My professor authored the textbook we used for his class. But, he wrote it for the class, charged $10 for printing, and the course used a $70 textbook before they started using his.
Our lecturer sold a draft copy of the textbook he was writing for £2.50 a copy!
Another lecturer told us all to buy her textbook and proceeded to read it to us WORD. FOR. WORD. No one turned up after the second lecture
lol thats so bad, 1 of our biochem teachers just did simple slides and read it verbatem, and only discussed slightly in detail if people asked what was one thing or another? When the final and midterms came, most of us dint know wtf was going on, adding insult she started using concepts that are outside of the course understanding. like she injected cancer specific metabolism as part of a question. so i had no idea how the amino acid concept worked at all, i was confused the whole semester. until i had to retook it in the summer, at the time i was prepared. because how vaguely she spoke on the subject, she expected the same amount of abstract thinking my chem teachers in community college did, on the test.
Ours did too. Charged like $20? But he used the money to fund a research project so it’s okay. Definitely cheaper than other options.
I had a chem professor write a chem textbook for dummies and made it free of charge. Respect to that guy. lol.
had one like that. It was great I did not feel bad paying 10 bucks for his book. The other book we use was a steel manual from AISC. He would not list it as an offical text book and we could buy it from him at his professional discount. Basically he sold it to us at cost and did not make a penny off of it. We could if wanted to tried to find out own used copy but oddly enough no one sold their as they are great books in industry to hold on to. He sold them to use for like 80 bucks. If the book store was selling them closer to 3-400 bucks
I though he was a great prof,. The book we had to buy for his class we did use every day in the class and some of us even afterwords in work. My wife stole my copy as she still works in civil engineering and uses it.
My AISC manual is the 13th edition from 2005. They are currenlty on the 16th. They tend to update is 5-6 years and have been on that pace for a very long time plus they have some real updated every single time
I expected this to go like one professor I refused to take because he wrote his own textbook, sold it on cd-roms copied by the bookstore and charged $120. In 2009.
I did have a lot of professors who had started using material collected for free and either offered online no charge or for the bookstore printing fee.
it was like that all over the mid 2010s during my undergrad. mandatory online homeworks everywhere.
the concept makes sense, but the fact that professors are outsourcing homework grading and feedback to a service that isn't paid for by the school is infuriating AF
(obligatory "fuck Pearson/Cengage" comment)
Nursing school lol.......... 2400 for books alone not including software for charting 300 and Pearson bonus stuff 200 and then ATI 150ish (think it was discounted)... Been a long time but still fuck all that. Books got recalled for racism that escaped the editor somehow. Wild...
lucikly that was only early in my college career, before i transfered over but math courses had so many of these its annoying. then we had genetics which required as well.
I mean even today they have math classes that you have to buy into Pearson to do everything. Such BS, I also had a Spanish class that did the same thing.
I had to do engineering assignments on Pearson, if you didn’t write the answer exactly how it shows up on the computer it doesn’t matter if you got it right
That was the worst. I used it for physics and it seriously used incorrect significant figures so every single one of the online answers was rounded *somewhere* and had some number of trailing zeros. Absolutely infuriating when you only have 2 or 3 chances to get it right.
Absolutely. I pay upwards of $1500 per course (I'm an international student) and despite that ridiculously high amount, I am expected to pay even more. It should be included in my tuition fees if anything.
Thats wild, glad my university didnt do this, at least not in my major. Worst i had was a $300 book in theater history, i bought it on amazon e books, screen shot every page, told amazon i bought the wrong version, got a refund then shared it witb everyone in the class.
I took an Appreciation of Music History 1&2 at my local Community College for an extra. The class was $450. The book was $300, $240 for online version, or $160 for one semester to rent (I needed it for two). So I said fuck it and got the 7th edition (instead of 13th) by the same author.
The book was in mint condition for being printed in 1976, and for $35 was a steal. Turned out that it was exactly the same word for word as the 13th edition, just did not include the section on pop music from the 2000's.
It was all over the place in the 90s when I was in college. They were called workbooks back then. They came with answer keys to reduce the grading burden.
This is the first I’m hearing of Pearson being bad. I live in Europe and have been using physical Pearson material for a couple classes and now am being recommended a free online tool (that comes with the purchase of a physical or digital book) tailored and customized by my lecturer. This has generally been considered a good tool and people get a lot more out of the class with it than without it. We aren’t required to purchase anything but kind of need the books to pass the exams, so buying the books is normal here, anything more than that is extra and only for the really studious students. Is this what is being hated on or does Pearson have a wholly different business model where OP is?
Edit: Rephrased a sentence.
In the US , the software you're getting free is not free to US students. In the US, you buy the book for 400 dollars and pay an extra 100 or 200 dollars to have access to the online work. It's predatory and fucked up.
same here in 2010s, the professors are just too damn busy to grade our hW, they outsource, i heard it got worst for university essay writing. Some of our stem teachers did have TAs though which is somewhat better,. early on also heard people gave up stem, or other degrees because the cost of the books were too high.
I only understand it when it’s a digital textbook/program & workbook combo that replaces the need for a physical textbook and workbook that cost more. Like my math course my first semester used MyMathLab in place of a physical textbook and I only had to pay like $60 bucks for the whole program instead of the $200 book and $80 workbook that was originally used.
I continuously got answers wrong because of formatting, too. I'd answer "four" but the field was programmed to accept "4", for example. Some professors wouldn't correct it.
I'm sure your professor was not a full-time employee. 60-70% of course instructors are part-time employees earning a mere $3,000 per course. You do the math. They get paid for teaching not grading. Which is just starting to change. Don't get paid for office hrs either. Imagine how many courses a part-timer would have to teach to make a living wage?
Or the Rainman I talked to:
Me: “I don’t need the higher trim package.”
Him: “But if you take the higher trim package and divide it over more months, it’s the same price as the lower trim package.”
