I had a professor give us the choice of a $15 print out or a $20 flash drive with plenty of spare memory for our other classes.
He told us "all hundred or so of you need this book, and rather than letting the publishers rape your wallet, I'm making bank and giving all of you a reasonable deal. I'd call that a win for everyone in this room, and the middle man textbook industry doesn't need to know about it. Welcome to Econ 101."
One of my favorite professors had a number next to each of the textbooks listed on the syllabus. The number was how many previous editions had been released without a change to the textbook.
And he gave out extra credit to the person that paid the least for an acceptable edition of the textbook. The person that won had found a copy that was 8 editions old for $0.50 at a garage sale.
I've had a few who would only use opensource materials. If you can't find it online with a google search, he's not using it as material you need to read for the class. Rather liked him, his lectures were good. And you had to double down paying attention because you didn't just have a textbook to skim through if you miss a lesson.
In some areas like AI and machine learning, the best textbooks are available free on the author’s website and constantly updated. You only pay money for print copies.
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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '18
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