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$115 For a math 50 text book!!

J

Joshua8o8

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 2, 2007
372
0
Honolulu, Hawai'i
Today i went to sign up for parking at my local community college. I am taking a sheet metal class, it is a great program, its setup so that as long as you pass the first year you are automatically inducted into the sheet metal union as an apprentice and you are put to work. My friend and i both got full scholarships from our union. After we both got our parking spaces we went to the book store to pick up our books. Our math 50 books alone costed $115 dollars. Im sure there are text books that cost a lot more than this but DAMN thats a lot of money... for what??? PAPER!!! Luckily our scholarships cover the cost of books, but now i understand why so many people are in debt from college loans. And that was just one book, i cant wait to see how much the rest cost. I feel really sorry for people who dont have scholarships and have to pay for everything right out of their own pockets.

It is very sad what these companies charge students. They are really taking advantage of people, you are pretty much forced to buy the books if you want to pass the class. Very sad!!! I know you can buy used books, but not all the time. Very sad.
 
There's always used version of textbooks available. Amazon, and comegetused are some of the favs around here. Plus with the facebook marketplace, its not that hard to find some books you need for cheap. Upperclassmen hook it up ;)
 
that's the reality of it. you can easily spend 500 bucks on books alone per semester. but the key is to buy used where you can, preferably from other students, since they typically charge less than the bookstore, that gives you 5 bucks for a book, then charges 90 bucks to the next sap. when i was a senior in high school and dual enrolled in the local cc, the teacher said this was one of the biggest scams period. it's true.
 
This is exploitation of the workers by the fat cats!

If I were you, I would already have gathered with my unionized friends and gone on strike. Why not burn one or two cars for good measure?

That would teach those capitalists a lesson.
:mad:
 
Just be glad you're not in law school.

$115 is roughly average for my books. Many as much as $150.
 
Same thing happens to me.

Took a sociology class, had to buy the SPECIAL UH edition book. We used the "special UH" insert ONCE. $180 book, only available new. Could've gotten it used for $30 without the "special insert." Ugh.

I spent $700 on books last semester. Welcome to college!
 
John.Smith said:
This is exploitation of the workers by the fat cats!

If I were you, I would already have gathered with my unionized friends and gone on strike. Why not burn one or two cars for good measure?

That would teach those capitalists a lesson.
:mad:
Click to expand...

sounds like a good idea! Damn capitalists....

Anyway, i think my biggest issue is more along the lines of the book costed the company who made it $15 dollars at the most to produce. Its a softcover book with 830 pages.

I know what you all mean by getting used books, if i was paying for these books believe me they would definetly be used! College is a monopoly, isnt it sad!
 
shecky said:
you think thats expensive, try going to art school fulltime. i wish all i had to buy was expensive books.
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Ummm yeah that is the truth. But I can say that while in community college I would spend $300 on classes and $500 on books. At least now I spend thousands on classes and hundreds on books.
 
My senior year English teacher spent some time as an editor for Simon & Schuster. He told us that the licensing fees for the crap-ton of artwork in textbooks is a major component of their cost.


Just don't do what I did. I bought a book for AutoCad 2002, even though my school was moving to 2004. I paid somewhere between $50-70 for it. End of the semester comes, and I sell it back for a grand total of $5. :mad:
 
wow that is not to bad for a math book. I have paid 160 for a math book before.
As for one book that not bad. Past 3 semesters I have spent over 700 on books. what makes that even scarier is I have always had 5 or less classes and not all of them require text books.
 
Counterfit said:
My senior year English teacher spent some time as an editor for Simon & Schuster. He told us that the licensing fees for the crap-ton of artwork in textbooks is a major component of their cost.


Just don't do what I did. I bought a book for AutoCad 2002, even though my school was moving to 2004. I paid somewhere between $50-70 for it. End of the semester comes, and I sell it back for a grand total of $5. :mad:
Click to expand...

I dont think theres too much artwork in my math 50 textbook, but there might be some. I just finished flipping through my book and im pretty happy, the work dosent seem to be too difficult untill the last quarter of the book. Im glad because math is my worst subject.
 
yg17 said:
Thats why I don't buy my textbooks from the college bookstore
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I never buy books from my college bookstore either. If I don't have to.

