Books for School Makes My Wallet Bleed

[Ergeheilalt]

Holy crap and a half. This is my most expensive course load ever.

I've got Heat Power, Heat Transfer, Design of Machine Controls, and Ethics this quarter. I'm started class today and the first materials list came in.

For Machine Design I've got the following list:

$60.00 - Professor's Printed Power Points
$93.69 - "Modern Control Systems" Used, Textbook
$99.95 - Board of Education Full Kit USB Serial
$45.95 - Process Control Kit and Textbook


Of course, unlisted are the parts I'll need to procure for my final project robot.

Add in my senior project (designing a solar concentrator, machining it, finishing it, and testing it) and whatever else supplies I have to procure and I'm seriously going to be broke as hell.

Engineering is a cruel mistress sometimes.

[Varaj]

School book stores are a racket. I remember as class on symbolic logic I had were the teacher apologized for making us use the book he had written. He thought it was ok because he picked it up at borders for $2.99. I looked at the one I bought from the school book store for $45 and scrapped off the school sticker to see the recommended publisher price of $2.99.

After that I researched, text books have wildly inflated prices and better profit than almost any other group of publishing.

[Atropine Mama]

School book stores are a racket. I remember as class on symbolic logic I had were the teacher apologized for making us use the book he had written. I thought it was ok because he picked it up at borders for $2.99. I looked at the one I bought from the school book store for $45 and scrapped off the school sticker to see the recommended publisher price of $2.99.

After that I researched, text books have wildly inflated prices and better profit than almost any other group of publishing.

Not only that, but they buy them back for around half of that recommended publisher price (WOO A BUCK FIFTY) and then resell them the next semester at the big discount of $40 instead of $45 because it's used. :rolleyes:

I used to work at the University Book Shop at KU. I have guilt.

[Brynja]

Amazon is your friend.

[Ergeheilalt]

School book stores are a racket. I remember as class on symbolic logic I had were the teacher apologized for making us use the book he had written. I thought it was ok because he picked it up at borders for $2.99. I looked at the one I bought from the school book store for $45 and scrapped off the school sticker to see the recommended publisher price of $2.99.

After that I researched, text books have wildly inflated prices and better profit than almost any other group of publishing.

Totally. I bought my book used on Amazon. It was 145 used in the bookstore. 170ish new.

[Ergeheilalt]

Amazon is your friend.

For books, totally, but these parallax materials I haven't found anywhere else.

[Schizm]

yeah. Amazon makes a 25-40% difference in textbook prices for classes.

sounds like this load would have cost you at least 400 if you'd bought it at the campus bookstore.

[Freedom Canadian]

60$ for printed power points ? Come on !

The most I ever paid for that is $10.

[Harry]

It's been almost twenty years since I was in college, but the books were a racket way back then as well. Fortunately, few courses required multiple text books. Mostly the standard stuff. And my friends and I would trade books back and forth when needed. I actually bought very few text books, and still managed an A average. I still bought a lot of books, just not text books. If there was an exam coming for a class that required one of the mammoth volumes, if I couldn't borrow a copy it wasn't difficult to bone up for the tests in the university library.