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From: vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao)
Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.physics,comp.edu
Subject: Re: How to beat the high cost of text books!
Message-ID: <1124@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 4 Dec 88 14:35:07 GMT
References: <2219@cbnews.ATT.COM> <684@stech.UUCP> <17553@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <17738@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao)
Organization: Dept of Math, Ohio St U at Newark, Newark, OH 43055
Lines: 19

In article <17738@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff)
  writes:
>[...]  It definitely does appear that publishers are conscious of the fact 
>that students must buy the **assigned** text for the course[...]

Ultimately the blame must fall on the students (as somebody else pointed
out). You see, in basic courses, I would rather ask the students to buy a
problem book, and may be one (or more :-) books out of a short list.

Unfortunaltey, students feel uncomfortable about this. In fact, a biologist
collegue of mine was bemoaning the fact that students wnat to know which
pages of the text were going to covered on a given day, rather than knowing
the name of the topic alone. I often feel the same way. In fact, when I
lecture, I give only the name of the topic. But student think that that is
too little. If that the way they feel, they deserve to be gouged.

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					Nath
				vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu