The California Public Interest Research Group is giving attention to an issue near and dear to every college student's heart, the skyrocketing and unethical prices of school textbooks. Among said unethical tactics: Releasing new textbooks with nearly the same info to force students to buy new textbooks, and selling completely unwanted CD-ROM supplements that neither students nor faculty use.
I love these guys. It's nice to have someone calling companies like McGraw-Hill on this issue. I added up the retail cost of all the books I was supposed to buy this year, and it was over $500. (Fortunately, Half.com and a BJU trading site came to my rescue and I paid somewhat less, in one case buying a previous edition to save $65). What kills me is that the books really aren't that good anyways, as if the authors KNOW that the students have to read it anyways, no matter how good the writing is.
In one book, Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics (by Dennis L. Wilcox, Phillip H. Ault, Warren K. Agee, and Glen T. Cameron; published by Allyn & Bacon/Longman Publishers) (Credit to where credit's due, of course), the authors seemed to write in an excessively verbose manner in order to inflate the word count (and thus charge higher prices). For example, the first chapter, entitled "What Is Public Relations" spends nearly twenty pages on what should have been summarized in a page. One paragraph begins, "Public relations is a process--that is, a series of actions, changes, or functions that bring about a result."
Now, come on. I don't care how bad the public education system is doing, you really shouldn't have to define the word "process" to a college level audience. Although I tried, I simply could not finish the chapter. It's that bad.
I'm glad I only paid $15 for it. Otherwise, I'd be really ticked off.
(Via Slashdot)
Posted by Blog Jones at January 30, 2004 09:38 PM