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In Minnesota, legislators are considering more tightly regulating the textbook publishing industry and requiring professors to be more cost-conscious in choosing course materials. At least a dozen other statehouses, from California to Connecticut, are taking up the issue.
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<p>This is long over-due.</p>
<p>Glad to see it's atleast being discussed. </p>
<p>My bill for books last semester?
$853!!!
This semester?
$792!!!</p>
<p>Professors who swear that "the edition from last year will not be accepted" and "you MUST have all the supplementary materials" are full of it and I'm not sure why, because they don't get any cut of the sales so why push the books so hard unless of course it's their book.</p>
<p>Supplements are not necessary probably 90% of the time. Those discs and little books that run $20-50 a piece never left their shrink wrapping last semester. </p>
<p>And selling books back is horrible. I got $91 back last semester--they wouldn't even take my Sociology or Psych books back at the bookstore because "we've already ordered enough for next year, we dont need the used ones anymore, but thanks". So as a Sports Marketing major I'm supposed to hang onto these books?...Great. I mean, I'll keep books relative to my career that may come in handy but geez! And nobody I knew needed to buy them because they'd already taken the course or their profs 2nd semester required a different book. </p>
<p>Anyway, sorry for my ramble. Just another college student overpaying for housing and books, among other things.</p>
<p>Try being a science major where new editions of textbooks come out at least once every two or three years, and only the latest edition "will do." I've had classes that have required me to buy over $300 in textbooks, lab books, and supplementary materials. It's insane.</p>
<p>^^I know what you mean. I was a health/human performance major when I started, an everything for my Anatomy/Physiology course was around $300...and my brother's a Mechanical Engineering major and his books are ridiculous as well. </p>
<p>I really hope they do something about this instead of talking about it for a few days, giving students false hope, and then letting nothing happen</p>
<p>The editions situation exists because the profs don't want to refer back to other editions. In many cases, the books are basically the same, just the layout has changed, so the page numbers are different, and the prof would have to keep track of the differences, a timew-waster for them, as they see it. The publishers do this in order to make money, because many of those books have a limited lifespan and sometimes they have limited distribution - not every prof in every college uses the same books. Not saying it's right. Just stating the situation.</p>
<p>Book prices were a problem even back when I was in college. $300-400 a year doesn't sound like much, but I think that would be well over $1,000 now. Not quite as bad as the OP wrote, though.</p>
<p>My favorite textbook story is the Psychology professor who assigned his own book, but always brought a bag of quarters to the first day of class. He said he only made about 25 cents a book, and he wanted every student to take a quarter so that they would know he required the book for its contents and not the money.</p>