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Last week I purchased (Amazon) the two recommended texts for a class I'm taking this semester. Yesterday, on the first day of class, the instructor said that while one of the texts is "okay" in his opinion he really doesn't like the other one. But he was "told" to put them on the list and they are sold in the campus bookstore. Instead, he has three other texts which he recommends (and which are not sold in the bookstore).
Last week, I also helped one of my daughters buy her books. The one text we couldn't find was on backorder but was the one that her prof said this week "Show up with it on Wednesday or else you should seriously consider dropping the class." We spent many hours getting our hands on it. The author? Oh, yes - it's the instructor. I wonder why it was the most important text?
This is exactly the type of nonsense that I commonly experienced in my decade in college and graduate school many years ago. My anecdotal evidence today suggests that nothing has changed. I would love to see college textbooks disappear as a serious source of income to publishers, colleges, and I guess even the authors to some extent.
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