So, I can see there being some academic advantage to all the teachers of a multi-section course using the same textbook. But that advantage doesn't see to trump all other concerns, and if a teacher can get course materials to their students at half the price ("only" a $75 text, rather than the $180 one), that seems a very strong counter-argument.
That the $180 book is written by professors in the department is, I'm sure, a sheer coincidence.
A Professor Didn’t Think His Students Needed a $180 Textbook. His University Wasn’t Pleased.
This post originally appeared on Inside Higher Ed. The choice of a single textbook for one section of a course at one university might seem like a decidedl
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Just read this article and shook my head My husband (a lecturer at the local U) has run into problems with textbooks both as a teacher and a student. Pricing is ridiculous, and some smart kids do everything they can to work around it.
Pricing was ridiculous back when I was in college (I mean, how much should you charge for clay tablets, right?), but it has only gotten much worse (and the reprint cycles more frequent, impacting the used book market).
One of my professors just ended up finding PDF file of the text bookand put it online for us. He said "The text book I use is cheaper than most only $20, but why even bother education like this shouldn't keep making you all waste more and more."
That guy is a nice guy. I mean when he first started his text book was around $150 but he kept doing more and more to lower the price till he could finally provide it for free.
Though I mean he seems to have good connection in the college, so I don't think anyone would mess with him if he did a few things a different way anyway.
Different schools have different policies, and even different departments in a school can have different policies. At all four of the Universities where I taught, I had the liberty to choose my textbooks. I took price into consideration when I selected books, but I was sometimes frustrated by how frequently publishers created new editions of textbooks, and by the fact that the university bookstores generally refuse to carry anything but the latest edition of a book. The one community college where I taught dictated what textbooks to use. They had one full-time faculty member in my discipline, and something like 12 adjuncts (perhaps more, I don’t remember clearly anymore). Many of the adjuncts held only a Master’s degree and had little or no teaching experience. Being told what textbook to use frees an instructor from the work that would otherwise go into choosing a textbook, but policies that allow this create the potential for conflict of interest (if those in charge have authored textbooks), and the potential for infringement on academic freedom.
However, professors I encountered who had authored textbooks almost uniformly decried the tiny royalties they received. It’s different in other fields (I recently read that the author of a popular Calculus textbook that went through many editions became wealthy due to his royalties), but in my field I always felt the professors were motivated to use their own textbooks by pedagogical concerns rather than financial ones, and I seem to recall that one donated the royalties from sales of his book to students he taught to charity.
I believe that textbook publishers have done what they can to maximize their profits, at the expense of the students. I also believe that educators and educational institutions have (perhaps unwittingly) aided the publishers rather than the students. While the cost of textbooks is often in the noise when compared to the cost of tuition and room and board, I think educators and educational institutions should do more to help reduce the cost and waste in the current system of textbook publishing and use. Unfortunately, faculty are not in a good position to effectively combat the status quo, and educational institutions have their own conflict of interest in that they often own the campus bookstore. I am not confident that anything will change any time soon.
And right-wingers such as myself who support the rights of an individual against the guvmint (Cal State Fullerton is a state school) are forced to admit that the professor is receiving substantial support from his union.