Things to Know Before Getting College Books

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Things to Know Before Getting College Books

Knowledge is something we keep learning throughout our lives until death. We mature over age and I believe the most critical point arises once you are done schooling. Yes a person really shapes up big time in terms of maturity when he starts attending college.

Self awareness is a very important concept. Before we starting going to college for educating ourselves and become civilized mature responsible citizens we have to be self aware of what do we really want to do as a profession which gives us a career. Ambition is very critical at this juncture.

The most important step is to decide upon what profession would best suit us and give us a career where we can grow. More than working hard we should be happy with what we are doing.

The initial step before going to college would be to decide upon our favorable course. Then we need to get an idea of the syllabus being followed in that particular course. We ought to have an idea about what areas are we going to cover in that field as it helps us to decide upon which area to expertise within that field as a field comprises of several areas all put together as the course. You can specifically expertise on any one of them when it comes to higher studies or future plans.

Once you have awareness about the syllabus, the next thing to do would be to buy college text books for each and every subject coinciding with its syllabus.

For any subject, you have a lot of books written by several authors. We classify them as prescribed authors and local authors. Prescribed books are the ones prescribed by the college which follows that particular syllabus. Thus for a better and thorough understanding it is advisable to follow prescribed books. However you can also use other subject related books as guide or for reference.

You must have awareness about cheap college books. There are plenty of scam artists who try to sell college books in cheap rates to the college students via internet. You usually get these books at discounted rates. Thus while surfing for college books via net, check for the site's reliability. Check for the return/refund policies followed by the site. Look out for reviews about the site. You'll surely find unsatisfied customer's remarks if the site is not reliable. Also see to that you get these books in good quality and condition. For that check for pages numbering and see to that no pages are missing or unprinted or even repeated instead of appropriate pages.

See to that you do not have financial constraints if the books cost more than what it's supposed to thanks to shipping charges. So be aware if shipping charges are involved and if so how much does it cost before ordering online. Thus it is more preferable to go to bookshops, check out each and every book related to your subjects and select the ones that make you understand better, books in good condition as well as best quality.

The author is famous for writing articles on Find cheap college textbooks. She has written various articles on College textbooks for sale online.

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Chicago News Cooperative: Economist’s Plan to Improve Schools Begins Before Kindergarten

J. B. Pritzker, a prominent Chicago businessman, says he wakes up each day mulling the best way to get a return on his investments. The most valuable resource he can find is “smart people with character.”

It explains why, last week, Mr. Pritzker, a liberal Democrat, introduced a person he described as a University of Chicago supply-side economist at a gathering that might have benefited mayoral candidates concerned about Chicago’s public schools performance.

At the gathering, James J. Heckman, who has won the Nobel in economic science, offered a provocative idea for reducing spiraling budget deficits and strengthening the economy: investing in early childhood development.

Mr. Heckman marshals ample data to suggest that better teaching, higher standards, smaller classrooms and more Internet access “have less impact than we think,” as he put it at the Spertus Institute. To focus as intently as we do on the kindergarten to high school years misses how “the accident of birth is the greatest source of inequality,” he said.

He urges more effectively educating children before they step into a classroom where, as Chicago teachers tell me, they often are clueless about letters, numbers and colors — and lack the attentiveness and persistence to ever catch up. Matters are as bleak with many students entering the City Colleges system.

Mr. Heckman is not really a supply-sider, but he is big on return on investment, just like Mr. Pritzker, who sponsored the Spertus event with the McCormick Foundation and is also a contributor to my wife’s nonprofit group.

He contends that high-quality programs focused on birth to age 5 produce a higher per-dollar return than K-12 schooling and later job training. They reduce deficits by reducing the need for special education and remediation, and by cutting juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy and dropout rates.

With charts and references to long-term studies, Mr. Heckman underscored why families matter and attributed the widening gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged to deficits in skills and abilities that begin with inadequate early childhood development.

One slide juxtaposed achievement test scores with a mother’s education. If you come from a single-parent home with a mother who dropped out of school, your scores lag far behind throughout your academic life.

Test scores may measure smarts, not the character that turns knowledge into know-how. “Socio-emotional skills” or “character,” which we don’t often measure, are critical, and include motivation, the ability to work with others, attention, self-regulation, self-esteem and the ability to defer gratification.

There are few more influential thinkers than Mr. Heckman on the impact of social programs and methods used to assess them.

“He’s one of the great labor economists of all time, a pioneer of empirical analysis of labor markets, human capital and education,” said Austan Goolsbee, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and a University of Chicago colleague.

In the mayoral race, only the freshly certified (to run) Rahm Emanuel and Gery Chico offer extensive plans for education reform. Mr. Emanuel’s ideas strike some nonpartisan folks as more innovative, but Mr. Chico puts early learning front and center.

To their credit, both encourage parental participation, though that’s a complex topic. It’s especially knotty for poor parents who don’t have computers, easy transportation or time to be involved in their child’s school.

Finally, each seems more tactical than strategic, with neither arguably offering a compelling answer to a simple question: What exactly is the purpose of a Chicago public school education?

Many politicians jabber about “preparing our children for a global high-tech economy.” That’s a projection of the present onto a future we stumble to imagine, let alone predict.

But if Mr. Heckman is correct, the purpose of education is what it has always been: to develop a well-rounded, knowledgeable and adaptable person; to create upward mobility through smarts and character.

Imagine more young adults going off into the world to make it better — and fewer coming home to sleep on the couch. If a candidate forced a real debate on such a vision, and a plan to pay for it, parents might pony up even in tough times.

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