College

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He sold his own 150$ "textbook" that you had to purchase from a copy shop next to campus.

Would have been interesting for the entire class to buy one, take it to another copy shop, and all split the entire cost.

Then, next year, hang out outside the classroom and offer to sell it to people for $20-$50.

Blue folder would be a little tougher….

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It’s a club, and you ain’t in it - George Carlin

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Thats because youre an insufferable elitist bore

BandDad

Yeah, this was 2010...

CarrotsHaveEars

Break into his home or office the night you submit the assignment and steal all the folders. Steal all from the print shop too. Demand them back the next day or $5 a piece.

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One year I was unable to find a textbook to pirate online so I bought a used copy, set up a camera on a tripod, photographed every page and returned it the next day.

Sounds like too much work but the book was worth more than my time to do it.

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I had a professor get upset no one had the book on day 1.
In her defense, she heavily used the book.

She couldn't understand that professors would make students a buy a book and never use it.

In another class a student had asked about the book a few days in, the professor's response was "we have a book?" He inherited the class last minute and didn't have time to look through all the materials.

dream_weasel

That is one busty gentleman.

SSTF

I don't know how long ago that was, but the hustle has long ago counter measured pirating or second handing the books by bundling the new books with a 1 time use code to make a profile into the online part of the course where you have to take tests. You could just buy the code on its own when I was going through this, but the code was like 80% the cost of a code and book.

They also do the thing where questions in the book will be scrambled from edition to edition, so using an older copy of a math book for example won't track because they've arbitrarily changed it just enough.

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Not that long ago, I only graduated last year. I've definitely noticed the tweaks-between-editions bs, so I always try to match up the isbn. I was also lucky in that I only had to deal with the online course/book bundle for general math courses, most of which I took care of in highschool and were paid for by the school, but yeah I did have to cough up one to two hundred bucks for a few of those.

Bobby Turkalino

One of my CS professors was a top contributor to Wikipedia articles on graph algorithms and just told us to read those in lieu of a textbook

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QR codes were invented in 1994.

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Yeah so I could show up to class just to listen to the chucklefuck prof rewrite what I just read and be bored out of my mind

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They promised to teach you how the world works didn't they? Enjoy your undischargable debt indentured servant!

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Oops didn't mean to! Sowwy I won't do it again. (Does it again)

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When I was doing my undergrad, there was this sketchy shop in a nearby alley where they photocopy textbooks and sold them for just a bit more than the cost of the paper and binding. If they didn't have it, you could borrow it from the library to lend them and they'll give you a free copy in exchange.

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QR codes weren't a big thing at that time and weren't integrated into the first smart phones, eventually you could download an app to use a QR code. However those weren't really in use in education settings until closer to 2015.

Flying Squid

Many people learn better if they both read something and have someone teach it to them in their own words, which is kind of the whole basis of a liberal arts education. Your learning mileage may vary.

Flying Squid

There's nothing strange about unfettered greed. The only strange part is that it isn't (technically) a feudal system going along with it.

udon

This guy also found a pretty nice (similar) solution for this:

They basically wrote their own textbook through class assignments, students are co-authors, seems to work great in their case. At least that's how he presents it.

I'm still a bit unsure how to handle that in my own classes. There are not always suitable OERs or the ones you find come with licensing issues (CC-NC and afaik it's not clear if you can use them because I do teach for the money).