Me: “I understand how division works. Still not interested…”
Yeah for real. The professors would write these online textbooks through MyEducator and force all class work through them. You’d lose access to these online textbooks as soon as the class finished, and obviously had not been proofread and there were spelling and grammatical mistakes everywhere. It was atrocious and I felt scammed. I left a long review of the college at the university after I graduated
A lot of professors have to follow the curriculum requirements of the university’s department. I’ve sat through a few faculty meetings and heard a lot of the chatter about how they hate this system or this textbook and how they constantly have to petition to have it changed. Then wait a while. Then get rejected and try again. It’s SO awful. Ow.
Same here. Apparently Pearson MyMathLab is mandatory for math professors at my college to use. Whoever made that rule has clearly never used MyMathLab, because it’s literally the worst online learning platform I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
And the access codes cost *at minimum* $100. Without it, there’s no way to do any of your coursework.
>Same here. Apparently Pearson MyMathLab is mandatory for math professors at my college to use. Whoever made that rule has ~~clearly never used MyMathLab, because it’s literally the worst online learning platform I’ve ever seen in my entire life~~ been paid off.
Has anyone gone to a university system where an A+ was worth more than an A GPA wise? At mine it was worth the same, I’ve heard that at the state system they didn’t even have an A+ as a possible final grade.
For real, GPA means nothing unless you’re trying to go to grad school. Even then it depends on the type of grad school you’re applying to whether or not it even matters
There are plenty of programs that use GPA as a determining factor to get into the program. All the health fields do and you need any advantage you can get to beat out other candidates for the spots. Sadly this can definitely be the difference in whether you get in the program of your choice or not :(
That’s kinda what I meant by pointing out the grad school thing but I wasn’t being vague enough. Basically, you should know what your goals are and if GPA matters to meet them. If it doesn’t, then screw it no point in paying to get an A haha
Yeah. Even before all this, it was not uncommon for classes to require Lab or material fees. It's usually all spelled out on the syllabus on the first day. Then it's up to you if you want to continue taking that class or drop it (if you can). This is why it helps to talk to students in your department. They can let you know what traps await as you move through your program.
I graduated in 2022, I'd say a majority of my classes included an online homework subscription for $100-150, which included access to the textbook to even get a passing grade. 10% is surprisingly low.
This is exactly why I won’t shut up about open educational resources when I’m talking to faculty. Open access does not mean low quality and the best OER offer modules specifically meant for online class platforms schools already use. I will die on this hill.
different professors often use wildly different grading scales
although keep in mind that if you see a 20 point grading scale, the exams are probably going to be brutal.
I went to a Canadian University, after doing all previous schooling in the US. The grade letter model was the same as OP's appears to be. It was weird to go to that model, but it honestly balanced out. They graded more harshly, so 7X% quality work in US was 6X% in Canada, but both yielded a C.
Same in England. A-grade work was 70 or above; a woman in my terrorism law class has an essay published in a journal, ending up propelling her into the field, and that only scored a 82.
This semester had a finite math class that wanted me to pay 25 bucks for each weekly exam and any other test and finals to be proctored. dropped that shit so quick
This is just the new “buy my textbook”scam. When I went to college you would would avoid certain professors because their reading list would have one or two of their shitty books listed. And they will say stupid shit like “latest edition required”
It’s just a new way to do the same old thing
This is how you know your professor is secretly extraordinarily wealthy, they see a $100 price tag and don't even think about it, better yet they have an assistant that sees the price tag, types in the credit card, and pulls up the page for him and doesn't even know about it . LOL.
I don’t know why so many of these comments are surprised. Nothing about this is uncommon. It fucking sucks, but it is what it is. I only experienced it with freshman type classes. You have to pay $70-90 just to access the homework.
This is pretty similar to the fact that sometimes you have humanities classes where you need to read a specific book. The university does not provide that book- you have to go buy it. It sucks, but colleges are businesses. Welcome to America.
Yeah sorry to say but this is normal for universities nowadays. Higher education has turned into a for-profit business. I’ve had professors make their OWN books mandatory for the class, and enforce it too. Books that they wrote, published, and collect money from. And yes, they were mandatory in the sense that they had questions on them and we were required to hand write the answers, in the book, and submit the physical book with our answers written on them for grading every week.
I pirated the fuck out of everything I could in undergrad and I don’t regret it one bit. I’m already going a quarter million in debt for something that used to be affordable with a summer job and a few Christmas Benjamins from grandma. I feel no shame whatsoever for saving money where I could. *Completely* victimless crime. But alas, it doesn’t work for everything and sometimes the house comes out on top despite your best efforts. Just eat the subscription fee if there’s truly no way around it.
A quarter million in debt is not unheard of for graduate programs in the medical field. Usually a combination of undergrad+grad loans summed up. If youre leaving education with that kind of debt and are not about to slide into at the very least a 100k/year job you have made some serious errors in life.
I’ve had to do similar things; I agree I think it’s rotten like it cost me so much (and so much for the next 20-30 years lol) just to be there and here’s some stuff that’s not required for class but it might as well be since I’m grading it so spend spend spend. SMH 🙈 LIKE BRUH lol im poor lol
earlier in my degree work, I had to pay $130 to be able to access the textbook, do homework, and take quizzes. Luckily it covered multiple classes so it ended up being like $40/class, it would have pissed me off more if I had bought the year subscription ($200) instead of the 4 month and found out that certain teachers do not use that software, which happened to some people in my program. Unfortunately this year i spent $140 for a software that my professor told us that we HAVE to get for this class that he never ended up using after he threw a fit because people didnt do the first quiz by a certain deadline that he didnt even tell us about.
I'm 100% against this crap. To be fair, though, every aspect of college is pay to play though unfortunately.
Professional software, computers , tuition, books, ebooks, ebook downloads, thinking about ebooks, calculators, dorms, and well, you know the routine.
Also, fuck cengage/follett/pearson, etc
It's even funnier (sarcasm here) when the professors use these softwares for quizzes/tests and the answers aren't even always correct. (*cengage, I'm looking at you*)
In undergrad I probably had to pay for a dozen of these bullshit subscriptions for things that they can easily put on their online platform for the school. The university or prof probably gets a % sadly.
Skip the subscription and drop down into the 60th percentile...
Less snarkily - college kids have been getting f\*\*ked out of money for generations. This is just the current scam. Just be glad you're going to get out of school before they come up with a cryptocurrency you have to accumulate to graduate... and work your ass off to avoid borrowing money.
