Book sticker shock [Students, colleges try to beat the high cost of texts]

Arizona Daily Star ^ | Becky Pallack

[Mygirlsmom]

Yes, that is how it works at UW Stevens Point, and I believe Whitewater is that way too. I was not aware that LaCrosse did that as well.

[SW6906]

My situation is more a case of we have a product that customers want, they just don’t want to pay the exorbitant price that the bean counters - who only look at development and recurring maintenance costs - want to charge. If we factored in the savings from using the software in-house, we are already well into the profit zone.

[VermiciousKnid]

I wasn’t very clear, Moonman....the crooks I refer to are the filthy politicians who have nothing better to do than to muck up our lives with foolish and short-sighted legislation such as the ADA.

I honestly don’t know which is worse: the notion that they really are too stupid to see the unintended consequences of their actions (the ADA and Soc.Sec. are two prime examples), or if they deliberately do these things to see how much we’ll take from them.

Perhaps I wouldn’t brand ALL of them crooks if once — JUST ONCE -— in my life I had been represented in Congress by someone for whom I’ve actually voted. As it is, that has never been the case. I fervently hope that will change in November, and then we’ll see.

Regards,

[BenKenobi]

“The problem is with those clients who aren’t willing to pay the price for top-quality work and are willing to pay far less for a lesser product”

I hear you. I get that too. I had a boss say it was expensive to pay me 20 bucks an hour to edit his documents, and make sure they were ready for publication.

I asked if he was concerned about the product, or the productivity, and he said no, just that he wanted me to do it for about 10 dollars.

People don’t understand what the work entails. Yes, I’m good and quick, but I’m not cheap. You want results, come to me and it will get done when you want it how you want it. And it *will* get published.

I guess it bothers me because even though I’d been working for this guy for years, he seemed to assumed it was easy to do. :)

[BenKenobi]

Sounds like a marketing issue.

I could do up some press releases for you that you could show clients that would help you make the sale.

[RipSawyer]

“The length of education alone that these students are put through, is utterly ridiculous.”
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Apparently it is, in too many cases, the length of NON-education. If all eighteen year old Americans had what used to be a high school education we could shut down most of the universities. Most four year graduates now don’t even have an honest high school education.

[Thunder90]

UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee don’t have rentals except for the most basic of classes. Anyway, many professors will get custom editions of books for their classes in the lower levels. At higher levels, many of the books (especially in the humanities and social sciences) can be had much cheaper from Amazon.com or Borders.

[SW6906]

I agree, but I have fought this battle for going on ten years now. They are immune to the logic and now just think I’m a crank who doesn’t want to play along and “follow the processes”.

[Prolix]

Most textbooks are "boiler plate" and have absolutely no substantive changes from one edition to another. Why should students (read parents) have to pay $150 for a college algebra text where a dogeared text from the 1970s purchased for $5 from a used bookstore would be perfectly adequate in most cases. Euclids Elements was over 1000 years in print before Isaac Newton made very good use of that text. If textbook authors and publisher are having difficulties making a living selling $5 books for $150 then they probably should get out of the business of robbing students (read parents) and get into some other business.

[BenKenobi]

Well the offer stands. I can prep a sampler for you if you want. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done this.