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[OC] Academic textbooks being discarded from abandoned university buildings. More photos in post.
(media.piefed.social)
Aberystwyth University closed one of its campuses a few years ago. The place has been left to rot, but recently they’ve started clearing the place out, and removing all the old scientific textbooks. Most of them look untouched. Wonder how much this lot would have set students back if buying new.
Depends on who your professor was. I worked as an engineering lecturer for a few years. I told my students that having a reference text can be invaluable as you move through your career. For certain kinds of engineering, this is absolutely true. Paper reference texts have little long-term value in computer engineering. But civil or mechanical engineering? The principles of material strength do not change. And that's the kind of engineering I teach. So I really encourage students to get paper reference texts.
To facilitate this, I would always post homeworks that included scans of the full problems. I either wrote the problems from scratch or cut out problems from the textbook. I then told students to still buy the book, but buy a few editions back to get their reference text for a song. I still want my students to have a permanent physical book, but if you design your course right, they won't need the newest edition.
Yeah as an engineer I regret not buying cheap outdated textbooks. Fortunately I have one for the most relevant part of my career, but that's it