Like many of my fellow college students, I'm looking into the necessary textbooks for the coming semester, and once again I'm struck by a blow of disgusted helplessness. We're essentially at the mercy of a non-competitive, non-structural monopoly that exists to prevent us from learning.
That's correct. I firmly believe that college is as much an institution of anti-learning as it is of learning. Consider that no effort is made to assign good professors to incoming students who naturally will have difficulties transitioning to college education. The opposite is true: some of the worst professors are assigned to teach 100-level classes. People who have had doctorates longer than their students have been alive fail to understand their students' frustrations dealing with the basic concepts that the professors had memorized when their students' parents were on honeymoon. To add insult to injury, many of these professors then actively work to fail students, because they have to "weed-out" those who aren't up to standards, but that's like using size to separate apples from oranges: plenty of oranges will get through, and plenty of apples won't.
Colleges mostly benefit when students fail courses. If they fail enough, the students will loose scholarships and/or have to pay for extra semesters. Instead of doing their best to help students, in many cases, colleges actively work against them. (Side speculation: this is a product of the "everyone goes to college" meme in circulation, and failing students is necessary because state schools cannot easily raise admission standards.)
Textbook companies benefit from this. Fail a course enough times, and the student will have to buy a new textbook even though they're still in Chemistry 101. Said companies actively create new editions which usually vary in little more than font and color scheme, containing almost identical information.
Online homework, integrated with the textbook, is a further difficulty. I've experienced this several times, and it's frustrating to think that the schools are too incompetent to built their own homework interface. Where else are my $30,000 a year going? But that's another rant.
Textbooks companies are a parasitic industry, dependent on colleges for their source of income. Colleges give them monopolies in essence, by mandating that their students purchase a specific book, no matter that any other book from the last 40 years contains essentially identical information in many cases. Colleges are the cause of the problem, textbook companies vultures that swoop in and eat the scraps of savings leftover after the all-but-theft of tuition payments.
I must say one more thing however: this is not the fault of capitalism. Proper, laissez-faire capitalism would prevent this monstrosity from forming, and still has the power to kill it. Capitalism would not create state-funded colleges: all institutions of learning would be paid for entirely by philanthropists and the students. Consequently, their would be competition between schools to keep tuition low in hopes of attracting the best students. Furthermore, students would be given options about what textbooks are sufficient for courses, and would not be bound to buying a book to complete a course.
Well. I hope that wasn't too all-over-the-place. You don't have to live in my brain.
P.S. I think that textbook companies are in cahoots with schools to fail us, because they're atrociously written. I would have gotten a much better grade in Calc 2 if I could have just read the bloody thing, but it was insultingly vague.
