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Re: Costs of textbooks



At 1:39 PM -0500 12/13/01, Rick Tarara wrote:
I would say that minimally you would have to supply a list of books you
consider to be consistent with your course. However, I don't know that this
is enough. I really believe that a decent text book can be a great help to
students who will take the time and EFFORT to read it. How many of us feel
that their course (as normally given) is equivalent to a good text book in
depth, breadth, logical presentation, number of applications, number of
examples, supplementary information (e.g. biographical sketches), etc. I
sure don't. I rely on the text book to provide much of this--and inform my
class of this. I would be afraid that your focus on the class notes would
be taken by many (most) students as 'the notes are all I need to worry
about'. While encouraging outside reading from a variety of books is
laudable, the simple fact is that it is hard as hell to get students to read
the $100+ book that most of us make them buy. You can't talk to students
and they can't talk to each other about something in 'their' book since
there is no common book. I'm also not sure that the cost of books is
really any higher a percentage of their educational costs today than they
were 30 years ago--anyone with data on that?

Sorry this is kind of a "me too" post, but I agree with Rick. Can't we try
to find innovative ways to get the students to read the $100 books we make
them buy? (For example, my students have to turn in a slip at the
beginning of each chapter with a question they still have after reading the
chapter; also on the first day of each chapter they take a quick quiz to
see if they have read the chapter.)

And while textbooks are really _very_ expensive, I also wonder along with
Rick if they are more expensive proportionately than they were 30 years
ago. Depsite their high cost, I still feel they are well worth the money
to the students in terms of their overall education. The financial return
on what they spend on their education (including overpriced texts) is (on
average) huge. (That all said, I do wish they didn't cost _quite_ so much.)

I had a prof once in grad school who wrote a great textbook but eventually
got so fed up with the publisher's charging the students so much that he
bought back the copyright and self-published it and sold it at barely over
cost. I loved that as a student, but I don't know how it would work for a
professor of an intro class who likes/needs ancillaries such as the big
publishers provide.

Larry