improving society through their business, or if they are just here to make a quick buck off of their quality professors and trusting students? Cowardice and greed.
I’m sorry, I’d rather take a 10% hit to my grades rather than be coerced into buying a book I can readily substitute with free PDF alternative texts—plus, I want to sleep easy at night knowing I wasn’t being manipulated into paying for whatever “agreements” were made behind closed doors. I’m perfectly willing to earn participation marks by participating, but if you make my ability to do so contingent on whether I’ve got $140 lying around to feed your under-the-table agreements, you can bite me. Losing a few marks here and there because of poor course design, I can live with. I just wonder why I have to.
If my marks are reflective of my learning during a course, then what the fuck does my wallet have to do with it? I’m already paying for the teaching and marking staff, and upkeep of your buildings and even development of new facilities I won’t get to use, so why are you making me pay for books when the same knowledge could easily be captured more concisely and precisely by our own professors for our own courses? So I can hope to get above 90%? Dickless.
WLU: take a note from Dan Wolczuk and his course notes for Calculus III, or just about any other course at UW. They are always excellent, professionally made, and free to students who just want to learn things.**
Basically, I don’t think it’s fair to handicap students who see through the shitty business model of the university by docking 10% off the top. This favors the rich (and/or just naive) over the average and grades will reflect this—sure, no amount of 10% participation marks will turn a C student into an A student, but it doesn’t need to if your C’s can become B’s and your A’s drop to B’s.
Oh yeah, and did I mention that actual textbooks use a huge amount of paper, toxic inks, and non-renewable energies to produce and ship? They are also a pain in the ass to store and distribute (given the rate at which they expire and become obsolete). I’d take PDF over paper any day.
** The closest thing from WLU that I have seen is the Business 111 and 121 course notes, and to be honest, the books were huge and filled with useful stuff. However, these books cost ~$70 (one per term), weren’t available in PDF format, and were filled with information more or less identical to the previous “editions”. The only major changes came with the numbers in questions, making them—surprise surprise—useless for in-class discussions, activities, and getting that 10% participation mark.