Textbooks
In university, textbooks can be really important. Many times (seriously, more than half the time) the textbooks are your only saving grace because a lot of professors are really imcompetent at teaching. I miss my Taylor's College days - those are easily the best year of education I have (or even will) ever had.
But textbooks here are very expensive - if you buy it in the bookstore anyway, which I never did except in those rare cases when the profs photocopied stuff and compiled them into a custom package. They cost at least C$100 and can go up to C$200. There are several things that baffles/annoys me about textbooks here (ot maybe everywhere else):
1. Answers to odd-numbered questions: Seriously? Only half the questions? I propose that they not only give that but the worked-out solutions for ALL questions. They claim that giving students solutions will make them lazy and too reliant on the solutions and not learning anything. I say, who are you to decide how students are going to learn the material. It's true that some will fail to learn, but IMO students should have the final say on how he wants to learn the material - I'm pretty sure we are matured enough to make that decision. I think the real reason behind this oddity (haha pun!) is two-fold: a) So they can make more money by selling solution manuals; b) So that lazy professors and TAs can use the textbook questions for assignments/midterms/finals.
2. Frequent revision: Students here are always experience the annoyance of having his major textbooks getting outdated so quickly (in fact, some books have new editions almost every 2 years) causing the value of the book to drop, and sometimes to buy the wrong (older) editions. And you don't know how much the "updated" version has changed. In fact, most of the time, the newer edition only adds some pictures and shuffles the number of questions around, and students will have to fork out extra $150 for the new edition. It's a scam I tell you.
3. Online resources bla bla: This is a recent outrage. In fact, it is so recent it happened just one/two days ago. Just found out that for one of my circuit analysis course I have to pay C$70 so that I can get access to my assignments which is worth 15% of the course. I get an ebook along with the registration code, and a lot of online resources. Even though I have 2 copies of the textbook I still have to buy the ebook, isn't it ironic? If I want online resources, I wouldn't have bought the hard copy of the book, would I? Online resources are more than welcome if they are free... but if you have to charge extra for that, that is just a rip-off.
So much for today's "What grinds my gears" section. You are dismissed.
But textbooks here are very expensive - if you buy it in the bookstore anyway, which I never did except in those rare cases when the profs photocopied stuff and compiled them into a custom package. They cost at least C$100 and can go up to C$200. There are several things that baffles/annoys me about textbooks here (ot maybe everywhere else):
1. Answers to odd-numbered questions: Seriously? Only half the questions? I propose that they not only give that but the worked-out solutions for ALL questions. They claim that giving students solutions will make them lazy and too reliant on the solutions and not learning anything. I say, who are you to decide how students are going to learn the material. It's true that some will fail to learn, but IMO students should have the final say on how he wants to learn the material - I'm pretty sure we are matured enough to make that decision. I think the real reason behind this oddity (haha pun!) is two-fold: a) So they can make more money by selling solution manuals; b) So that lazy professors and TAs can use the textbook questions for assignments/midterms/finals.
2. Frequent revision: Students here are always experience the annoyance of having his major textbooks getting outdated so quickly (in fact, some books have new editions almost every 2 years) causing the value of the book to drop, and sometimes to buy the wrong (older) editions. And you don't know how much the "updated" version has changed. In fact, most of the time, the newer edition only adds some pictures and shuffles the number of questions around, and students will have to fork out extra $150 for the new edition. It's a scam I tell you.
3. Online resources bla bla: This is a recent outrage. In fact, it is so recent it happened just one/two days ago. Just found out that for one of my circuit analysis course I have to pay C$70 so that I can get access to my assignments which is worth 15% of the course. I get an ebook along with the registration code, and a lot of online resources. Even though I have 2 copies of the textbook I still have to buy the ebook, isn't it ironic? If I want online resources, I wouldn't have bought the hard copy of the book, would I? Online resources are more than welcome if they are free... but if you have to charge extra for that, that is just a rip-off.
So much for today's "What grinds my gears" section. You are dismissed.