Books are such a sore point. Their cost is way out of hand. Everyone is at fault, in my opinion, except for the students. I don't see anything that they do that warrants the costs. Though, students use them as a way to convert scholarship and parent's money to cash. We used the same text for the 2 semester sequence of research methods courses. It was common for students to sell the books between semesters knowing they would get more money for books the next semester.
We often (not all of us) change editions whenever the publisher makes the change. We can have some control over the cost effects of this: I know of one professor who allows up to three previous editions in his economics course. I can't believe the publishers can justify the actual amount they charge. I know that they claim that they do not sell many copies of the book, and they hate the system that allows used books to be sold for any fraction of the full price (that's why they change editions). Part of the problem of low sales of any specific edition is the number of choices we have. Each major publisher has several social psychology texts, for instance. (e.g., MacGraw-Hill: 6; Wadsworth: 5; Pearson: 5) Does every publisher need that many? Do we, as teachers of social psychology need over 16 to choose from? Do we have time to really examine with more than a cursory glance more than 3 to 5? What purpose do all these different books serve, really? And, by selling each for only 2 to 3 years before going to the next edition, publishers can't spread production costs over as many sales. I guess they've figured out that the market gets saturated with used copies around the 3rd year, so to keep the money pumping in they have to crank out a new edition. A field like social might justify a new edition every 5 years or so. But, statistics and research methods? Not a chance. There is nothing new under the sun in those fields, at least for what is being taught to undergraduates in psychology. New editions every 2 to 3 years is 100% a money engine for the publishers. If/when we settle on text we like, I'm confident that it will be easy to allow students to use several editions with no loss in their ability to track lectures/content. Paul Bernhardt Dept of Psychology Frostburg State University pcbernhardt _at_ frostburg _dot_ edu -----Original Message----- From: Shearon, Tim [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thu 7/22/2010 3:24 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] Textbook rentals? Bob- Out campus has a B&N bookstore so we will have rentals this year. We are given the choice to have our texts available or not within the program. I tend to allow the students to decide though I send out notes to my classes with my thoughts on the idea. One of those thoughts is that I don't support any particular method of text acquisition. My own method was to buy them and hold them. Much the same as you report, I still have my intro book from 1972! My message is primarily that they buy their own copy (or somehow have a physical copy!) and that they use it in the recommended manner (taking notes, reading actively, asking questions, actively engaging the text. . . ). But given that the average student today seems to buy the text and sell it back at the end of the term I don't really see that the rental idea is such a problem. A few bookstores will even give more "buy back" credit or cash if the book is pristine! From that standpoint, I'd rather them rent since it doesn't matter if they mark it up. Tim _______________________________ Timothy O. Shearon, PhD Professor and Chair Department of Psychology The College of Idaho Caldwell, ID 83605 email: [email protected] teaching: intro to neuropsychology; psychopharmacology; general; history and systems "You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." Dorothy Parker ________________________________________ From: Dr. Bob Wildblood [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2010 12:53 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Textbook rentals? I don't know about today, but when I was a student at Purdue University from 1964 - 1970, both Southworth's and University Book Store had a policy of buy a new book pay full price. Turn it in at the end of the semester and get 50% back. They then sold used books at 75% of the new book price and again, turned in they gave 50% of the price paid. I didn't turn many books back except those that were for courses that I decided were only required for the degree outside of psychology courses, and I kept a lot of those as well. I still have on my shelf a couple of those books including a very early edition of Hall & Lindzey's _Theories of Personality_ . --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13441.4e79e96ebb5671bdb50111f18f263003&n=T&l=tips&o=3739 or send a blank email to leave-3739-13441.4e79e96ebb5671bdb50111f18f263...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=3750 or send a blank email to leave-3750-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
<<winmail.dat>>
