Comment by diamondlovesyou | Hacker News Reader

Comment by diamondlovesyou | Hacker News Reader

diamondlovesyou

As a student, I've been fortunate in that most of the time I can find pdfs of the books I need, saving me a dime and the pain of the weight of a normal textbook. The two books I had to buy this semester were books I still bought online, and I still hate them: they're slow, don't work without the internet, constantly log me out (b/c timeouts), and why the fuck can't I cntl-C? Chemistry nomenclature is a bitch. Give me a pdf for use in my favorite pdf reader damnit!

The other stuff I fucking hate is the free resources given to professors (yay, fiscal budgeting!), but shifts the revenue stream to the student. For example, iClicker, which provides the server for free to the professor but makes the students buy a physical clicker ($50); when this service could just use the fucking web-browser and make the professor/university I pay tuition purchase this REQUIRED part of the course pay for the software. Or the online homework, which is also a purchased item (like $60-70 too). I don't pay for the organic chem lab equipment (and couldn't; that stuff is expensive!).

To be clear, I have not a problem with using these materials. I also don't mind paying for them. But I ONLY want to pay for it through tuition!

Also, why don't publishers work directly with universities so that every student is provided with a copy of textbook/homework? It seems to me that that would be a sure fire way to prevent lost sales due to the used textbook market/pirating. They could just get the university to purchase pdfs of the textbook for each student every year: it would drive down the incentive to pirate and would mean they didn't need to develop their own shitty-af reader. A win-win.

Anyway, to those still reading: sorry 'bout the language. This status quo drives me absolutely bonkers.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I'm not sure about shifting the cost of textbooks to the school and charging for it through tuition. In my three years of school so far, I haven't bought a single textbook, and I've only had to pirate two. And I only pirated those two to have the questions for mandatory homework problems, didn't really use the material.

I think that if a student can find better alternatives to their assigned textbook, making the school buy it anyway and charge it through tuition just seems wasteful.

In my case, at the University of Kansas, a lot of the time assignments will come from the required textbook (when not taken from some online system), so still kinda required. Homework is a teacher aid anyway (in a sense, though I do realize for many it is also a study aid), so why am I forced to pay outside of tuition? I don't pay for tests outside of tuition.

Either way, the intention is to make the person (ie the dept chair/professor) who selects the textbook/online homework/etc be the one to pay for it; otherwise there's no is pressure to use cheaper books (or rather the books with the best value/cost ratio).

Also, I presume that the universities would be able to bargain down to a lower price, due to gains had in mass production (as an analogy) or your usual volume ordering discounts reminiscent of Monoprice. This is especially true if the university buys access to N pdf every semester, which offer practically free distribution costs vs textbooks.

How's reading PDF textbooks on an e-reader for you? Personally, I've found them a nuisance because you are not able to skim through pages quickly as you can with a traditional textbook. Let's not forget the small screen size.

It ain't bad, but I have a Surface Pro 3 (the Surface's are awesome, btw).

Yeah, it's massive drawback. I prefer it anyway as it incentivises better features (at least I want it to): I can envision a reader that shows the edges of the pages so you can flip through many at a time (ie think of how the pages don't line up when the book is opened flat). I use the Microsoft Reader so I can use the pen so probably no such luck for me.

Found for large text books the Ipad air 2/3/pro to be a live saver. I tried E-ink but gave up after most of them suck for reading large text books.

Also advantage of the ipad is you can load it up more modern that can assist your learning where by a book is a dead tree.

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