Sadly , that ' s not universal . When I was at QUT in the 00 s , it was pretty common for lecturers to assign ' required reading ' as specific page numbers of the textbooks that they personally published . Specific page numbers and not ' sections on X subject ' because that way they could fuck you up if you didn ' t get that year ' s ' edition ' of the annuallyupdated piece of shit . This was especially galling when the ' textbook ' was a lowbudget , selfpublished dodgy piece of crap produced by the uni book shop for the same prices as hardcover internationallyrenowned books . The only bright side there was that the library usually kept a couple copies of each of the required reading so you could fight other starving students in impromptu pitfights for a copy of the relevant material . Also , you could return used textbooks to the QUT bookshop for like . a ten percent refund on the purchase price .