The price of college textbooks ... wow

I'm taking a Stanford University computer science course (their introductory programming course) online this fall. I'm not paying tuition, lectures are prerecorded and it's not graded or anything like that, but still I figured if I could track down the actual textbook Stanford uses for the course, it would boost my enjoyment and results.

The primary text is called The Art & Science Of Java, written by one of Stanford's professors, and it costs ...

One hundred seven dollars.

Amazon has it for $96.48. Stanford bookstore lists it for $83.25 used and $110.75 new. :-\



I'm not buying it, for about 111 obvious reasons. (It'd be different if I was paying tuition, natch.) I'm either going to muddle through without it or buy something like Java For Dummies to help me figure out the concepts.

I looked up the textbook I used in my first news reporting class back in the day and the current edition of that is running $78. I hope it's a helluva lot better than what I used 20 years ago. I had heard that college text prices had gone through the roof, but I had no idea they had not only gone through the roof but also kept going until achieving geosynchronous orbit. It sounds like tuition costs less than the books do these days.

 

That's not good news.

 

Well, they've definitely gone up recently. When I was in college 6 years ago I generally set aside about $200 a semester for books, but I was an English major so I didn't have a lot of textbooks.

The ex-wife was majoring to be a nurse and she routinely spent $500 per semester. I guess the only good thing was she still used the books when she got a job and whatnot.

 

I have paid $150 for a used textbook.

 

That would have covered the cost of a four-credit class and the books in my freshman year in college.

 

Students should get used to it, it's not going to get any better. I took an Intermediate French course my senior year and the textbook cost somewhere between $115-$120 and I received no money back for it when I returned it.

I spent approximately $500 on textbooks last semester (English major), and I only got back a grand total of about $40 on returns, if I could return them at all.

 

Last year at UT San Antonio, we paid an average of $600 per semester for books for my kid. This semester at UT Austin, it was almost $800. Crazy.

 

$150 covered three credit hours and the books for one class back in the day.

I never paid more than $40 for a single textbook when I was in school.

Hell, it doesn't even pay to buy used anymore.

 

College = Biggest. Racket. Ever.

 

Close, but I think weddings are bigger. Think about what you pay a photographer alone these days. The average wedidng is supposed to be up to like $20,000.

 

In grad school, on more than one occasion I sold the book after the semester for more than I bought it for. All my transaction were on Amazon.

 

Yeah. If you're "one of those girls" that wants to do all that bullshit and guys want nothing to do with. The Grandpa and I: Outdoors, karaoke, booze and casual dress. Didn't come close to 20K and our family and friends still talk about how much fun they had.