Nobody ever said buying textbooks was easy. At least, not if you actually try and get a good deal (rather than choose to get robbed by the University Bookstore). So naturally, when it came time to buy books for this semester, I shopped around online to compare prices. For once, perhaps I shouldn’t have.
You see, I had MATH 1031, or “College Algebra & Probability” this semester. For that class, I needed what the University’s site told me was “Pkg2 College Algebra, Custom 8th, And S/m, 8th.”
Uh….ok. Whatever the hell that means. All I knew was that I didn’t want to buy it from the bookstore since it was $115.85 new and $87.00 used.
Alright, so surely I can find this elsewhere through the ISBN “9781285264585”? …right? Nope. It seemed that because it’s a special bundle of the book and solutions manual, the ISBN was unique and exclusive to the University Bookstore.
Ok, no problem. I’ll just find a College Algebra book, 8th edition, by the same author. Which was listed as “Kaufmann.” How hard could it be?
So, I went to Amazon.com, my online store of choice since my family has free 2-day shipping from them. But typing in “College Algebra Kaufmann” lead to some confusing results. Whatever the case, it seemed that the eighth edition was not the newest one. I found what seemed to be a steal of “Algebra for College Students By Kaufmann & Schwitters (8th, Eight Edition)” for about $10 from a 3rd party seller.
This seemed too good to be true. So I emailed my professor with the details of the book. She replied saying that it was the correct one.
Well, lucky me! So I went and bought both that and the student solutions manual for a total price of about $20. Dang, I wouldn’t have imagined I’d get my math texts for so cheap, but I did. All was well.
…flash-forward to the present. Guess what?
The professor and every student in class had a book with a different cover.
Ok, no problem, maybe it’s still the same somehow.
Well…the title was different. Mine was “Algebra for College Students” and their’s was “College Algebra.”
What!? Well, ok, maybe they got the newer edition.
*looks at their books* “Eighth Edition”
*looks at mine* “Eighth Edition”
Huh? Different authors?
*looks at their books* “Jerome E. Kaufmann – Karen L. Schwitters”
*looks at mine* “Jerome E. Kaufmann – Karen L. Schwitters”
H-how….? OK, maybe they are the same then?
*looks inside my book and theirs*
Um….the layout is extremely similar. Some of the questions are basically the same. But numbers and several other small things are different.
WHAT THE HELL!??? Is my book from a freaking alternate universe? What is this shit?
My only explanation is that this is greed on the authors’/the university’s/the publisher’s part. They made a “University of Minnesota” exclusive edition to suck money out of students. I could have gotten by with my lovely $20 bundle, but just now shelled out the $115.85 to the freaking bookstore in order to have the right problems for homework (no, there were no used ones or rentals).
This is all greedy, ridiculous, and just plain bullshit. Whoever is responsible for this needs to be called out on it so that’s why I made this post.
Here are picture comparisons of the covers just to give an image to all this (bookstore one still in shrink wrap till I hear back from my professor about the books):
suspiciously generic 
For $115 they should have included a picture of the MN Gopher mascot on the cover page. Total rip-off.
did you try to see if the umn edition was on reserve at the umn library and just go there and copy the homework probs? i think that’s what i’ll do. i just received my algebra book in the mail and got it for 5 bucks. no way im shelling out 80-120 bucks just because our own school doesnt look after the STUDENTS interests, just their own when they require us to get umn editions.
Gah, that’s what I should have done. For some reason that thought only briefly crossed my mind because it seemed like way too many pages to copy. But it’s not really and I could have easily done that…too late now though since I opened the shrink wrap…
I saw you wrote this nearly four years ago, but I currently have the same class at the University of Minnesota, which in my search for the same book led me to your blog… I know this is unlikely, but any chance you still have your copy of the Algebra for College Students?
Hi! Sorry for not replying sooner. Unfortunately, I don’t have my copy anymore. Pretty sure I sold it as soon as the semester ended.
Hi! I go to the U and also encountered this problem. Did you end up being fine with the text from Amazon or did you think you really needed the University edition? Just wondering before I spend $150 on a book that I’ll only need for 3 months.. 😦
Hi! Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure you need to get the University edition. It’s been a while, but I think the two books were actually pretty different on the inside.