Mad Season

[d_aulnoy]

I defend in a few days: administration made me jump through hoops last week to be able to attend my own graduation in the company of both my parents; I've graded 20 papers this weekend, with 20 more to come before the defense; the contract from the movers hasn't arrived yet; and I think that I'm starting to develop separation anxiety from my books, just from having packed the living room.

However, none of that is what is stressing me out now: what is stressing me out is that the textbook that I want to order for my YA Lit class costs $113.00.  Yep, you read that right - one hundred and thirteen dollars.  (I feel like Dr. Evil.)  (Also, it's Literature For Today's Young Adults, if you're interested.)  Obviously, my students would lynch me in effigy, if not in fact. 

... help?

Comments

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Order it. If you were teaching Calc or Bio, that would be cheap at the price, and nobody would blink an eye. Textbooks are expensive. Fact of life.

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

See, on the one hand: yes, I agree with you, and it's a sad bias between the disciplines. But on the other hand ... the sad fact is, *all* the Calc and Bio books cost that much, and I don't think that they can excerpt articles under fair use in the same way we can. I can put together a course pack covering the same materials for less, it's just going to be a pain in my ass ....

But I know that most of my students will probably not be able to afford it without hardship. So, PITA it is.

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

P.S. - On the upside, planning the Children's Lit syllabus is fun. Great new collected editions!

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

You're nicer than I am. I rather think they can--they just don't. It's not like copyright laws have clauses that say things like "except for maths and sciences."

I'll make a coursepack for an upper-level seminar with a specific theme, but for a survey? Absolutely not.

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Heh. Well, see, I figure that they *can* ... except, it's not fair use to just excerpt the 1st chapter of one textbook in the sciences, the 2nd of another, etc., etc. ... and there just aren't as many single, stand-alone, upper-level articles on "Meet the Atom", or whatever. With us, there's a bit more leeway ....

... you know, there's probably an interesting sociology paper in *this*. Huh.

[schrodingersgnu.livejournal.com]

The problem there is that all the texts are contiguous - chapter 5 will refer back to chapter 3, etc, and you'd be forced to copy the whole book. Obviously, that's a bit outside of "fair use". :)

It might also be a question on what constitutes fair use - a science text book is written expressively to teach science, with no other uses. An antology is reprinting someones work, so copying that seems kind of fair.

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's pretty much what I meant - though I disagree on fair use: I don't think it's as much about intention as it as about, a) application, and b) percentage. So, for example, it would be within fair use for me to photocopy an excerpt from a book to teach a class ... but not for a magazine to run that same excerpt for profit. And it would be illegal all around to use the text in its entirety.

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Er, authorial intention as opposed to that of the person using it - just to clarify.

this comment is pretty pointless but I can't help but make it

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

(But the people who learn Calc or Bio in college so they can use it in their professional lives are probably going to be making more money than the people who are going to be using their knowledge of YA lit in their professional lives. $150 for a biology textbook is a normal price not just because supply and demand has made it so but because a university transcript including biology classes makes it possible for a student to pursue career paths that will allow them to make back that money and more.)

(And not every student at a small rich liberal-arts college is there because their parents are super-rich.)

I'm not saying that professors have ethical obligations to make textbooks available cheaply to their humanities students-- sure, assign the book, and some students will buy it with their parents' money, and some will buy it with their student loan money, and some will ILL it, and some will share a copy with their classmates, and some will drop the class because they can't afford the book. A professor can make the required course materials as expensive as they like, just as a professor can assign as much reading and as many papers as they like, and it's up to the student to review the syllabus and evaluate whether they can afford the materials or are capable of doing the work. Accessibility and affordability are not the professor's duties to her student.

Just don't reason by recourse to textbook prices in the natural sciences-- ouch!

Re: this comment is pretty pointless but I can't help but make it

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

I don't buy that premise. You're making an awful lot of assumptions about what kind of students take what kind of courses with what kind of results. For one thing, almost all universities and colleges that I know of in the US require all students to complete at least a year of lab science and a semester of quantitative reasoning requirements, which means that all students, regardless of their future plans, interests, or earning powers, are going to be forking out money for those textbooks. Further, YA and Children's lit courses are huge draws for students who are not English majors or education majors, but are looking to fill a humanities requirement, so their future earning power isn't really marked by that course.

The debate about liberal-arts colleges is moot, 'cause that's not where she's teaching.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Oh god, that's expensive. I would never buy it. I hope you make the library buy 15 copies (or however many students you wind up having)...

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Heheheheheh - the good news is, the 6th edition is now available used for around $15 bucks a pop (and thus, we see the evils of capitalism/depreciation in action). So, while I probably can't have the bookstore order those, I can certainly *strongly suggest* that my students hunt them down on their own ....

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

I think bookstores can order used old editions. I know the [large urban university] bookstore tries to get as many used copies as possible unless you tell them otherwise.

Although I would chip in that the book doesn't seem excessively expensive, especially if it happens to be the ONLY book for the class (I don't know if that's the case). Even in lit classes, a couple good scholarly editions can add up to just as much as that book or more.

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Reeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaally ... I might have to look into that, then: not seeing any new editions up, but only old, I assumed that I'd *have* to go with the most recent version. It is, as far as I can tell, the only damn textbook on the subject to approach it from the perspective(s) I want.

And, it doesn't ... until you consider that I want to order 6 books, and that's only the 1st. Making them shell out 200 bucks+ seems ... excessive.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Oh, I thought this was the single, or perhaps one of two, texts for the course.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Good luck with it all!

And I cannot believe how expensive textbooks are anymore. Yikes.

[sacredchao23.livejournal.com]

I know nothing about the demographics at the school you're teaching at, but my logic for ordering expensive texts at BC (a school with a majority of overly-wealthy, over-entitled students) is that their parents who are already shelling out loads of money will buy it for them. And the students are happy because at the end of the semester they can sell it back for beer money.

If I were teaching at a state school, or a school more likely to have students who are paying their own way or are financially hard up I'd give it more consideration.