Selfishness and greed. Anyone that stands up stands alone, and the others are quick to lick a boot as they grovel for scraps. For some inconceivable reason too many consider this preferable to standing together and working to make things better.
It's not selfishness and greed so often as it is fear and ignorance. Education remedies the ignorance and steels people against the fear that keeps them from working together against a seemingly more powerful force.
North American here. Funny how it's very much less "which is it?" And more "Yeah. Basically."
We've been culturally domesticated to not cause trouble for our bosses / schools / etc. If the State steps in after you cause trouble for enterprise, it's usually to kick you back into your place.
We might not live in a State dictatorship, but that only matters so far, because that State enables many tiny, petty dictatorships that more directly affect your life and run amok unopposed.
Somehow people accept petty tyranny in everything from corporations to universities to shifts at the burger joint. They'll get all riled up that some politician they never met is bawking about foreign policy, but their tail is tucked firmly when their company tells them they can't get sick days and arriving a minute late is a fireable offense.
Many have bought the lies of rugged individualism and competition.
"An insult to one is...well, that really sucks for you but I told you to just stay quiet. I'm just working hard doing what I'm told."
Like someone said before me: Even the most rebellious in us think twice about making our move, because many people simply think "That's how it is." And don't believe it can get any better.
There's not a lot of examples of collective action winning in recent history, so a lot of people don't even know how to begin to push back in the first place, besides writing an angry tweet or two.
A professor at my university tried that, but the students quite quickly made a huge fuss, got the principals office involved, and the universities lawyers informed said professor that what she was doing was illegal, and that she should stop before she got any more trouble. She stopped.
Possibly a poor translation from my side: I'm referring to the "head office" of the university, i.e. the group of people under the direct leadership of the principal, who have the highest administrative authority at the university.
The professor that taught my algorithms & data structures course said if we were going to keep one book it should be the one for that course. I followed that advice and it's the one textbook I still have. It's been 8 years since graduation and I haven't opened it once. I tend to just read Wikipedia if I need to understand a particular algorithm or data structure.
The best investment I made in textbooks was the class that wanted a Schaum's Outline book, $15 brand new and still a book I use for occasional linear algebra reference.
Don't you have university library? I did most of the recommend readings through my studies and found them all there (excepted for one). Ended up being a two reference books which prove themselves to be worth it.
A creative way to tell a student how to download a free book while telling them “not to”. The professor probably just wants to teach and is as tired of the university bullshit as the students.
I have had uni professors sign books to make sure people actually bought new books and not used ones (he wrote them); unfortunately for him i had access to toluene to get pen ink off; did the same to all of my peers;
Fuck those kind of professors
He threatened you to either buy a new book or he would make your uni career hell, one of my mates did it, at the last exam he sent him back 5 times, the last time he went to take the exam the coordiator said "what else have you got to ask to him; he told you everything in your course; [insert name] give me the paper" he signed the paper and sent him off; the prof. Still gave him only 60/100.
I still want to slap that piece of shit.
After that i taught other people in the uni to do that; he tried to mitigate by writing over the printed title of the book; hoping that any tampering would be evident; toluene didn't touch the toner, so it didn't work
Here in italy no one gives a quater of a fuck about that kind of shit.
Good thing is that the same can be said when after the last exams he always needs to call a tow truck since he won't have tires, not even cameras were able to stop them, and i'm quite sure other professors turn a blind eye to them since they also hate him.
just fyi:
"teach" is one of those words in English that has a different suffix for it's past-tense: it is "taught".
Eg. "They taught me to sew."
"teached" is improper.
Note: not to be confused with "taut" which is pronounced the same.
You know what I also hate? When professors take your phone while in class. I had a professor that did that back in my days of gender studies college and he saw nudes of my they/them girlfriend at the time. Mannn it was an awkward rest of the class and he didn't tell anyone, but I really showed him, ended up taking the day off next day and nailed his wife. Dude never found out or anything, turns out her wife has had countless orgies with several other guys while he's busy at school teaching students. Still never confirmed whether he found out or not.
Overall, lost my train of thought, in response to your comment they do it to be sure you have the most recent information in the book, don't see an issue tbh.
The specific case here was the professor had a financial stake in new books being sold.
I do agree updated editions with new information could be important, but again when theres a financial incentive to sell new books, the obvious lean will be towards making new versions even if there is no new information.
Since the books can be required, they should be required to show proof they have substantially added to their edition or else relegate it to a minor revision (maybe adding sub-editions like 1.0, 1.1, 1.2; where you only need the first number to be current). Right now its a whole lot of, "Trust us you need this book and the only pre-owned versions are out of date".
As a side thought, this is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if they use the book costs to weed out those that will not allow themselves to be abused to that degree. This would leave only those who would conform to their leader/manager/teacher and are less likely to try to change the system.
Side note: to anyone looking to follow this method, please try to limit the amount of toluene you are exposed to by wearing gloves and working in a well ventilated space. It can do dirty shit to your nervous system and I've seen chemists start to experience symptoms from relatively little exposure to the fumes.
In general if you can get a respirator or at least an n95 mask if you still have them from covid(apparently that doesnt work); also make tries on an old book before going on the good one, at least if you mess up it isn't another hole punched in your wallet
A respirator with an organic vapor trap will work, but an N95 will do essentially nothing for chemical vapors besides give you a false sense of safety.
If you have nothing, do your work outside and don't work with your face directly over areas with the toluene.
In one of my uni courses, I found a free copy of the required textbook and posted a link to it on the forum in the LMS saying "Hey prof, is this the correct textbook?" By the time the prof responded and politely took my message down a week later, everyone had helped themselves to a copy.
This reminds me of when Weird Al told Canadian (or maybe Australian?) fans who wanted to watch his movie, "there's Very Probably No way to do this. I know you probably have a TORRENT of questions, but I don't have time to answer them right now."
Once in a while maybe you will feel the urge
To break international copyright law
By downloading MP3's from file sharing sites
Like Morpheus or Grokster or LimeWire or KaZaA
I had a professor who kept all the materials from the books that he wrote on his website. He was cool with students printing the html pages and bringing it to class.
I paid $1000 for books my first semester of college back in 2007. I felt so burnt and violated I never bought another textbook. I made it through the rest of undergrad, a masters, and a PhD in biochemistry by checking out books from the library, borrowing textbooks from friends, and going sailing. When I taught I made it a point to teach my students about all the ways they can avoid becoming a victim like myself.
