The cost of living is very high, the cost of varsity is even higher and to add on to that the price of text books exceeds the other expenses incurred for the purpose of learning. Due to the economic conditions students often opt to purchase second hand books, this is a cost effective method of acquiring the study materials. But we all know that the university does not care about poor students who literally scrape through their parent’s last cash to buy the second books… What does this profit and revenue hungry capitalistic system do? They have gotten smarter over the years in trying to maximize profits by issuing new editions and prescribing them to students.
The fact remains that in most universities students are prescribed books that are often authored by their lecturers or professors, because the author also wants to make money they have to sell their books, and because there is competition already on the second market selling old/current editions the authors/professors have to be innovative in their quest of greed in robbing poor people of their hard earned money. The authors are now revising their books every year or second year and then go on to prescribe the latest edition every single year to students.
The trick is to corner the unsuspecting students and milk them of their cash, so the lecturers would often try persuade students or even scare them into thinking that if they do not purchase the latest edition they stand a chance to fail the module at hand. I once heard someone share the story of a lecturer who claimed he won’t assist any student who is still using the old edition of the prescribed text book.
I really wish academics could come to the party in helping US lower the cost of education by being reasonable in the number of times they revise an edition, and also look at cost versus benefit to the student having to ditch the low priced second hand market for a new edition that only has either 3 new pages or one or two new chapters which could have easily been provided through study slides.
Article By Dimo wa Moraswi Sekele (Added on by Kagiso Maloma)
