[charcircuit]

>but we must also recognize that students in particular do not have enough money to pay for all these books.

Sure they do. They happen to be able to pay for food, water, electricity, rent, tuition, transportation, pens, pencils, paper, etc just fine.

[JR1427]

Academic books are terribly expensive.

When I was at university (Oxford, UK, 2009), I bought about four key books, and spent well over 100GBP. I simply couldn't afford more. I had a student loan which covered tuition and some of my living costs, as well as a bursary from the university which covered some of my other living costs (but not all!).

What was annoying was that our library didn't have enough books for all the students. We'd all be assigned the same reading list for the week, and then have to race to the library to get the books before they were all gone.

[gizajob]

If people could download any of those things for free off the internet, they would.

[fragmede]

by "just fine", you mean "go into crippling amounts of debt that isn't dischargeable by bankruptcy"?

[webefbskj]

Imagine someone from a 3rd world country. Let's say India.

Even the books like K&R C, Tanenbaum operating systems or CLRS / Skienna Algorithms will be north of 1000 INR in India.

Count 5 - 6 such books per semester, that's at least 5k - 10k INR. But for obscure books the price often goes to 5K for a single book. Let's say 10K INR.

Which is a significant amount, and for some students can exceed a month's living expenses for a semester.

So they're hesitant to spend that much. Often they end up with shittily written local books.

Now imagine you want to consult some book for specialist topics, like Windows internals or something, you will have to sell an organ.

Source: I was the Indian student.

[abridges6523]

“Just fine” here means riddled with debt.