I don't know about some of your Universities, but ASU (Arizona State) screws us over. A lot of the classes have "Special ASU Editions", so they are impossible to find online. Granted, the only thing different about these editions are usually the covers, but you never know until you actually get the book.

I went to my college bookstore today. I had to buy my Biology lab manual, my Biology book (it was available online, but it was just as expensive everywhere as it was in the bookstore), and my French book.

Let me explain about my French book. What my school did with this, is a perfect example of everything wrong with the textbook industry. My French "book" was actually a package of 3 items. The book itself, a DVD (instead of the CD; why?), and instead of a lab manual, I have an online access code for my online lab manual.

I paid $156 for this package. I was able to find the book online for $10, but it was impossible to find the online lab manual and the DVD. Apparently, the publisher only sells these directly to universities. I wasn't able to purchase these items separately at the bookstore. I had to buy the package.

Luckily, the Arizona Board of Regents passed a ruling recently that said all packages like my French one had to be available with individual parts, but unfortunately, this does not take effect this Fall semester.

I hate college bookstores.
 
i took a math class in college that required two text books. the class was part of a continuing series of six lower division math classes, and i got to skip a couple of them. the class i placed into, however, used the book from the previous classes for only a chapter. i had to buy that for $100+ and another book for almost another $100. yuck!
 
siurpeeman said:
i took a math class in college that required two text books. the class was part of a continuing series of six lower division math classes, and i got to skip a couple of them. the class i placed into, however, used the book from the previous classes for only a chapter. i had to buy that for $100+ and another book for almost another $100. yuck!
Click to expand...

thats ridiculous! $100 for one chapter, what a rip off! I know this isnt highschool but wouldnt there be a way for the teacher to just xerox the chapter. I guess that would be violating some copyright laws, but thats just insane!
 
This was about 15 years ago, but I had an art history class on Japanese Art. The book itself was all black with an inset photo of a temple or something. It was published by Penguin books. All the university did was take a black magic marker, obscure the pre-printed price on the cover, and charge roughly triple the list price.

The bookstores have been ripping off college students since the beginning of time....
 
The worst thing is when the professor of a certain class writes the book for his class and forces all the students to buy his book and then charges outrageous prices.
 
shecky said:
you think thats expensive, try going to art school fulltime. i wish all i had to buy was expensive books.
Click to expand...

so true. on top of the books i had to buy for my gen. ed. requirements (about $500), i spent at least $600 a semester on art supplies, printing, and the like. i left school very much in debt.

i'm not saying i had it worse...i'm just saying that i feel for ya. :eek:

to be fair, however, our campus bookstore had buyback events near the end of every semester, and they were pretty good about giving you a decent price for your used books. however, science books were worth nothing, since they're printed and updated almost every year.
 
imac/cheese said:
The worst thing is when the professor of a certain class writes the book for his class and forces all the students to buy his book and then charges outrageous prices.
Click to expand...

I remember one of my professors had photocopied booklets that were stapled together and along with the $100 book you had to buy this $30 photocopied booklet that the professor wrote. Don't these professors get kick backs from the publishers for using their books?

What gets me is when something is "required" and then its used 1 time the whole semester.

Ed
 
shecky said:
you think thats expensive, try going to art school fulltime. i wish all i had to buy was expensive books.
Click to expand...

Same with Architecture school. The amount of money I spent on building and drafting supplies every week added up to a hell of a lot of money every semester.

But I did make some awesome models in my time, though. :)
 
i did the math after i graduated and it came out to more than $10,000 in art supplies for my BFA (including stuff like 35mm film + developing, printing large posters, bookbinding materials, 16mm movie film processing, etc..)

i think my single biggest art supply expense was my degree project, the majority of which was on the order of a few thousand lettersize color laser prints. that project ran me around $2000. ridiculous.

this is on top of the required PowerBook + CS2 + fonts, etc..
 
Ed H said:
What gets me is when something is "required" and then its used 1 time the whole semester.
Click to expand...

I got dinged by this in third year engineering. I paid $130 for a textbook and we never used it.

After all the students complained, they amended the course curriculum so future students no longer needed to buy that textbook.

Meaning I had nobody to sell it to after my term was over...

Ever since then I adopted a new rule. Don't buy the textbook until the first day you actually need it.

That rule has saved me a few times since then.

I still have the book. Anyone interested? :D
 
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