Is this Ideal?

Is this Ideal?

Imagine the following scenario:

A student thinks that some textbook purchases might be superfluous.  The student, in her second semester, is taking a full load of courses, one of which being English 102.  She plans to transfer to a university to pursue nursing.  Her grades are generally good despite her thirty-plus hours a week working at a restaurant to support herself.  The semester is about to begin, so she purchases the textbooks that are required for her classes, shelling out over $300 in the process.  The English class alone requires two texts, a thick writing manual and a reader, which together add up to almost $150, almost half the price of tuition for the class itself.  As the semester progresses, it becomes painfully clear that pretty much the only section of the manual that the course consistently uses is that covering MLA style.  She looks at the course schedule and sees that only nine of the fifteen chapters of the reader are assigned.  The investment that she's made in these texts doesn't seem sound at all, causing some serious consternation.

Now move to the instructor's office, where she is grading a stack of mid-semester essays.  Noting that many students still need to work on composing an effective thesis statement, she flips through the manual to the appropriate passage.  She is not completely satisfied with the description provided by the text, so she spends several weekend hours putting together a presentation, complete with activities and an accompanying handout, in which she describes in satisfactory detail the concept of a thesis as she sees it and some methods for nailing one down to an introduction.  She assigns the reading anyway and makes her work available through the course's LMS.  Her students all agree that the presentation was very helpful, whereas only a few find the manual's explanation worth their time.  She then discusses her weekend's work with a colleague, who just so happened to spend a similar amount of time creating a similar teaching unit.  

The inefficiency of this situation causes learners extra stress and teachers extra time.  While definitely not ideal, chances are that, as students or as instructors, we have encountered a scenario like this.  There are any number of ways to avoid this kind of unhelpful practice, such as selecting a more appropriate textbook or asking around for materials.  However, the problem can be avoided completely with a small amount of work ahead of time, saving the student money, the instructor time, and enhancing the learning experience all the while.