After sending my four kids through high school over six years, I had a four-foot pile of leftover textbooks that were worthless. They all went into the recycle bin. It’s hard to believe that some other school couldn’t use them.
The textbook scam is beautiful. Instead of making all the books digital and saving thousands of acres of trees, they created a hybrid system. They have combined the textbook with an access card with a code that allows you to get online content. A $300 textbook comes with a card that is non-transferable. If you try to buy the book used you also have to go to the publisher and pay $200 for a new card. Publishers are destroying the used-book market, and they make extra money selling the access codes.
The teachers seem to go along with this scam. They claim it keeps the content current, but there is no substantial difference in the books. If it walks like a scam and quacks like a scam… Buy my access card for $200, and I’ll finish the sentence.
— Charles Lord, Glenview
