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[Frumple]

Currently too tired to regain earlier rage levels.

But.

One of my textbooks. For a class I'm taking. Finally pulled it out and unwrapped it, today.

It.

Is not.

A book.

It's a bunch of hole punched looseleaf stuck inside some... cardboard, like, stuff. It's just. You realize. The sheer level of goddamn quality lack, that comes about. When they're not even binding the fucking things anymore. And that sensation. When you first flip the "book" open and half of it just... pulls away. "WTF is this shit?" you ask yourself, waving the first several chapters of the book around like party favors. "Who's frakkin' idea was this?" you wonder, gazing at it stupefied. And slowly... so slowly... "This engenders within me a burning need to strangle someone with capitalism manifested as a garrote of barbed wire. That is on fire. Whoever it was that did... this."  It was not a happy way to start the morning.

Not even going to talk about the pricing.

[Pnx]

Yes, my precalc book was like that, they said it was so you could take it apart and take individual chapters with you and such, but honestly it was such a pain to keep the pages organised, that I would have honestly just preferred a traditional binding.

[lemon10]

The real reason is that binding large books is expensive, while printing pages loose leaf costs pennies (not that they will really pass those savings off to you).

[Frumple]

Bingo. Also, you basically can't resell the loose leaf stuff. Blatant and bloody clumsy profiteering bullshit, among all the other crap related to it.

And savings, ha. It was cheaper to buy used and get the online portion separate than to buy this "binder version" bull. But! Note: Only version the campus store had. Further note: The ISBN was specifically for the binder version, with no indication that other versions existed. Bit of a research failure on my end, but... seriously, stuff like that should be illegal, or at least something able to press a civil case against or whatev'. Blatant... whatever that is. Or at least just cause for dragging whoever was responsible for it out in the street and, like, kneecapping them or something. We really need better legal recourse to be able to go, "This shit isn't cool, people." Though maintaining decent controls on said recourse would itself be a nightmare, but... meh.

[nenjin]

Bingo. Also, you basically can't resell the loose leaf stuff. Blatant and bloody clumsy profiteering bullshit, among all the other crap related to it.

And savings, ha. It was cheaper to buy used and get the online portion separate than to buy this "binder version" bull. But! Note: Only version the campus store had. Further note: The ISBN was specifically for the binder version, with no indication that other versions existed. Bit of a research failure on my end, but... seriously, stuff like that should be illegal, or at least something able to press a civil case against or whatev'. Blatant... whatever that is. Or at least just cause for dragging whoever was responsible for it out in the street and, like, kneecapping them or something. We really need better legal recourse to be able to go, "This shit isn't cool, people." Though maintaining decent controls on said recourse would itself be a nightmare, but... meh.

What's truly bullshit is that the colleges are complicit in it. In a free market system, people can buy from where they want. But college is a closed system. If they were doing right by students, they'd offer various places to buy books: in the stores, online, what have you, all at different prices to meet the needs and wants of a variety of students.

What we get instead is a list of "approved vendors" who have contractually negotiated with the University to keep prices artificially high and to restrict access. Which is bullshit. The recommended online vendor isn't any cheaper than the bookstores on campus usually. Want to order your books from Amazon or somewhere used? Hope you can survive for 4 days to two weeks without class-approved materials!

It's all about 1 step removed from the good ol' "company stores." Universities will argue that students pay a convenience fee for quick access to these texts, and that they're free to buy books from elsewhere. Except a) they don't help you and b) teachers and the colleges determine what are approved texts so there's no substitution available at all. If you buy a cheaper book on the same subject by a different author, the teacher will just flat out tell you your work based on that text is inherently flawed, so your grade will be too.

Like I said. When a media law professor photocopied all the relevant texts and bundled them in a paper packet that he sold for $10 (to cover his own printing costs), I wanted to nominate the man for sainthood.

[Bdthemag]

I wait nearly three and a half weeks waiting for a response from Steam Support after finding out many of my steam inventory items were hijacked when someone got into my account. I gave them information regarding the people who potentially hijacked my account, what items were taken, and pretty much gave them all of the information needed for them to verify it was in fact my account. Today I just got a response.

"Due to the amount of time that has passed, we are unable to assist you with recovering the item(s) in question."

Fuck.

[SalmonGod]

What's truly bullshit is that the colleges are complicit in it. In a free market system, people can buy from where they want. But college is a closed system. If they were doing right by students, they'd offer various places to buy books: in the stores, online, what have you, all at different prices to meet the needs and wants of a variety of students.

