[chrisseaton]

Courses at university in the UK (or at least mine, and at least when I did it) don't really have textbooks. You are advised to read three or four books during the course, but there isn't one single book that you absolutely must have. Lectures had notes, and referred to those three or four books and you could find relevant material in each, in basically any edition.

I think I bought maybe four text books during a four year degree, and those were the ones I really liked and wanted to keep after I graduated. The rest were just checked out of the library.

How come this isn't possible in the US? Why do you need that one particular textbook and a specific edition and nothing else is suitable? There's no undergraduate subject I'm aware of so specific that there is only one book in existence on the topic - many are suitable. What's the blocker?

[leetcrew]

> How come this isn't possible in the US?

depends on the course, major, and school. in my CS major you could pretty easily get away with not purchasing the "required" textbook for most classes unless they assigned problems directly out of the book. even then, professors would often distribute PDF scans of the relevant problem pages. everything you actually needed to know for the exam would almost always be included in the monstrous PowerPoint lectures, so you could just study these if you didn't need extra help understanding the material.

[lnanek2]

IME the US profs like to assign problems from the book and follow the chapters pretty closely. So editions often had reworked problems or fixed typos. On rare occasions a professor was kind enough to let people using older editions know the differences and let them use older ones, but it was definitely more work for the professor than just expecting everyone to have the same book and problems.