I literally had one university professor that had us purchase some random up to date little book for $17.00 that he told us we would only use once- and it was only because the university made him require one up to date text. He choose the cheapest one, and bought the actual expensive textbook and just photocopied it for everyone in the class. What a guy!

College isn't about education, it's about getting a degree that says "see? I have credibility...and you know I'll work hard for you cuz I have to pay off student loans."

My english teacher said it best: "We are required to require it."

I am a college instructor. The textbook business is a criminal enterprise.

"You need the textbook or you'll fail the class" *Buys Textbook* *Never uses it*

the worst is when the professor wrote the book

That moment when you realize that school is no longer about education and personal development.

"Free information on web exists" School: Only use textbooks, never ever visit the big bad evil internet.

"The smartest sounding credentials possible" This isn't even a parody. This is real life.

That's why my college professor printed his own textbook and sold them for like 10 bucks. And if you hadn't bought it by the first couple weeks he'd just give it to you.

I remember my health class. My teacher told us there was literally a single sentence added to the new edition of our textbook. That added 1 page to the bibliography. He wrote the sentence on the board, told us to put it on a sticky note, and stick it on the page it was added to in the old book.

School system : You are required to buy these $500 textbooks for your classes Students : all this information is free and accessible thanks to google so we don’t have to waste money School system : *Its the textbooks or your kneecaps*

blisteringly accurate and every reason I have used to justify to my department why I never assign a textbook.

"Wanna waste $150 on a book with 7% of the info you'll actually use, which you can probably find on KZfaq?" "No" "You wanna fail this course?" *heads to overpriced bookstore*

The worst is when the professors make their own authored book a requirement for their class.

I’m a student: Library genesis, the Pirate Bay, and reddit. You’re welcome

Is this why teachers say Wikipedia is an unreliable source?

I never bought books for my studies at university. There is a library and I have a smartphone camera.

After two years of being bamboozled into purchasing text books, in my junior year at university, I bought no books until the moment I knew I needed them (say, for a test). Such moments were few and far between. I got by just fine. Now, as a teacher, if my students are required to buy the books (it is not my decision), I make an effort to use them as best as we can to justify the cost.

What? I'm from Spain, I studied a major in engineering and never had to buy any book. We always used proffesor's notes which they uploaded to the internet. The several books that were recomended to use were on the library, plenty of them and absolutely free to use and to take home

i thought cracked was supposed to be satire? all he did is describe how the textbook industry works, word for word.

Unless you're in a highly, highly specialized field everything you need to know is on the internet. Just be smart, folks.

My PE teacher is an author and I literally saw him copying from Wikipedia for his new book!

This is why I’m so thankful I went to community college. Half of my bachelor’s degree done for free & I get a refund. A true win.

Degree... A sheet of paper with latin written all over it. THEY LIED TO ME!

"Exploitative business practices will exist as long as they make a small group of people an obscene amount of money." -Literally the most accurate lesson in economics I've ever heard.

The worst is when you can’t buy the book used cause there’s a one-time use code inside that you need to get access to the publishers website 🙃

Little trick if you’re a prof: make the “official” textbook the new/expensive one your university wants while making sure the previous edition is freely available for download in PDF format on the web and use that for your class. Then give your students a speech about how they “DEFINITELY should NOT go looking for the last edition online, wink wink”.

I remember reading a Math Textbook where the first page complained about people who sold used books and how it took away money from the poor people who wrote the book I laughed

My current teachers are like "You can buy the books if you want to but there are five copies in the library so just use that"

The only department at my school that didn't require those new and specific books was computer science, a field that has huge changes every few years. I took a class in 2019 that used a book written in the 70s. The first chapter was "when are floppy disks better than 8-track-tape" and we were tested on that.

This was one of the reasons my professors were okay with kindle books. They didn’t care how the information was found, they just wanted in to be sourced properly.

College: The MOST EXPENSIVE WAY to meet new friends

You know you've got a great prof if he's wears t-shirt and shorts, comes in fashionably late, and assigns a free online textbook.

As a college instructor, I am frightened by how realistic this video is! I do use the textbooks, but I hate the way publishers put out new editions just so they can jack the price up. The textbook I use in one class has gone up from $70 to over $100 with new editions. You better believe we will use the book... a lot! What a crock!

Don't forget that schools also act like game stop. I bought a math book for $250 and when I try to resell it back to the school they said "the best we can do is $60"

Textbooks are the most atrociously written things ever made. They use 1,000 words to explain something that somebody with a hint of succinctness and language discipline could do in 50.

I love the way Cracked exposes greed one industry at a time.

bruh that is the worst. I have had the luxury of having a professor who wrote my math textbook and provided free PDF versions of it.

When I was in college I was told my degree was something no one could take away. When I got in the field I was told it is good for 3 years, and have to present experience for another job.

You forgot how the industry is also cutting cost by making the books so cheap sunlight makes the pages turn to dust.