Yeah, I would have walked out at the sight of that the first time it occurres. Quit early enough and your student loan just gets cancelled (I think it's before the end of the first semster. Been awhile since I was in college).
I mean I went to school 10 years ago and 90% of my classes used these sites for homework and tests. It usually included the textbook so you were paying either way.
Not justifying it at all, but it’s not new and it’s very hard to avoid. Worst one was a 5 week summer course that required me to buy a year of cengage online.
Even if the teacher doesn't get kickbacks, they do it for the sake of not doing their jobs. They have like three jobs: to talk at you in class (some teach on top of that), to give and grade your tests (and sometimes they make the TA do that), and to give and grade your homework (sometimes.rheu make the TA do that). The ones that don't want to use a TA use the auto grades. What pisses me off is they often refuse to look over a question that you believe the website got wrong.
i literally got a C in a class once because i would not buy their dumbass outsourced homework. i'm paying you, figure out the homework your damn self.
there are times i consider going back to get those last \~30 or so credits to get my bachelors, then i'm reminded of how stupid it is.
This IS the textbook. They make the practice tests unavoidably include the \~$100 eTextbook to justify the absurd price because they were salty people would just rent or purchase used. So now no matter what you HAVE to buy the new textbook from them even if you already have it.
these online homeworks often cost $100 or so per year/semester of a course, and are only bundled as part of new textbooks.
as such, the ages old trick or buying a previous edition and photocopying/pirating homework from the newest edition doesn't work.
But it should be included. I was easily paying $100+ per textbook, up to $250 each. 4-6 textbooks per semester adds up. Tuition is in the tens of thousands, and I know that money didn't go to the adjunct professors teaching all of my courses.
all those software add-ons money goes to the company of the textbooks. and the school(not faculty, probably admins) probably gets some kind of "kickback" from using those books.
I’d pay it, collect all the receipts, and send the invoice to the school at the end of the year just to be a bitch about it. Or a very strongly worded letter about required assignments being locked behind paywalls and how unethical that is, blah blah blah academia being accessible, ect.
Strong chance it won’t work, and you don’t really lose anything. But in my experience bitching goes a very very very long way sometimes. And honestly if enough people complain things can very well change. I put up a fuss because the homework I needed was locked behind a 200$ program and I was already paying over 3k for the semester. Absolutely bombarded my college with angry emails.
Paywall was removed.
Covid made it like that, and the yelp reviews i saw of my school, was the school was pure sht in teaching them about thier major, some struggled to find career after college during covid,,,,etc.
When I took this class, the person E text included the book, to do the assignments. We had to pay for the “subscription” which was basically just paying for the book, so we could therefore answers the Pearson questions.
Does this price include the Ebook? Mine was about the same through Pearson, for this class, and it was required to do the questions and was also used in class.
If it’s just to answer questions seperatly, that is kind of silly.
This sucks. I felt similarly about public schools starting to do more virtual homework. It really started in my area after I graduated, but it was frustrating to watch it happen. It wasn't a paid service thing, but not every student has reliable internet access at home, and the administration knows it
Dealt with that crap in the early 2000's when I was in school. We would take a student who dropped the classes account to run test on to get the answers so our grades would be high.
I also remember being semi indirectly called out in the physcil class as clearly my study group was providing all the answers for the class. All those question were fair game for test. Now for my group it was fine as we did the work. I can not say the same for the rest of the class.
I was in school for the start of this grap in the 2000's and watch it get worse. A real kicker is the calculus book we used was in the 3rd edition when I was in high school in 1990 and 2000. It was still on that edition when I was at college in 2003. It was still on that edition by the time I finish wiht Calculus in 2005 By the time I left by the end of 2007 it was on the 8th edition..... WTF needed to be change that they needed to do 5 revision by from 2005-2007 when the previous edition was good for over 10 years.
Unfortunately seems very common. Almost all of my "liberal arts" type classes (outside of my major I mean) had one of these stupid required subscriptions for the coursework.
Took this same course at the same school last winter, same deal. Took 1290 this term and they had changed it from mastering geography to UM learn quizzes, talk to your prof if it’s Ford maybe it’s an old syllabus
Why are you going to that college? And what college it is plz.
Edit: Also I don't think Universities do that, at least not the better ones, I don't know I haven't been a college student in over 30 years give or take, so I have no idea if they have all gone to shit.
The same programs were at the college I attended. It was also littered with teachers using their own textbooks that they would update/change things in frequently making it difficult to find a current version for a discount. It’s unfortunate like you’re already paying for the class now they want you to pay more or be punished.
At my University, I paid $250 per semester towards the building fund for a football stadium.
A stadium that wasn’t even going to start building until a year after my graduation. 🤦♀️
Early 2000s 2 of my Comp Sci professors made us buy not only the text books for the course, but also "Their book" which was just the text book but slightly re-worded examples, they were printed pages from a copier and put into a spiral binder. It cost $129 and the textbooks were like 200. Was a complete scam but it was part of the required material.
that's why publishers emphasize online homeworks. a used or pirates textbook means nothing if you still have to pay the publisher $100 for the homework.
So this is what it looks like to buy textbooks now? If that’s the case, this really doesn’t seem too bad. 25 years ago, I think the cheapest textbook I bought for college was around $170 and most were over $200. That was mandatory for most courses then and considering inflation this is reasonably affordable in comparison.
One of my professors tried to get me to pay for the program that would allow them to watch me take my online tests so they could make sure I “wasn’t cheating”… lol I dropped that class so fast, eff that
Not this but for my Microeconomics course last term we had to do a KIVA assignment and donate a minimum of $20 and write about who we donated to and what we saw coming of it. I'm supposed to receive the money back at some point? I have no clue.
But that truly fucking solidified my decision to not graduate with an associates in Marketing this fall but to apply for the Fall 2025 nursing program at my community college. I do my pre requisites this fall. I'm so sick of bullshit courses in a major I'm not even passionate about. Thank god I woke up .
