| Our son has typically paid less than a $100/semester for books since first semester frosh year. How? He has bought used, prior edition books at a small fraction of new and even used same editions. He has bought foreign edition texts and never used the college bookstore.
The big premium for current editions is largely a scam by text book publishers to maximize profits. Earlier editions usually have identical content or essentially identical content. Even problem sets are typically the same with changes amounting to merely changing the number order of the individual problems. Our son was assigned an 8th edition multivariable calc text, bought an identical 2nd edition for about $5 + shipping.
Finally many profs are relying less on texts than in our day. It is not unusual for our son's instructors to have lecture notes on line, use journal articles and use the assigned text sporatically throughout the term.
He is due to graduate next month Magna Cum Laud so his parsimonious ways seemed to have worked out just fine. |