This isn't always allowed.

I had an Astronomy professor who was forced to assign textbooks every semester.

He got his own textbooks published so the students could print them out.

College started charging students to print.

Professor- in the best FU yet, used the free faculty printers to print out copies of his books for free and hand them out to students.

This was the same year the college removed free parking, and cried poverty and thus unable to pay the professors a living wage (to the point some didn't show up for finals in protest) but the school magically had the $250k (possibly double that- the school kept lying about what was spent) to go to court twice (so 500k minimum) to fight the school having their football championship taken away because they were caught doing illegal af kickbacks to the football players (giving them houses to live in and paying them with fake jobs).

College cried it was too broke to pay professors, yet gives administrators raises, and uses college funds to fight a suspension they knew they deserved!

Same college had some professors asking questions about funds who were summarily terminated. They are suing tf out of the college and the stepping-down if asshats began pretty damn quick.

Fuck college administrations, and what colleges have become.

It's fine to FU the administrations, but at public US institutions, a lot of the problem is declining state support for education. In 1970, the full cost of in-state students at the University of Texas was being paid by the state, IIRC. Today, it's 20% or less. The University does what it can to raise money, but... effectively, poor legislative support is going to put pressure on students (and their families) to pay more for education.

I tend to think this needs to be worked out at a national level. If we really want a well-educated populace, we need to find a sustainable way of funding it.

1970 was a local maxima, probably due to the draft and GI bill. We still spend more as a function of GDP; 1973 was 5.7% of GDP, 2017 was 6.8% (2009 was max at 7.5%).

Those numbers are roughly comparable to other countries. We're within a percentage point of GDP of Switzerland, Australia, Germany, the UK and more.

The big issue is the number of students has dramatically increased, but funding has not. We either need to spend a lot more (costs would rival and maybe even exceed healthcare), or we need to cut costs.

My personal take is that we need to trim the fat out of the curriculum. A lot of classes have nothing to do with your major, and exist only to make students "well-rounded". I don't see a compelling reason to use public funds to force electrical engineering or CS students to take English composition classes (hell, I had to take Early Childhood Education to fill a gen ed credit). I barely see a reason to force them to take Calc 2; tools exist to give people the answer to those questions, they're just truncated to a value more precise than anyone could manufacture anyways.

I don't have a problem if Math students want to take English classes or vice versa. I just don't think there's enough public good in it to be worth paying for with public money. How many people actually use those skills anyway? I have never in my career been asked to read a document and look for symbolism. I have never been asked about childhood education. I have never been asked a problem that I needed Calc 2 for. I probably could have skipped half my classes and no one would have noticed.

I don't think that would deliver a comparable education. Speaking as someone who majored in math, got a doctorate in anthropology, and later became a software engineer.

I agree with that, but a comparable education is explicitly not a goal of mine.

My question is whether it would make a comparable workforce, and to that end I suspect it would.

In my mind, the purpose of the government funding education is a return on investment. They're expecting to get more back than they put in over a long enough time horizon. The goal isn't education for the sake of education, it's to create an educated workforce that can produce higher value goods and services.

We can put public money to better use than education for the sake of it. If people want to learn for the sake of it, they can use the library or YouTube or pay for a teacher.

We've got other problems like people without healthcare or homes, climate crisis, a terrible foster care system, etc. Put the money towards that instead of paying for massive buildings and staff to teach everyone underwater basket-weaving so they're "well-rounded".

As a part-time returning student at a community college - who's really just taking advantage of their fantastic advanced manufacturing facilities - most every teacher in this department subscribes to this approach. YouTube channels such as NYCCNC, Blondihacks, Weld.com, Titans of CNC, The Engineering Mindset, and others provide far superior material over any textbook, and the lecturers realize that any textbook they're obligated to assign just cannot keep up with the pace of innovation from the creator community. As such, "textbook sharing" is implicitly encouraged here, and the one or two students per class who actually buy the printed books are the butt of most of our jokes throughout the semester.

Now if only the languages department at this school would realize this. Those textbooks and "CDs" are the most egregiously overpriced materials, and it seems that none of the lecturers in the department want to put in the time to build a course around collaborative learning (group discussion) and the abundance of free materials available online.

TL;DR - thanks for being a goodguy/goodgal professor.

I'm so glad more professors are fighting this, especially at community colleges which are supposed to help those without means, not rent-seek them to financial death.

The worst part about a computer science degree is the sheer amount of brand new books they force you to buy since they come with online cd keys for 'additional learning materials' which is really just some scanned workpages, but for some reason it'd be mandatory you log in to this random book's website.

I teach my students to do, not listen. I demo and they work. I can't imagine using a book for any class that isn't specifically scholarship.