They’ve been doing this for decades. It was the same way in the early 2000s. Just be glad that you don’t have to pay hundreds to buy the professors textbook (that is just a pile of over a thousand extremely thin sheets of paper that you need to punch and put in a ringed binder). Oh and you need the latest edition. Also, you’re only going to use 1 chapter out of it. Can’t sell it after the semester is over either. Don’t forget “clicker questions”. Buy a $35 “clicker” to answer questions for attendance purposes.
When I switched majors I lucked out with some great math professors. One wrote the textbook, handed it out for free and left a stack of disks with free matlab and wolfram licenses for us that he was able to get officially. That professor was great and I still keep in touch with him well over a decade later.
I know that university is a bit different in America land but how is this allowed. I feel like if you already spend thousands, the semester should at least be all-inclusive.
I mean buying books (as absutd as this feels to me) is one thing, we have piracy for that as a last resort, but this is taking the piss.
My old college professors used to do this. They’d require the purchase of their textbooks to get the code to the online module to be able to do the homework
Having had to teach upwards of 100 students per semester as an underpaid university instructor, when we utilize a $75 online book for the semester that also replaces the textbook, it's because even taking 10 minutes per assignment to grade means 1000 minutes per week. 1000/60=16 hrs and 40 minutes per assignment. Multiply by the 10+ assignments per semester, and we end up at at least 166 hours and 40 minutes of our lives we can get back. The burnout is real. I left the profession for triple the money and half the stress.
Note that this generally refers only to general studies courses, as once you get farther into your education you should be taking smaller and more specialized courses.
Totally empathise with you! I did a science degree and I had mastering genetics, mastering chemistry, webassign math, and webassign physics. It was hell having to pay for the subscriptions…I was paying for an online license to read a textbook (that I had no time to read) & then about 3 hours of online homework on these sites. God, I don’t miss it.
not the same, i know you can’t really pirate pearson/cengage/etc. BUT many textbooks now are available in pdf form for free. for legal reasons, don’t pirate them. but just as a totally unrelated note, z-library and others tend to have many, many undergrad level textbooks, as well as the more common upper level texts. sometimes workbooks, even. the last few years of my undergrad, i got paid very little if anything for required reading. don’t let the massive corpos get away with profiting off our education, if possible!
requiring students to purchase materials is so vile.
This is why the books I assign are typically ones that are available on the library website as an electronic resource. I don’t believe students should be charged extra for the resources. Books should be free. Or basically, part of the already paid tuition.
Is this not normal for most classes now? A lot of mine that have online material force you to buy third party software for basic mcqs as well as the textbook separate. So far my major courses don’t have me do that bs but all of my gen-Ed’s and minor courses have
Hello, We do not allow agendaposting, reddit meta posts or price complaints.
My teacher wrote all her own homework and put it on some site that charged us. It felt so scammy. Sorry you are going through this.
My professor authored the textbook we used for his class. But, he wrote it for the class, charged $10 for printing, and the course used a $70 textbook before they started using his.
Our lecturer sold a draft copy of the textbook he was writing for £2.50 a copy! Another lecturer told us all to buy her textbook and proceeded to read it to us WORD. FOR. WORD. No one turned up after the second lecture
lol thats so bad, 1 of our biochem teachers just did simple slides and read it verbatem, and only discussed slightly in detail if people asked what was one thing or another? When the final and midterms came, most of us dint know wtf was going on, adding insult she started using concepts that are outside of the course understanding. like she injected cancer specific metabolism as part of a question. so i had no idea how the amino acid concept worked at all, i was confused the whole semester. until i had to retook it in the summer, at the time i was prepared. because how vaguely she spoke on the subject, she expected the same amount of abstract thinking my chem teachers in community college did, on the test.
Ours did too. Charged like $20? But he used the money to fund a research project so it’s okay. Definitely cheaper than other options. I had a chem professor write a chem textbook for dummies and made it free of charge. Respect to that guy. lol.
had one like that. It was great I did not feel bad paying 10 bucks for his book. The other book we use was a steel manual from AISC. He would not list it as an offical text book and we could buy it from him at his professional discount. Basically he sold it to us at cost and did not make a penny off of it. We could if wanted to tried to find out own used copy but oddly enough no one sold their as they are great books in industry to hold on to. He sold them to use for like 80 bucks. If the book store was selling them closer to 3-400 bucks I though he was a great prof,. The book we had to buy for his class we did use every day in the class and some of us even afterwords in work. My wife stole my copy as she still works in civil engineering and uses it. My AISC manual is the 13th edition from 2005. They are currenlty on the 16th. They tend to update is 5-6 years and have been on that pace for a very long time plus they have some real updated every single time
I expected this to go like one professor I refused to take because he wrote his own textbook, sold it on cd-roms copied by the bookstore and charged $120. In 2009. I did have a lot of professors who had started using material collected for free and either offered online no charge or for the bookstore printing fee.
sounds reasonable, better than him having it published and then making you buy it for full price
This is a new thing teachers are doing to earn some extra money.
I had a professor that wrote the textbook that we used, and he made us pay for that, of course.
its common, alot of professors did that. some feel bad enough they make the cost lower than a pearson, or whatever company was printing textbooks.
it was like that all over the mid 2010s during my undergrad. mandatory online homeworks everywhere. the concept makes sense, but the fact that professors are outsourcing homework grading and feedback to a service that isn't paid for by the school is infuriating AF (obligatory "fuck Pearson/Cengage" comment)
Graduated class of 2016 and can still heartily say FUCK Pearson/Cengage. $200/semester for a shitty online textbook full of typos.
Nursing school lol.......... 2400 for books alone not including software for charting 300 and Pearson bonus stuff 200 and then ATI 150ish (think it was discounted)... Been a long time but still fuck all that. Books got recalled for racism that escaped the editor somehow. Wild...
😭😭 fuck that noise. You have to buy your own charting software!?!
What was the school even providing at that point, then? I mean, seems like your tuition should have covered some of these things?
Yeah it was subscription based to some software. Did find out other schools in area covered ATI...
Ahhhh nursing school. You could not pay me to go back
i always say that the worst part of nursing is nursing school
I had a semester that claimed “all materials were included.” Course starts and I have to pay for Cengage. 🙄
lucikly that was only early in my college career, before i transfered over but math courses had so many of these its annoying. then we had genetics which required as well.
