And honestly, even if every professor had their courseware printed at The Underground, people will continue to complain about the cost.

I just wanted to add one point to something that was said AGES ago now. Not that I'm supporting the high cost of courseware...but think for a course like Psych 1X03. There are 3200 students. Dr Kim hires approximately 40 TAs, as well as several graduate students who help develop the course and the material, plus a full-time instructional assistant and the "nerd herd" aka the technological guru's in the faculty of science are contracted out for a lot of the resources that are available to students. That's not cheap!

Think even about midterm review for that course where 500 students want to see their midterm. Each for an average of 30 minutes. For that we need 1 TA per 3 students to a) make sure that no one leaves with a midterm but also so that they can give appropriate help to all of the students. With the new contract thanks to CUPE, they get paid $22/hour. Also think about the Learning Lab which is open 10:30-4:30 every day in Psych 1X03.

It is such a large course with a significant support staff and it doesn't come cheap!

Originally Posted by McIntyre

plus a full-time instructional assistant and the "nerd herd" aka the technological guru's in the faculty of science are contracted out for a lot of the resources that are available to students. That's not cheap!

Sweet Chuck reference.

Originally Posted by michelle

The prices fluctuate depending on store stock. Why would they buy back a book at a high price if they know they can't sell it again?

True.

Titles will offer you up to 50% back IF they need your textbook. For a textbook that isn't being used when you're trying to sell it or that they already have too many of they won't offer you that much. If they have 100 of Book A they're going to give you the bare minimum b/c they won't be making any money reselling your book b/c they have enough of them already.

$0.75 is obviously a huge ripoff, I would decline to sell it back to Titles and try other means. Someone at another school might need the book and be willing to buy it off you for more than 75 cents b/c of the cost of the book at their school bookstore or something.

Originally Posted by McIntyre

I just wanted to add one point to something that was said AGES ago now. Not that I'm supporting the high cost of courseware...but think for a course like Psych 1X03. There are 3200 students. Dr Kim hires approximately 40 TAs, as well as several graduate students who help develop the course and the material, plus a full-time instructional assistant and the "nerd herd" aka the technological guru's in the faculty of science are contracted out for a lot of the resources that are available to students. That's not cheap!

Think even about midterm review for that course where 500 students want to see their midterm. Each for an average of 30 minutes. For that we need 1 TA per 3 students to a) make sure that no one leaves with a midterm but also so that they can give appropriate help to all of the students. With the new contract thanks to CUPE, they get paid $22/hour. Also think about the Learning Lab which is open 10:30-4:30 every day in Psych 1X03.

It is such a large course with a significant support staff and it doesn't come cheap!

What about the tuition we pay?

Some to the University, some to the course. Trust me, as a student I don't enjoy spending the amount of money I do. But now having been involved in the administration of a course, it's clear that a lot of money is needed - especially when you have 3200 students.

Originally Posted by McIntyre

Some to the University, some to the course. Trust me, as a student I don't enjoy spending the amount of money I do. But now having been involved in the administration of a course, it's clear that a lot of money is needed - especially when you have 3200 students.

Well wouldn't it be the same for each course? Each student enrolled in that course would grant that course a specific amount per student so even with 3200 students psych would be getting more because they have more students enrolled in the course.

Not if you think of the resources that this course uses to offer the online web modules, this course offers way more TA time than the majority of courses you will see, this course requires that all TAs take a term-long course with Dr. Kim to learn how to teach, and on top of that has many quizzes and resources to help you along the way.

This course could be offered with less money, but then there would be less opportunity to learn. Every resource we offer has been shown (we take stats) to be used by a significant proportion of the students and is useful.

Originally Posted by McIntyre

Not if you think of the resources that this course uses to offer the online web modules, this course offers way more TA time than the majority of courses you will see, this course requires that all TAs take a term-long course with Dr. Kim to learn how to teach, and on top of that has many quizzes and resources to help you along the way.

This course could be offered with less money, but then there would be less opportunity to learn. Every resource we offer has been shown (we take stats) to be used by a significant proportion of the students and is useful.

Well the web modules are more or less a one time cost because they are easily reused many times for the same course over and over again. As for all the TA time there is definitely a lot more TAs doing tutorials which would rise the cost but as for the learning lab (and I'm not complaining) its nothing really special. Yes there is a lot of time open to students but other courses have similar timings too. So with the extra money intropsych gets from the extra student its not too bad.

Web modules are redone every year so far. This course is only in it's third year so there are always ways to improve them. Especially for a psychology course where some of the content does change as more research emerges.

We do get more money due to tuition and books than say a 2nd year course with only 400 students in it, but there is significant need for more staff. In order to maintain similar ratios to those courses we need to spend more. Even think about marking and organizing marks - 3200 scantrons that need to be fed through a machine individually takes a lot longer than 400. Consider this increased time for almost every task with a large course and it does make sense.

Ideally tuition would be less - but I wouldn't say your money is being wasted by some courses without knowing exactly what you're speaking about. Perhaps the University is wasting their portion, but even then, until you fully understand exactly what they are using the money for then it's difficult to make an accurate assessment.

Originally Posted by McIntyre

Web modules are redone every year so far. This course is only in it's third year so there are always ways to improve them. Especially for a psychology course where some of the content does change as more research emerges.

We do get more money due to tuition and books than say a 2nd year course with only 400 students in it, but there is significant need for more staff. In order to maintain similar ratios to those courses we need to spend more. Even think about marking and organizing marks - 3200 scantrons that need to be fed through a machine individually takes a lot longer than 400. Consider this increased time for almost every task with a large course and it does make sense.

Ideally tuition would be less - but I wouldn't say your money is being wasted by some courses without knowing exactly what you're speaking about. Perhaps the University is wasting their portion, but even then, until you fully understand exactly what they are using the money for then it's difficult to make an accurate assessment.

Fully redone or partially? And well of course its hard to make an accurate assessment without all the data but a few hypotheses may be produced based on some common or more open knowledge. Also for the scantrons, it shouldn't be very time consuming compared to courses with only 400 students that have short or long answer questions included in their testing. But generally I do believe that there is a good amount of resources for psychology and a great deal of help available. The university itself is another story.