Meh... what's free market about telling people how they're allowed to compete?  Tell people they're not allowed to freely negotiate their resources into specific types of contracts with specific people, and you're essentially breaking two of the most basic concepts of free market capitalism:  free association and property rights.  Their actions may result in an unfree market, but preventing them from taking those actions goes against the principles of a free market.  Essentially, the concept is a paradox.

[Descan]

I prefer the term "consumer-based market", I.E. everything is geared toward making things better for the consumer. More competition, more choice, everyone getting a stipend each month to -make- that choice. Whether arrived at via regulation or via non-regulation.

Free market is a buzzword, it doesn't mean anything. Or you can make it mean whatever you want.

[nenjin]

What's truly bullshit is that the colleges are complicit in it. In a free market system, people can buy from where they want. But college is a closed system. If they were doing right by students, they'd offer various places to buy books: in the stores, online, what have you, all at different prices to meet the needs and wants of a variety of students.

Meh... what's free market about telling people how they're allowed to compete?  Tell people they're not allowed to freely negotiate their resources into specific types of contracts with specific people, and you're essentially breaking two of the most basic concepts of free market capitalism:  free association and property rights.  Their actions may result in an unfree market, but preventing them from taking those actions goes against the principles of a free market.  Essentially, the concept is a paradox.

It's just like everything being way more expensive in an airport than elsewhere. Businesses know they have captive audiences, so they turn the screws a little bit harder because they can. College isn't much different in that regard. People have signed the papers and paid the money. It's not like they're packing up and leaving so why NOT inflate the cost of books, clothing, food and utilities? (Answer: Because it makes you the subject of posts like this.)

[Solifuge]

What's truly bullshit is that the colleges are complicit in it. In a free market system, people can buy from where they want. But college is a closed system. If they were doing right by students, they'd offer various places to buy books: in the stores, online, what have you, all at different prices to meet the needs and wants of a variety of students.

This makes me want to take out a loan, buy a big chunk of property made cheep by the collapse of the housing market, and found a college that was actually about educating people. It would pay it's instructors well, to encourage competition and improve the quality of professors. It wouldn't have a sports team or organized non-academic activities, but would encourage and provide infrastructure for students and staff to organize their own clubs and activities. It would arrange professors by teaching style, and help students identify the ways they best learn, to encourage ideal professor-student pairings. It would have a built-in rating system, where students could anonymously review their experiences with a professor, and other students could vote on or flag reviews as helpful or unhelpful. And most importantly, it wouldn't absolutely shaft students on enrollment, tuition, and material costs.

You know, give the broken Education Industry something to compete with.

[LordSlowpoke]

What's truly bullshit is that the colleges are complicit in it. In a free market system, people can buy from where they want. But college is a closed system. If they were doing right by students, they'd offer various places to buy books: in the stores, online, what have you, all at different prices to meet the needs and wants of a variety of students.

This makes me want to take out a loan, buy a big chunk of property made cheep by the collapse of the housing market, and found a college that was actually about educating people. It would pay it's instructors well, to encourage competition and improve the quality of professors. It would arrange professors by teaching style, and help students identify the ways they best learn, to encourage ideal professor-student pairings. It would have a built-in rating system, where students could anonymously review their experiences with a professor, and other students could vote on or flag reviews as helpful or unhelpful. And most importantly, it wouldn't absolutely shaft students on enrollment, tuition, and material costs.

You know, give this broken Educational System something to compete with.

buy out detroit, kick everyone out, do some demolishing and support the university via the profit margin you get from rent of a small town you now own

i assume only the population of a small town would come to recolonize the area if given the occasion.

[Vector]

The rating system, man... =/

Just saying, there's often huge problems for marginalized populations for that.  If it's entirely written-notes-based, that'd probably be better.  Less efficient, but it would actually get the job done.

[Pnx]

There's some websites out there that let you review your professors and give them ratings... and frankly a lot of the reviews I've seen have been awful.

[Solifuge]

Oh, I meant written reviews, not something like "Dr. Funkmeyer scores 4.5 out of 5 Mortarboards!".

The rating system is for the written reviews themselves, to promote ones that other people agree with or are most helpful, and to push inflammatory or unhelpful reviews down to the bottom of the stack (this also encourages people to write higher-quality reviews). A tagging system might also help people sort between reviews that are written as rants or entertainment, and those that are written to convey information. There is still potential for gaming that system, or for marginalization of voices... but it provides much-needed quality control on the reviews. And it's certainly better than nothing.

[Xantalos]

Yaaaaaaaay for parental assholery.