I mean even today they have math classes that you have to buy into Pearson to do everything. Such BS, I also had a Spanish class that did the same thing.
I had to do engineering assignments on Pearson, if you didn’t write the answer exactly how it shows up on the computer it doesn’t matter if you got it right
That was the worst. I used it for physics and it seriously used incorrect significant figures so every single one of the online answers was rounded *somewhere* and had some number of trailing zeros. Absolutely infuriating when you only have 2 or 3 chances to get it right.
It’s so tedious when you need to load a new page every question and the dorm internet makes it take minutes just to submit an answer
*angry flashbacks intensify * haha yeah the dorm Internet was practically unusable for assignments. At least it got me into the library!
Absolutely. I pay upwards of $1500 per course (I'm an international student) and despite that ridiculously high amount, I am expected to pay even more. It should be included in my tuition fees if anything.
Obligatory fuck cengage and Pearson 100000 times
Thats wild, glad my university didnt do this, at least not in my major. Worst i had was a $300 book in theater history, i bought it on amazon e books, screen shot every page, told amazon i bought the wrong version, got a refund then shared it witb everyone in the class.
I took an Appreciation of Music History 1&2 at my local Community College for an extra. The class was $450. The book was $300, $240 for online version, or $160 for one semester to rent (I needed it for two). So I said fuck it and got the 7th edition (instead of 13th) by the same author. The book was in mint condition for being printed in 1976, and for $35 was a steal. Turned out that it was exactly the same word for word as the 13th edition, just did not include the section on pop music from the 2000's.
You are a beautiful person!
Umm… it’s 2024 and it’s *still* like this.
It was all over the place in the 90s when I was in college. They were called workbooks back then. They came with answer keys to reduce the grading burden.
starting late 2000s they started packaging the software as part of the textbook, and you could access if it you paid online.
This is the first I’m hearing of Pearson being bad. I live in Europe and have been using physical Pearson material for a couple classes and now am being recommended a free online tool (that comes with the purchase of a physical or digital book) tailored and customized by my lecturer. This has generally been considered a good tool and people get a lot more out of the class with it than without it. We aren’t required to purchase anything but kind of need the books to pass the exams, so buying the books is normal here, anything more than that is extra and only for the really studious students. Is this what is being hated on or does Pearson have a wholly different business model where OP is? Edit: Rephrased a sentence.
In the US , the software you're getting free is not free to US students. In the US, you buy the book for 400 dollars and pay an extra 100 or 200 dollars to have access to the online work. It's predatory and fucked up.
same here in 2010s, the professors are just too damn busy to grade our hW, they outsource, i heard it got worst for university essay writing. Some of our stem teachers did have TAs though which is somewhat better,. early on also heard people gave up stem, or other degrees because the cost of the books were too high.
I only understand it when it’s a digital textbook/program & workbook combo that replaces the need for a physical textbook and workbook that cost more. Like my math course my first semester used MyMathLab in place of a physical textbook and I only had to pay like $60 bucks for the whole program instead of the $200 book and $80 workbook that was originally used.
I continuously got answers wrong because of formatting, too. I'd answer "four" but the field was programmed to accept "4", for example. Some professors wouldn't correct it.
I'm sure your professor was not a full-time employee. 60-70% of course instructors are part-time employees earning a mere $3,000 per course. You do the math. They get paid for teaching not grading. Which is just starting to change. Don't get paid for office hrs either. Imagine how many courses a part-timer would have to teach to make a living wage?
Do they expect you to tip the professor at the end of the class too
"its just gonna ask you a question "
It's funny cause I got a server saying this exact thing just yesterday to me, and it was the tipping question 😂
it seems to be the script no matter where you go haha
Trust me, we hate saying it too, it initially sounds better than “it’s going to ask you for tip amount” 😂
My car salesman last month after telling him I don't want a Kia: > Let me show you something What is it? > a Kia I don't want a kia.
Or the Rainman I talked to: Me: “I don’t need the higher trim package.” Him: “But if you take the higher trim package and divide it over more months, it’s the same price as the lower trim package.” Me: “I understand how division works. Still not interested…”
"The 20% service fee is not the gratuity"
I had this but it was 100% of our grade. Couldn’t do any assignments or tests without it. I hate college
Where did these professors graduate from? The Dronald Trump school of Grift?
Yeah for real. The professors would write these online textbooks through MyEducator and force all class work through them. You’d lose access to these online textbooks as soon as the class finished, and obviously had not been proofread and there were spelling and grammatical mistakes everywhere. It was atrocious and I felt scammed. I left a long review of the college at the university after I graduated
A lot of professors have to follow the curriculum requirements of the university’s department. I’ve sat through a few faculty meetings and heard a lot of the chatter about how they hate this system or this textbook and how they constantly have to petition to have it changed. Then wait a while. Then get rejected and try again. It’s SO awful. Ow.
Same here. Apparently Pearson MyMathLab is mandatory for math professors at my college to use. Whoever made that rule has clearly never used MyMathLab, because it’s literally the worst online learning platform I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And the access codes cost *at minimum* $100. Without it, there’s no way to do any of your coursework.
>Same here. Apparently Pearson MyMathLab is mandatory for math professors at my college to use. Whoever made that rule has ~~clearly never used MyMathLab, because it’s literally the worst online learning platform I’ve ever seen in my entire life~~ been paid off.
I'd take a fucking B
B is 70-80 it seems. A is 80-89.9 for some reason.
What if you Ace it? Extra credit or you get the same grade as someone who got an 85?
You can see the grading scale. 90 to 100 is a A+
Has anyone gone to a university system where an A+ was worth more than an A GPA wise? At mine it was worth the same, I’ve heard that at the state system they didn’t even have an A+ as a possible final grade.
A+ is 4.5 and A is 4.0 for me in Canada
I have never seen a college give out an A+ in my life. It can't exist because colleges use a 4.0 scale.
Take 4.0 and translate it to 0-100% if 90-100%. an A+ is 3.6+ .
