I’m a college professor. I’m very aware of textbook prices. Most students don’t read the textbook anyway, even if its something you want them to read everyday.
For intro classes, I use openstax, which are available free online. For upper-level classes, I try to pick non major publishers, ie not pearson or cengage, with much more reasonably priced books.
My version of this meme would be the prof begging the students to actually read the book he/she picked out that is free or cheap so that they are prepared for class and the students rolling their eyes and instead just going to chatgpt or chegg…
If you were to do things over again, with today’s climate and opportunities, would you pursue the same career? I’m considering going into teaching, but it seems damn near impossible to make a living doing it nowadays. A friend of mine teaches highschool and he makes more than the professors at my school (granted, I go to SNHU online). Any advice?
I’m a professor who uses OER materials too; I might have bit off more than I can chew this semester since a new class of mine lacks a free textbook and I said, to hell with it, and am curating weekly readings from stuff I can get off EBSCO our campus pays for. So far it’s solid but I didn’t have time to prep it all in advance so it’ll be a wild ride every weekend!
I think I figured out a sneaky solution though; I made an assignment to had students find and report on an article for 5 to 10 minutes of class. They get real practice for grad school and I get crowdsourced sources. Win win!
In Europe we just have scripts for each lecture. Professors may liberally take and modify content from books so you might sometimes wanna check out their sources in a library but you do not need books.
My favorite was when I took Calc 2 and the teacher just told us if we knew someone who took the course in the last 7 years ask if you can get theirs. The new version just deleted 4 chapters and didn’t even change the chapter numbers. It just went something like Chapter 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,13,14,15… brand new price tag though.
I went to community college out of high school and dropped out after a year. I went back when I was 35, got my bachelor’s in 2 years, and was the best student in my major and got an award. All I did differently was read the books…
Some of that speaks to your maturity and drive too tho. You clearly had a desire to go back, a will to learn, and hopefully a purpose to use that degree you were earning.
At 18 years old, so many people just go to college because its the next step or their parents told them they were. They dont have the passion, maturity, or vision of how their life can be different with a degree
I mean, going back in my 30s school is wwwwwaaaaay easier than the daily adult life struggles. Also, I have ADHD, and a lot of my peers went to college and professional life while I took an extra 10 years to mature. Bbbbbuuuut, a bit of grit and lick I’ve sling shot up to them all thanks to going back to school. It’s not a competition, but going from $25k to $100k correlates to an increase in happiness by climaxing the stress of seeing basic needs.
I had one professor who did this but spiralbound for our only course textbook but it was mostly just pulled from other sources and they only charged like $20 for it. It was great. Another one of my professors got in trouble with the on campus print shop because she was sending students there with her personal copy of the textbook to make photocopies of like 50 pages at a time lmao. One thing I appreciated about my school was that our professors seemed generally aware of crazy textbook prices and did what they could to help make it more manageable.
One of my professors wrote a major engineering textbook for his topic. It sucked. I value having a textbook written by someone other than the professor because that way I have a chance of encountering 2 ways to learn the concept.
My version of this meme would be the prof begging the students to actually read the book he/she picked out that is free or cheap so that they are prepared for class and the students rolling their eyes and instead just going to chatgpt or chegg…
Waiting for the meme, in another five or ten years, when students are bemoaning how the subscription fee to ChatGPT For Grad Students keeps going up.
I’m a college professor. I’m very aware of textbook prices. Most students don’t read the textbook anyway, even if its something you want them to read everyday.
For intro classes, I use openstax, which are available free online. For upper-level classes, I try to pick non major publishers, ie not pearson or cengage, with much more reasonably priced books.
My version of this meme would be the prof begging the students to actually read the book he/she picked out that is free or cheap so that they are prepared for class and the students rolling their eyes and instead just going to chatgpt or chegg…
Hey, Prof! I have a question.
If you were to do things over again, with today’s climate and opportunities, would you pursue the same career? I’m considering going into teaching, but it seems damn near impossible to make a living doing it nowadays. A friend of mine teaches highschool and he makes more than the professors at my school (granted, I go to SNHU online). Any advice?
I’m a professor who uses OER materials too; I might have bit off more than I can chew this semester since a new class of mine lacks a free textbook and I said, to hell with it, and am curating weekly readings from stuff I can get off EBSCO our campus pays for. So far it’s solid but I didn’t have time to prep it all in advance so it’ll be a wild ride every weekend!
I think I figured out a sneaky solution though; I made an assignment to had students find and report on an article for 5 to 10 minutes of class. They get real practice for grad school and I get crowdsourced sources. Win win!
In Europe we just have scripts for each lecture. Professors may liberally take and modify content from books so you might sometimes wanna check out their sources in a library but you do not need books.
My favorite was when I took Calc 2 and the teacher just told us if we knew someone who took the course in the last 7 years ask if you can get theirs. The new version just deleted 4 chapters and didn’t even change the chapter numbers. It just went something like Chapter 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,13,14,15… brand new price tag though.
Here in the Netherlands we had some teacher who wrote a (small) book on “How to write professionally” and of course that book was mandatory.
in Germany*
I went to community college out of high school and dropped out after a year. I went back when I was 35, got my bachelor’s in 2 years, and was the best student in my major and got an award. All I did differently was read the books…
Some of that speaks to your maturity and drive too tho. You clearly had a desire to go back, a will to learn, and hopefully a purpose to use that degree you were earning.
At 18 years old, so many people just go to college because its the next step or their parents told them they were. They dont have the passion, maturity, or vision of how their life can be different with a degree
I mean, going back in my 30s school is wwwwwaaaaay easier than the daily adult life struggles. Also, I have ADHD, and a lot of my peers went to college and professional life while I took an extra 10 years to mature. Bbbbbuuuut, a bit of grit and lick I’ve sling shot up to them all thanks to going back to school. It’s not a competition, but going from $25k to $100k correlates to an increase in happiness by climaxing the stress of seeing basic needs.
You also had the work/life experience by then to be better able to filter out pertinent information from the material.
Most college textbooks are written in an overly complex manner and require some skill to extract and process the information from them.
So right out of highschool you could have read the textbooks but gotten very little out of them.
Thank you for not being one of those professors who writes their own “book” which is 85 pages stapled together that they charge $150 for.
I had one professor who did this but spiralbound for our only course textbook but it was mostly just pulled from other sources and they only charged like $20 for it. It was great. Another one of my professors got in trouble with the on campus print shop because she was sending students there with her personal copy of the textbook to make photocopies of like 50 pages at a time lmao. One thing I appreciated about my school was that our professors seemed generally aware of crazy textbook prices and did what they could to help make it more manageable.
One of my professors wrote a major engineering textbook for his topic. It sucked. I value having a textbook written by someone other than the professor because that way I have a chance of encountering 2 ways to learn the concept.
Waiting for the meme, in another five or ten years, when students are bemoaning how the subscription fee to ChatGPT For Grad Students keeps going up.