Bamatick

College textbooks are such a scam!  I’m sorry, a college Chem 111 book is hardly worth $200.  I’m not making that number up.  Let’s say though that this book is worth $200.  How long will the information contained therein continue to be relevant?  The publisher’s know this.  That’s why, every semester, they produce a new version, making the one purchased 4 months ago, obsolete.  At buyback, the best case was to get maybe 10% back.  $20?!  I spent 10 years going to college (I have two degrees).  That’s 20 semesters.  That’s 20 times I got the shaft.

Dutifully, I would buy all the “required” books at the beginning of the semester, but rarely did I ever open them.  It was only the books that had homework in them where they saw any use.  By the end of my time in college, I got very, very clever.  I COMPLETELY stopped using the bookstore, which allegedly uses the disgusting profits for scholarships, which I never saw.  Those must have gone to the athletes.  I used the ol’ intarwebs.  Amazon, eBay, Borders, whoever had the cheapest copy I could find.  I got what I needed out of the book, and sold it right back.  Genius!

As a professor myself, I was required to use the department approved textbook and ancillary materials.  The workbook was about the only thing I ever actually had the students use.  The text wasn’t that great.  The audio was less than thrilling.  I always used my own stuff.

But what happened to all my textbooks?  The ones I didn’t sell back for pennies on the dollar?  The trial copies of textbooks I was asked to test?  They fill several book cases and boxes in a storage unit that costs me $100 a month.  I STILL have to pay for my textbooks!

Gah!