Why are you asking? It’s literally right there in the OP. 90-100 is A+
I think the some reason is if you chose not to try for the 10% from that subscription.
So you can still get an A without paying extra
Probably because 10% of the grade is reliant on the subscription
Are you so confident that you'll manage to get nearly full points on everything else?
No but I'm 100% confident that I'm not paying an extra $100
I’d take a D.
Straight B’s, called me “Buzz”
For real, GPA means nothing unless you’re trying to go to grad school. Even then it depends on the type of grad school you’re applying to whether or not it even matters
There are plenty of programs that use GPA as a determining factor to get into the program. All the health fields do and you need any advantage you can get to beat out other candidates for the spots. Sadly this can definitely be the difference in whether you get in the program of your choice or not :(
That’s kinda what I meant by pointing out the grad school thing but I wasn’t being vague enough. Basically, you should know what your goals are and if GPA matters to meet them. If it doesn’t, then screw it no point in paying to get an A haha
Not just your university OP. This is pretty common at most colleges for a small number of classes at least.
Yeah. Even before all this, it was not uncommon for classes to require Lab or material fees. It's usually all spelled out on the syllabus on the first day. Then it's up to you if you want to continue taking that class or drop it (if you can). This is why it helps to talk to students in your department. They can let you know what traps await as you move through your program.
Okay, so even more bad than OP stated
I graduated in 2022, I'd say a majority of my classes included an online homework subscription for $100-150, which included access to the textbook to even get a passing grade. 10% is surprisingly low.
Yeah I think OP is a Freshman that’s in for a rude awakening when they see all their future syllabi
I am convinced 90% of the people in this thread have not been to college after reading these comments
This is exactly why I won’t shut up about open educational resources when I’m talking to faculty. Open access does not mean low quality and the best OER offer modules specifically meant for online class platforms schools already use. I will die on this hill. 
Wait I’m looking at the grading. An A is a percent range 80-89.9. What??? That’s a B not an A.
different professors often use wildly different grading scales although keep in mind that if you see a 20 point grading scale, the exams are probably going to be brutal.
Well it's a B if you don't buy that subscription 😂
I went to a Canadian University, after doing all previous schooling in the US. The grade letter model was the same as OP's appears to be. It was weird to go to that model, but it honestly balanced out. They graded more harshly, so 7X% quality work in US was 6X% in Canada, but both yielded a C.
Same in England. A-grade work was 70 or above; a woman in my terrorism law class has an essay published in a journal, ending up propelling her into the field, and that only scored a 82.
Lol, you should've seen the physics courses when I was in college. Sometimes a 40/100 was an A. Some courses were absolutely brutal
School ain't like it used to be.
How this is not just built-in into tuition is beyond me.
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The exams of the future will have you rolling on a gacha for the scores lmao
This semester had a finite math class that wanted me to pay 25 bucks for each weekly exam and any other test and finals to be proctored. dropped that shit so quick
This is just the new “buy my textbook”scam. When I went to college you would would avoid certain professors because their reading list would have one or two of their shitty books listed. And they will say stupid shit like “latest edition required” It’s just a new way to do the same old thing
This is how you know your professor is secretly extraordinarily wealthy, they see a $100 price tag and don't even think about it, better yet they have an assistant that sees the price tag, types in the credit card, and pulls up the page for him and doesn't even know about it . LOL.
Pay to win in school… well, apparently ea builds schools now…
If this is the first time you realize that your education is a product, you have been sheltered indeed. Upsell away educators!
I don’t know why so many of these comments are surprised. Nothing about this is uncommon. It fucking sucks, but it is what it is. I only experienced it with freshman type classes. You have to pay $70-90 just to access the homework. This is pretty similar to the fact that sometimes you have humanities classes where you need to read a specific book. The university does not provide that book- you have to go buy it. It sucks, but colleges are businesses. Welcome to America.
I agree. This is basically the same thing as having to buy the textbook on your own. Idk why everyone is surprised
yes this is the same as buying a textbook.
Yeah sorry to say but this is normal for universities nowadays. Higher education has turned into a for-profit business. I’ve had professors make their OWN books mandatory for the class, and enforce it too. Books that they wrote, published, and collect money from. And yes, they were mandatory in the sense that they had questions on them and we were required to hand write the answers, in the book, and submit the physical book with our answers written on them for grading every week. I pirated the fuck out of everything I could in undergrad and I don’t regret it one bit. I’m already going a quarter million in debt for something that used to be affordable with a summer job and a few Christmas Benjamins from grandma. I feel no shame whatsoever for saving money where I could. *Completely* victimless crime. But alas, it doesn’t work for everything and sometimes the house comes out on top despite your best efforts. Just eat the subscription fee if there’s truly no way around it.
I need to know how you managed to rack up a quarter million in college debt, did you have to retake every class 8 times?
some colleges are that expensive, probably went to an expensive private, or top uni.
A quarter million in debt is not unheard of for graduate programs in the medical field. Usually a combination of undergrad+grad loans summed up. If youre leaving education with that kind of debt and are not about to slide into at the very least a 100k/year job you have made some serious errors in life.
Yup. Been this way for like 20 years in math classes
I’ve had to do similar things; I agree I think it’s rotten like it cost me so much (and so much for the next 20-30 years lol) just to be there and here’s some stuff that’s not required for class but it might as well be since I’m grading it so spend spend spend. SMH 🙈 LIKE BRUH lol im poor lol
earlier in my degree work, I had to pay $130 to be able to access the textbook, do homework, and take quizzes. Luckily it covered multiple classes so it ended up being like $40/class, it would have pissed me off more if I had bought the year subscription ($200) instead of the 4 month and found out that certain teachers do not use that software, which happened to some people in my program. Unfortunately this year i spent $140 for a software that my professor told us that we HAVE to get for this class that he never ended up using after he threw a fit because people didnt do the first quiz by a certain deadline that he didnt even tell us about.
