Re: broken schools

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:

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Too much screen reading if you ask me. But when I'm not working, I read a lot of
regular books, or on my eInk device, which is much kinder to the eyes. Reading
is one of my greatest hobbies. My wife gets annoyed at the enormous number of
books I accumulate. She wants me to throw them away, but it would be like
throwing away my children. I cannot do it! =/

>
I don't know the two of you, but it does sound like a good idea to throw
it all away.  But I'm suspicious to say it because I often do it.  When

 
Ouch! My children! ;)
 

I was a freshman, I bought all the books I'd use at the university.  I
thought it was expensive, but it was worth it---I thought then.  On the
second semester, I couldn't spend that money again and decided to try to
just get the books from the library.  If the exact book wasn't
available, I'd take another one---a theorem should be the roughly the
same in every book, right?  From this experiment, I concluded that I'd
never buy another book (and that every student should do the same).  It
was wonderful to always look at other books perspectives.

 
I bought last years used books. Usually they weren't that expensive, about 20-30
USD or so per book. But if you bought them new, the price were at least double!

The entire university textbook market is one giant scam anyway. 
Publisshers make minor updates (often just changing the "exercises") to
create "volume 4", and then the professors state "vol 4" as the text
for the class, duping lots of students into paying full price.  One
wonders how much of a kickback the professors get for recommending the
"updated volume" that is 99.9% identical to the prior volume.