I believe it is like this everywhere in Europe.
It was next door to the main faculty building and they could pirate any textbook you needed. You didn't even need to know the name of the book, you could just say "I need the book for so and so professor's so and so class" and they'd print it out for you. All the source files were already on their copy machines' hard drives.
While technically illegal, this was fully endorsed by faculty and administration in the "If you need books, don't go next door and print them there. Under no circumstances are you to do that. Again, don't under any circumstances go next door and ask for these books at 5 cents per page. And whatever you do, do _not_ ask for 2 pages per page in tiny print to make it cheaper"
Noticeably, this was done at multiple print shops in the university area, and you could get a discount or a free copy if you brought the original when a new book was chosen.
The whole academic establishment basically was aware of this, except for a few professors who insist on selling their own book, but it's typically in humanities or social sciences.
Here in India we just legalized copying for educational purposes. No tricks necessary!
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000091049
but in 1993 Microsoft bribed the regime to change those laws
Fun story, I had a professor in university that tried to force us to buy his own book for his course, refusing to provide notes or any other free alternatives, and for the final exam he allowed anyone to bring in his book.
We complained to the school board as this was unfair and there was a conflict of interests, the exam was redone by a committee and a new professor replaced him the next year.
Or if we were really required to buy a book, it usually was like a really good 30$ book that we could use as reference for the whole degree.
In fact, my kids have used my old books to help them with AP Physics in high school. They tell me they like the lower content of distracting color-filled "circus acts" (as they call it) and better explanations.
How much of the math, physics and chemistry has changed? I would guess, depending on stage of learning and subject, somewhere between 0% and 10% (with 10% possibly being an exaggeration). It is nothing less than ridiculous that students have to buy books on Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus, etc. for $60 or more.
This is the kind of thing that really gets me going about just how badly our system of education has derailed in some areas. Most school books, at a national level, should be freely available and used year over year, preferably in electronic form.
What is wrong with a, let's call it, federally publish set of books covering the sciences and other subjects? They could be evolved over time.
I know these things exist in various forms, we simply don't seem to lay down the law and use them. CK-12 used to be about books, now they seem to have expanded beyond that:
What's wrong with these books?
The people I really appreciate are the pedagogues on YouTube who make world-class materials for "free". Shout out to Dennis Davis:
They're getting assigned in some courses, but I think most professors are happy assigning commercial textbooks, often knowing that they can be pirated and that most students will pirate them.
What's the justification for a professor to assign openstax Calculus instead of Stewart, for instance, other than to make a political statement?
It won't matter in another few years once teaching AIs, a hybrid of LLMs and knowledgebases and logical inference engines, can take the place of textbooks and teachers for non-specialized fields. That'll be able to handle almost all K-12 and lower level college subjects, and teach better than most human teachers. Traditional education may not matter by then, though, depending on what AI does to society.
"Hello, I received this book today and it is definitely not in "like new" condition; the eBay condition definition for "like new" states that the "cover has no visible wear", but this textbook's cover is very worn on both front and back. The cover corners are bent inward, there are scuffs on the upper edges like it had been dragged upside down, and there's even a tear on the bottom of the back cover! It's incomprehensible how you could list this book as "like new," according to eBay's definitions, this book is closer to "Very Good", or even "Good" condition."
Note the "damage" they speak of came from amazon shipping it to me and it sliding around in the box. I responded:
"Sorry for the misrepresentation of the book. $71 is a very good price for the book. I was hoping to get above $110 for it. Because of the great deal you have gotten, I hesitate to offer a partial refund for the book. Will a partial refund be necessary? Otherwise, I will be more careful next time."
Lame.
The point about the biology book though, I just find it ironic that biology is always changing, but the Biology book was old and never updated while a math book seems to get re-written in a different permutation every two years.
Really the prof should just make his own assignments (or rather have his underlings do it). At least that's how it works on this side of the pond. In any case, requiring additional purchases of educational material when students are already paying tuition is absurd.
It taught me that there are limits to my ethics. Knowing full well that I am violating a social contract that many others are abiding by, I still did it. If I can act on this particular line, then it's just a matter of degree between me and those who more egregiously violate our shared rules.
After all, we had a massive advantage against kids who worked hard to afford the books. Even if they made $15/hr (outrageous), they would still have spent 10 hours on that book alone.