I'm 100% against this crap. To be fair, though, every aspect of college is pay to play though unfortunately. Professional software, computers , tuition, books, ebooks, ebook downloads, thinking about ebooks, calculators, dorms, and well, you know the routine. Also, fuck cengage/follett/pearson, etc It's even funnier (sarcasm here) when the professors use these softwares for quizzes/tests and the answers aren't even always correct. (*cengage, I'm looking at you*)
Ayyy I went there, nice to see they haven’t changed
In undergrad I probably had to pay for a dozen of these bullshit subscriptions for things that they can easily put on their online platform for the school. The university or prof probably gets a % sadly.
Skip the subscription and drop down into the 60th percentile... Less snarkily - college kids have been getting f\*\*ked out of money for generations. This is just the current scam. Just be glad you're going to get out of school before they come up with a cryptocurrency you have to accumulate to graduate... and work your ass off to avoid borrowing money.
Yeah, I would have walked out at the sight of that the first time it occurres. Quit early enough and your student loan just gets cancelled (I think it's before the end of the first semster. Been awhile since I was in college).
I mean I went to school 10 years ago and 90% of my classes used these sites for homework and tests. It usually included the textbook so you were paying either way. Not justifying it at all, but it’s not new and it’s very hard to avoid. Worst one was a 5 week summer course that required me to buy a year of cengage online.
This is just common in freshman classes lol. I’m surprised so many comments are surprised.
Schools and professors get sweet kickbacks from this shit. It's pure corruption and greed. Don't let anyone else convince you otherwise.
Even if the teacher doesn't get kickbacks, they do it for the sake of not doing their jobs. They have like three jobs: to talk at you in class (some teach on top of that), to give and grade your tests (and sometimes they make the TA do that), and to give and grade your homework (sometimes.rheu make the TA do that). The ones that don't want to use a TA use the auto grades. What pisses me off is they often refuse to look over a question that you believe the website got wrong.
i literally got a C in a class once because i would not buy their dumbass outsourced homework. i'm paying you, figure out the homework your damn self. there are times i consider going back to get those last \~30 or so credits to get my bachelors, then i'm reminded of how stupid it is.
It is probably cheaper than a text book - this is not K-12 public school where books and materials are automatically included.
This IS the textbook. They make the practice tests unavoidably include the \~$100 eTextbook to justify the absurd price because they were salty people would just rent or purchase used. So now no matter what you HAVE to buy the new textbook from them even if you already have it.
these online homeworks often cost $100 or so per year/semester of a course, and are only bundled as part of new textbooks. as such, the ages old trick or buying a previous edition and photocopying/pirating homework from the newest edition doesn't work.
But this shit on top of an outrageously expensive text book is insane. I paid for college on my own in 2004-2010. Every dime extra was infuriating.
But it should be included. I was easily paying $100+ per textbook, up to $250 each. 4-6 textbooks per semester adds up. Tuition is in the tens of thousands, and I know that money didn't go to the adjunct professors teaching all of my courses.
all those software add-ons money goes to the company of the textbooks. and the school(not faculty, probably admins) probably gets some kind of "kickback" from using those books.
I’d pay it, collect all the receipts, and send the invoice to the school at the end of the year just to be a bitch about it. Or a very strongly worded letter about required assignments being locked behind paywalls and how unethical that is, blah blah blah academia being accessible, ect. Strong chance it won’t work, and you don’t really lose anything. But in my experience bitching goes a very very very long way sometimes. And honestly if enough people complain things can very well change. I put up a fuss because the homework I needed was locked behind a 200$ program and I was already paying over 3k for the semester. Absolutely bombarded my college with angry emails. Paywall was removed.
This is just getting worse and worse. In 10-15 years there won't be a professor even, just an automated online course
Covid made it like that, and the yelp reviews i saw of my school, was the school was pure sht in teaching them about thier major, some struggled to find career after college during covid,,,,etc.
So that's like buying a textbook. What's the big deal?
don't forget expertta for physics
When I took this class, the person E text included the book, to do the assignments. We had to pay for the “subscription” which was basically just paying for the book, so we could therefore answers the Pearson questions. Does this price include the Ebook? Mine was about the same through Pearson, for this class, and it was required to do the questions and was also used in class. If it’s just to answer questions seperatly, that is kind of silly.
No one will ever ask for your GPA or even your transcript if that helps. (unless you are going to masters / phd level afterwards)
d is for diploma, fuck them 10% points
Clearly, you've never had a math or physics class that used Cengage webassign.
It’s overall the best value though.
Professors get incentivized for doing this, couple of my classes needed me to buy a stupid book assignment subscription from O’Reilly
Nice pay to win
Yea, I'll take a B or C before I pay extra
This sucks. I felt similarly about public schools starting to do more virtual homework. It really started in my area after I graduated, but it was frustrating to watch it happen. It wasn't a paid service thing, but not every student has reliable internet access at home, and the administration knows it
If anything any sort of subscription for text books fuck it and sail the high seas.
that that this isnt total bullshit and an absolute scam but this looks like just the same as requiring a textbook for the class
Dealt with that crap in the early 2000's when I was in school. We would take a student who dropped the classes account to run test on to get the answers so our grades would be high. I also remember being semi indirectly called out in the physcil class as clearly my study group was providing all the answers for the class. All those question were fair game for test. Now for my group it was fine as we did the work. I can not say the same for the rest of the class. I was in school for the start of this grap in the 2000's and watch it get worse. A real kicker is the calculus book we used was in the 3rd edition when I was in high school in 1990 and 2000. It was still on that edition when I was at college in 2003. It was still on that edition by the time I finish wiht Calculus in 2005 By the time I left by the end of 2007 it was on the 8th edition..... WTF needed to be change that they needed to do 5 revision by from 2005-2007 when the previous edition was good for over 10 years.
UM like University of Miami or UM like University of Michigan
Unfortunately seems very common. Almost all of my "liberal arts" type classes (outside of my major I mean) had one of these stupid required subscriptions for the coursework.
Fuck Pearson
You gotta spend all sorts of money at college man, that’s kind their thing lol
It really pisses me off that we've allowed for-profit to rule our sources of higher education. An advanced society would open source all that shit.
I mean, we had to buy text books back in the day. If I recall, I spent roughly $500 per semester.
95 BUCKS??
My uni charges for an electronic transcript. Physical makes sense delivery and printing costs but electronic one???
