More on College Text Books

College text books have gotten to be outrageously expensive. I spent so much money on my college text books when I was in school, I was perpetually poor and in debt. Of course, debt and poverty are no strangers to students historically, but it’s a whole new ballgame theses days, and the high prices on college text books doesn’t help.

College text books are a huge industry, and the people the make them aren’t stupid. They’re well aware of the massive market and profitability to tap, and they’ve come to do just about everything legally possible to exploit it. First of all, your professors can (and will!) require you to buy certain books. Incidentally, the books they often require you to buy are the ones they themselves wrote. While this doesn’t seem so bad at first, as soon as you walk into the university book store and see your first 200 dollar book you’ll begin to wonder about it just a little. Personally, I think it’s a little unethical for a college professor to require you to buy his or her book, but many of them will do it. In a twist of irony, my Ethics professor required me to buy his 120 dollar text book.

But what about used books you say? Aren’t they a lot cheaper? Sure, used books are certainly the way to go if you can find them. Unfortunately, used books don’t make any money for the college text book industry, so they’ve found a clever way around it. ‘New’ editions of older college text books come out almost every year, and many professors will require you to own the newest and most current version. In most cases, very little is changed in the book with respect to the content, but the pages and chapters are all different and mixed around just enough to make it seem somehow modified. Next time you look at one of your college text books, check to see what ‘edition’ it is. They’re almost always remakes of older books that are essentially the exact same thing repackaged to be sold as new all over again.

Of course, you don’t HAVE to buy the college text books your professors ask you to, but if you don’t you’re going to have a hell of a time passing. While there are usually copies of the college text book you need held at the school library, you’ll find them checked out almost always during the times you need them most, especially if it’s a big class.