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Comment by noodlesUK | Hacker News Reader

Just saying, I didn’t use a single textbook throughout my entire CS degree here. All of the course materials were available freely on our Moodle instance or through our library. Most of the course materials were produced by the lecturers, and where they had written a proper textbook, they just sent us the PDFs.

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No idea why this is downvoted, same thing here.

Ripping off students through overpriced mandatory textbooks is not a worldwide phenomena. Through CS Bachelor and Master I too have never had to buy a coursebook. The few books that were needed for extremely standardized courses like math 1-3 were available in sufficient numbers in the library.

It takes two to force students to spend so much on books, a publisher can price their books anyway they like if there isnt a university forcing their students to use them. That for profit universities dont have a problem with that is not surprising.

> Through CS Bachelor and Master I too have never had to buy a coursebook.

It is entirely possible that your experience might be relevant for CS, I don't know I did a Physics degree, but there are a lot more degrees out there than CS or Physics, for which your experience might not be representative, in other words: There probably are degrees out there that do require the textbooks or if not actual requirement, it makes the learning experience better.

Or the university libraries.

What is happening now is the publishers are providing a “service” that puts the homework assignments online.

That means you have to pay in order to do the required homework. Eg the books being in the library doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay the publisher. Similarly second hand books are closer to worthless because you still have to pay to have access to, and to submit, your homework.

I suspect legislation that requires the university to cover all fees required for assessment would end this nonsense in short order.

I bought very few textbooks (Physics degree) but heavily used the ones available in the library, clearly YMMV.

Doesn’t matter if the school has the book in the library: you have to pay the publisher to access and submit the homework (the homework is not in the book, only online)

Probably showing my age here but there was no electronic submission of homework back then.

I take your point that if the e-books are available via the library, they will charge the library, probably on a pay as you go basis too

Oh yeah, this is a relatively recent approach to killing off the second hand book market. Now I believe you can even buy just the access to assignments/homework for >$100, which is essentially all profit for them, they don't even have to manufacture a book.

I'm only aware of it because my wife went back to school to completely change field (microbiology now, rather than software)

The university doesnt have to use online material from the publisher. Its as much their decision as what books are in the library in which volumes.

However the selling point that Pearson gives is "you don't have to create your own material for the homework and assignments". e.g. save the university money and the professors time.

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