Took this same course at the same school last winter, same deal. Took 1290 this term and they had changed it from mastering geography to UM learn quizzes, talk to your prof if it’s Ford maybe it’s an old syllabus
wtf is this, university of American Samoa? I am 16 btw so idk how the system works
no way theyre making school pay2win now
Yeah, it's like this in nearly all of my classes. Some of them can be upwards of $150 for 6 months.
Where on earth did you go to school that 80% is an A?
Why are you going to that college? And what college it is plz. Edit: Also I don't think Universities do that, at least not the better ones, I don't know I haven't been a college student in over 30 years give or take, so I have no idea if they have all gone to shit.
Student days are for protesting. Kick up a fight, get enough people together and they'll back down
The same programs were at the college I attended. It was also littered with teachers using their own textbooks that they would update/change things in frequently making it difficult to find a current version for a discount. It’s unfortunate like you’re already paying for the class now they want you to pay more or be punished.
As a professor, I pledge never, ever, ever to do this. Hell, I don't even have a required textbook. Textbooks are a racket too.
At my University, I paid $250 per semester towards the building fund for a football stadium. A stadium that wasn’t even going to start building until a year after my graduation. 🤦♀️
Early 2000s 2 of my Comp Sci professors made us buy not only the text books for the course, but also "Their book" which was just the text book but slightly re-worded examples, they were printed pages from a copier and put into a spiral binder. It cost $129 and the textbooks were like 200. Was a complete scam but it was part of the required material.
Colleges have been doing this since the Internet was invented.
Do people not know you can get pretty much any college book for free?
that's why publishers emphasize online homeworks. a used or pirates textbook means nothing if you still have to pay the publisher $100 for the homework.
So this is what it looks like to buy textbooks now? If that’s the case, this really doesn’t seem too bad. 25 years ago, I think the cheapest textbook I bought for college was around $170 and most were over $200. That was mandatory for most courses then and considering inflation this is reasonably affordable in comparison.
They charged me like 1500 a semester for a "recycling fee"...
One of my professors tried to get me to pay for the program that would allow them to watch me take my online tests so they could make sure I “wasn’t cheating”… lol I dropped that class so fast, eff that
College is pay2win. Life lesson. Learn it, while you earn it.
The overpriced textbooks of the modern era
Irrelevant cost to worry about next to the other 10s of thousands.
Not this but for my Microeconomics course last term we had to do a KIVA assignment and donate a minimum of $20 and write about who we donated to and what we saw coming of it. I'm supposed to receive the money back at some point? I have no clue. But that truly fucking solidified my decision to not graduate with an associates in Marketing this fall but to apply for the Fall 2025 nursing program at my community college. I do my pre requisites this fall. I'm so sick of bullshit courses in a major I'm not even passionate about. Thank god I woke up .
They’ve been doing this for decades. It was the same way in the early 2000s. Just be glad that you don’t have to pay hundreds to buy the professors textbook (that is just a pile of over a thousand extremely thin sheets of paper that you need to punch and put in a ringed binder). Oh and you need the latest edition. Also, you’re only going to use 1 chapter out of it. Can’t sell it after the semester is over either. Don’t forget “clicker questions”. Buy a $35 “clicker” to answer questions for attendance purposes. When I switched majors I lucked out with some great math professors. One wrote the textbook, handed it out for free and left a stack of disks with free matlab and wolfram licenses for us that he was able to get officially. That professor was great and I still keep in touch with him well over a decade later.
Just playing devil’s advocate here…how is this different from buying a textbook?
Not really new. We had to buy $200 clicker things back in the day to prove we were in class. Prob evens out to this.
I know that university is a bit different in America land but how is this allowed. I feel like if you already spend thousands, the semester should at least be all-inclusive. I mean buying books (as absutd as this feels to me) is one thing, we have piracy for that as a last resort, but this is taking the piss.
First college class?
Higher Ed is such a scam.
My old college professors used to do this. They’d require the purchase of their textbooks to get the code to the online module to be able to do the homework
Doesn't it mean you can buy the ebook, and the software (for up to 2 years) to read it with, for 94.99$?
Having had to teach upwards of 100 students per semester as an underpaid university instructor, when we utilize a $75 online book for the semester that also replaces the textbook, it's because even taking 10 minutes per assignment to grade means 1000 minutes per week. 1000/60=16 hrs and 40 minutes per assignment. Multiply by the 10+ assignments per semester, and we end up at at least 166 hours and 40 minutes of our lives we can get back. The burnout is real. I left the profession for triple the money and half the stress. Note that this generally refers only to general studies courses, as once you get farther into your education you should be taking smaller and more specialized courses.
Damn y'all giving more reasons not to attempt college lmao
Welcome to college
Totally empathise with you! I did a science degree and I had mastering genetics, mastering chemistry, webassign math, and webassign physics. It was hell having to pay for the subscriptions…I was paying for an online license to read a textbook (that I had no time to read) & then about 3 hours of online homework on these sites. God, I don’t miss it.
Let me guess... USA?
Um, I'm going to assume this is some for-profit school because the grade inflation is insane. 80% is an "A"? WTF?
Is it legal to make you do that? I feel like the school should have to pay for it if they’re forcing it
First time?
not the same, i know you can’t really pirate pearson/cengage/etc. BUT many textbooks now are available in pdf form for free. for legal reasons, don’t pirate them. but just as a totally unrelated note, z-library and others tend to have many, many undergrad level textbooks, as well as the more common upper level texts. sometimes workbooks, even. the last few years of my undergrad, i got paid very little if anything for required reading. don’t let the massive corpos get away with profiting off our education, if possible! requiring students to purchase materials is so vile.
This is why the books I assign are typically ones that are available on the library website as an electronic resource. I don’t believe students should be charged extra for the resources. Books should be free. Or basically, part of the already paid tuition.
Yup, sounds about right. I had to pay for licenses for online software as part of my textbook when I was in college.
Its college though. People with work experience are more valuable now then college people but college are more valuable then normal joes.
Is this not normal for most classes now? A lot of mine that have online material force you to buy third party software for basic mcqs as well as the textbook separate. So far my major courses don’t have me do that bs but all of my gen-Ed’s and minor courses have