College Textbooks - Usually Much Longer Than A Course Can Cover?

Question

I was wondering if this is standard practice or not in most colleges...

It seems most college textbooks have at least twice as much information in them as my professors cover here at my university in a one semester course - even if the college textbook was aimed for a course in college.

Is this standard, or is the school I attend simply not as good as others and doesn't require as much? I know I could be at better schools but there are benefits to being here (which is why I am here)

In my computer science classes, we get textbooks, and cover probably half of it. The only textbook series I've covered every chapter in was for calculus - but this was broken into 3 separate calculus levels. After those 3 courses, I had gotten through all chapters in the textbook. Other than this course/textbook, we NEVER make it through the whole book, and rarely make it halfway through the book.

Is this normal?

Answer 1

Professors/ Doctors find the  text book that will cover the information they require for the course, since they do not write the text they have to pick one that best illustrates the information they want you to learn during the semester.

I have lit books that we covered certain authors and did not use a lot of the  book. The only book I have used everything is when the instructor wrote the book.

Answer 2

They don't cover everything because there isn't enough time in the course schedule to do everything.  Rather than get a whirlwind tour of the entire book they prefer to cover in enough detail the sections they think are most relevant to the course topic.  Even advanced course levels are still too wide a net to cover all the material within that area in just one semester.

Answer 3

I've had classes where we use the whole textbook plus stuff not covered in it.  I've had classes where the textbook was pretty much worthless to buy.  I've had classes where they only use one or two chapters.  It depends on your teacher, how well he/she conveys the knowledge to you, and how organised they are.  If they just jump all over the place, make you buy a worthless textbook, or teach completely different information, then don't even bother getting a book.  To be honest, I would suggest you NOT buy the book until you start the class, get the syllabus, and see what's on it.  

Yes, it's normal.  It's just a pain because you're buying c**p you don't even use.