Once I actually had a college class that required the student's buy a textbook that had tear-out assignment pages. The professors were not allowed to accept any work that didn't include the book's tear-out page stapled to it. So you couldn't just buy or borrow someone else's used book if it had those pages torn out. I'm telling ya, these guys are getting better and better at plugging in those loop holes in order to scam students.

Fun fact a 200$ textbook cost roughly around 6-7$ to make and schools expect us to buy it for 200 corrupted business

Students: Already broke from paying for College and have now accumulated immense amounts of debt. Textbook companies: "I missed the part where that's my problem."

BEST LEGAL LOOPHOLE It is illegal to copy more than 10% of a textbook due to copyright laws so all you have to do is follow the instructions: 1.Borrow textbook from friend 2.Take pictures of 9% of content 3. Delete pictures of content once completed 4.Repeat steps 1, 2 and 3 until completing the subject.

1st year Freshman: "Wow there's a lot of books I have to buy! Well its for my education, and I don't want to fail. Whoa every book is so expensive!" 2nd year College: "Hmm I really don't have money for books (but for beer)... I'll just buy second hand books for 1/10th the price!" 3rd year Coollege: "Wait a minute..... Lecture notes+ Wikipedia+ KZfaq + Google is kind of enough...?" 4rd year : "Internet" 5rd year: "Internet." Ph.D : "Internet." Professor: "Use Internet."

I laugh so hard when people call it an “Education”. This entire system is literally a giant business that couldn’t care less about teaching.

You can buy one book as a class, split the price and scan it so everyone has it on their laptops/ipads/phones

My favorite kind of book is the "You can't buy an old copy because this book contains a special code that you must have in order to do the coursework online".

Change the fonts, move some content around, but don't fix the errata, and call it a new edition

Love how this always pops up at the beginning of every semester.

I had a $450 Chemistry book by Chang get "denounced" mid semester so had to buy a different book for the same course.

College students! Here's what you should do! Step one: Buy the textbook! (Keep receipt) Step two: Go to the nearest print shop on the same day! Step three: Photocopy everything off that textbook and place it in a binder! Step four: Return your textbook the same day citing "wrong class" excuse! Your 400 dollar textbook is now just a 40-60 dollars investment.

This is actually the literal truth. When I was in college, I went and found the 3rd revision of a text book ($20) for a class, that was using the 6th revision ($150). There was actually more pages in the 3rd revision, than the 6th...... and we used it for exactly 3 different lessons, so a total of 3 chapters in a book the size of an encyclopedia. All three chapters, were word for word identical, except that they were arranged in a completely different order in the book from the latest revision. Thankfully I did this in my first year of college, and never bought the book again. Complete, and total waste of money.

I've collected text and reference books since I was a kid... Dictionaries, Thesaurus, Atlases, Harvard/ Princeton Science text books, etc... and I find it quite intriguing how the printing style has changed over time. Specifically, my collection of pre- 1940's text books are so much more factually accurate than those that came after.

I noticed that my textbooks contained virtually the same information every year but the sections were moved around so you couldn't do the reading assignments assigned by the teacher because the page numbers didn't match with the prior years' editions. That way you couldn't buy used textbooks at a fraction of the price of new books. The text book industry is a criminal enterprise.

Cracked you forgot the best textbooks! The ones that come packaged with a special key used to access an online environment for the class. The fun thing about these is that while a normal textbook can be rented or sold back, in lower level classes at least, these ones are worthless once used. Because buying the key and the textbook separately is always significantly more expensive. This is how some major textbook publishers are saving money by preventing used textbooks from being a viable purchase, while also not needing to edit the textbook every year! Genius!!

As a person with a degree in English Literature, this hit close to home lmao ITS ALL FUCKING TRUE

the students at my University is smart, they create a FB group dedicated to reselling, or trading textbooks/materials require for courses for cheaper, some even give away their 'trash' of a textbook

It used to cost 2000$ for my textbooks for each sem for the first four semesters, until i figured out that i could use the photocopier in the library to print out updated ebooks of the same book. The total cost for the next four semesters didnt even cross 1000$, now i tell every freshman about this just so they dont lose any money on them

Those damn access codes man, 100-200$ for numbers on the back on of a piece of cardboard. That you use once.

I learned 7,000 total french and russian words and grammar for under $40. My college is trying to make us RENT a $300 French textbook for a first semester french class. What a joke! 😂 self education is basically free

I had a teacher outright tell us not to buy the required text book because it was too expensive and badly written. I had another teacher who wrote her own (very useful) "notebook" for the class and we literally never opened the actual textbook.

Nothing worse than trying to buy your required, expensive textbook for the college bookstore to be out of stock on the first day of the semester.

So that is why when my sister finds a free PDF or online copy of her textbooks, she gets down on her knees, lifts her face to the sky and shout 'YES!' To the heavens. Interesting.

This is like the sarcastic funnier version of Adam ruins everything

"your child will LOVE having their spine slowly telescoped by the sheer heft of these handsome volumes" Vietnam flashbacks

I want this narrator to just follow me around and criticize everything I do

I worked for Prentice hall for about a year. . this is spot on

At the community college I went to, a handful of teachers would tell their students not to buy the new edition, ignore the syllabus, save money by buying the old editions.

