Honestly, I don't understand what is the goal of the teachers by making their students buy textbooks a hundred of $.
In my engineering school (France), teachers write their own textbooks and make them available to us as PDFs. You can pay for paper version at the school's printer (~150€ per year, and then you'll have all the textbooks for your year, and trust me, many students find that very expensive, especially when you only get 3-4 textbooks some years).
In the university I went, it was the same, except that the only teacher who had written a textbook gave it to us for free (300 pages). The rest of them gave us their PDFs.
That's why, would a teacher ask us to buy a book some insane amount of money, students would not understand, and at the end, not buy the book. Moreover, what do the US teachers gain from this? I truly don't understand how they support this racket.
In my engineering school (France), teachers write their own textbooks and make them available to us as PDFs. You can pay for paper version at the school's printer (~150€ per year, and then you'll have all the textbooks for your year, and trust me, many students find that very expensive, especially when you only get 3-4 textbooks some years). In the university I went, it was the same, except that the only teacher who had written a textbook gave it to us for free (300 pages). The rest of them gave us their PDFs.
That's why, would a teacher ask us to buy a book some insane amount of money, students would not understand, and at the end, not buy the book. Moreover, what do the US teachers gain from this? I truly don't understand how they support this racket.