> I think it is highly unfortunate that universities these days, at least in science, then to force students to buy a new edition every year, or at least every couple of years.
This seems to be a specifically American (or anglo? not sure about the UK/Australia/etc.) thing. I've never heard about this happening in Germany where there are standard textbooks in about every field that people have been using for decades - and in many cases, people just simply go with the lecture and the associated notes instead of a textbook.
I studied CS in Germany and pretty quickly learned not to buy textbooks too fast: lecture was announced with book X as necessary to have.
First lecture the professor holds up book X. "I have taught using this book for years. A few days ago I decided to use book Y (holds it up) going forward."
TIL, but still: the lecturer changing their book preference at the last minute still seems different than "you have to use edition 15 of this book (which came out 3 months ago) which is exactly the same as all the previous editions, but the exercises are rearranged, so you'll get confused if you use an older edition", which - if I understand it correctly - is what seems to happen sometimes in the US.
Do you have any evidence specifically about lecturers being bribed? Because there could be a whole other range of other explanations for why this practice continues.
working for two uk universities. and this not the only stuff these corrupt people got up to - one had the cheek to photocopy his own (crap) book using free to him university copiers, and then make his students pay for the copies. nothing was done about it, of course.
That's of course deplorable. But it just feels to me that if it happens so regularly, there must be some systemic causes and not just instances of invidual educators being bribed
what other reason can there be for very, very bad authors have new editions of books come out every year and get enforced on students by tenured clowns?
> it happens in the uk as well as the us - university lecturers are bribed by the publishers.
I really, really, really wish people would quit repeating this without evidence.
Maybe ... maybe ... this is true for some huge name who can force the adoption of some huge number of textbooks. Maybe.
However, for any random lecturer who teaches an upper level technical class, the maximum level of revenue any seller can expect from that class is probably about $200 x 50 students = $10,000.
Where the hell is the bribe money going to come out of that? By the way, last I checked, the publishers wouldn't even let us keep the sample copy they sent to us. Yeah, they're that cheap.
And do you really think that your technical lecturer/professor or anybody in the publisher is going to risk going taking potentially illegal behavior for $1000?
If your lecturer/professor is that money driven, they would be better off simply not taking an underpaid, overworked position teaching your sorry ass and instead teach the same technical material to professionals who will pay more than your semester tuition for a one-week program.
Now, if you want to talk about the publishers bribing government bureaucrats over high school textbooks, that is an entirely different and completely documented thing.
This seems to be a specifically American (or anglo? not sure about the UK/Australia/etc.) thing. I've never heard about this happening in Germany where there are standard textbooks in about every field that people have been using for decades - and in many cases, people just simply go with the lecture and the associated notes instead of a textbook.