Textbooks teach the same thing, in fact, I find a lot of the time that there are better textbooks out there for the exact same stuff in our courses. However, the main thing is that you understand the material in your course notes, and supplement that with stuff from notes. A lot of the time the prof will get paid to promote the book, and so they uselessly promote an expensive book, which really is not that great. I've found that out of my textbooks in 2 years, only about half the textbooks are even needed to be bought, and the main function of those was to reiterate a point a prof made. My mom is a Prof and says that she sees so much in the way of Prof's uselessly assigning new editions for no reason other than personal financial gain.
At the same time, there are some unfair profs who like to test you on how well you can memorise parts of textbooks, I had one last year. One question on the final was "In chapter 6, the author claimed that around____ of children are from single family homes and of those ___% end up in juvenile detention."
But what I'm trying to say is that there are some classes where a textbook is definately needed: math classes definately, also other stuff where practice questions will help, but if you are in a social science/humanities/commerce stream, theres no need to waste money and buy brand new textbooks. Concepts don't change, and profs are most likely to put readings in the Custom Courseware. Plus we live in the age of internet, where there are better profs teaching similar courses and you can find their lectures online. It's how I got through half of second year.
Last edited by Chad : 08-08-2007 at 08:05 AM.
Reason: Edited for use of language
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