See, they've really shot themselves in the foot. I've just graduated from college, and the community has finally caught on, we've had enough of it. We're paying for plenty as it is. Now everyone finds PDFs online, and uses group chats to help everyone out to ensure all students have access to a digital copy for free. I barely purchased ANY textbooks in college.

This brings back horrible memories of college. It's sad when textbooks costs more than (community) college tuition. Just like Roger said teachers have to use new editions every semester so now that paperweight you paid $700 for is worth about $30. Most of my classes we never even used the book. Those teachers let us get the ebook version.

We stopped evolving when corporations took over education

Never leave us, Horton Rogers

internet meme: my $3000 tv stand: widescreen sitting on 7 college textbooks.

"Get a cover - you'll want to protect your investment." Love it.

I once took a course where the professor made us preorder a book for $80 because it wasn't out at the start of the semester, but would release 4 days before we needed to read the first 120 pages. So you needed to preorder to guarantee you got it early enough to read it. Then she told us that we were behind schedule with the syllabus and she would have to cut the book out entirely. I tried to get a full refund for the book (still in the plastic) which almost worked. Then while this lady was ringing up my refund, out of casual conversation I explained how the professor made us buy the book only to say she didn't want to use it anymore. Somehow that piece of information changed everything and the lady refused to give me a refund. Suddenly the best i could do was sell it online because "we don't buy back books that have been removed from the course syllabus." I asked my classmates to come fight it with me, but out of 25 kids only 2 wanted to. Needless to say our complaint went nowhere, and I still have that stupid book sitting on my shelf.

Sir, your poetically fluid satire flows as if it were Shakespeare. Your wit and coveted sarcasm a delight to those enlightened that do not see the world through the rose tinted glasses of falsehood. Your 3 minutes are a delight and always guaranteed to get a grin, again and again (a nod to Nicholson's Joker). Thank you.

Moral of the story: *Go to trade school and become and electrician or automechanic.*

Hard Copy of textbook: $350 to RENT Digital copy that's basically the same thing: *Is only $3.99*

Piracy is a student's best friend.

as an Taiwanese student who has textbooks and practice books that can totally fill 2 book shelves i was surprised when my german professors weren't forcing the class into buy any books at the beginning of the semester then i started to feel like i've really made a brilliant choice for myself

First new Honest Ads since 2017 now live here!!! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ldiZespjp72ceqs.html

I knew I was going to college for that stupidly expensive piece of paper. I could've learned everything they taught me online for free. But it's not about knowledge really. Otherwise, employers would have you just prove you have relevent skills. Also, yesterday I saw an internship for doctoral students that required three years of experience. They were basically just trying to underpay an overqualified person.

i once had a text book for sociology that attempted to define "otaku" culture and completely butchered it.

Imagine if textbooks didn’t exist.

You know books are useless when your teacher asks you to rewrite the whole damn thing on your notebook anyway

Business school taught me to buy low, sell high. So I bought a $400 book and sold it back for $10 🤔

"Its a bachelor's of english literature and it counts" ..."mmMMmm"

Yup, the textbook costs $200 at the start of the semester, and then when you go to sell it back after finals, they give you like $5 for it. That's why I started buying used textbooks online, or I started buying the electronic versions of those books from off-school sites at a discounted rate. It was WAY cheaper than buying books from the campus bookstore. However, now my university has started making it to where they are forcing students to buy textbooks from the university by making you buy a textbook code and redeeming it on Canvas, or else you can't progress to the class material. They are also putting the e-book versions of the textbooks on Canvas and baking the price into the cost of the class, except now you can't even resell the books at the end of the semester. University in the USA is more and more becoming a profiteering racket meant to squeeze every last penny out of students who are just seeking a better opportunity in life. Pretty fucked up really.

Nowadays even universities recommend google lol.

In India, we buy just one book and photo stat thousands of copies that can be bought from any bookstore at 5% the price of original book. My middle finger to the publishers.....😎

i paid $80 for a calculator[drops mic....]

Humor aside, can we just... Protect this precious man?

My classes never have textbooks/only use them a fee times, and even then my teachers will download the book so we don't have to buy it, or will show us the cheapest one we can rent

School, where you learn thousands of facts and retain about 12 of them...

Lecturer: You need Shigley Mechanical Engineering Design 10th addition to pass this class. Me: What's wrong with 9th addition? Lecturer: There have been changes. Only use 3 chapters.

I had an astrophysics professor who wrote and published his own book for the sole purpose of making the PDF free to all students, and a Mathematics professor pass around a USB stick with a PDF of the Calculus 1-3 text book. RIP Dr. Newman, you were a real hero

I’ve always said that if I’m ever filthy rich, I’m going to buy evil companies just to destroy them, or to make them genuine. These greedy publishing companies are definitely on that list.

And now they’re having us buy online access codes for the course, so you’re *required* to buy them new.