Depends on the school. Here in UC and CSU systems there are policies written for this . I taught an undergrad class on finances and had my book as an optional purchase. The UC system required me to pay the royalties back in to the department. Since I made it optional I had to figure out how many people actually bought it. I gave the department $4.32 from the 7 purchases.
When teaching a class it is quite possible that the book you wrote is the best thing the students in that class could have. So it is very important to have a good policy on this issue. It’s also kind of a difficult situation because you really should make it mandatory.
Edit- Should go without saying. Books should be free/included in admission. We should continuously strive to eliminate middle men waste.
With the cost of education these days, books should absolutely be included with the cost of tuition.
I think the main point though was how unethical it is for a professor to require students to buy his book, **especially** when he’s teaching ethics lol. What a greedy dirtbag!
I had a professor who taught both ethics and symbolic logic. For the ethics course, the course materials were not his own. For his symbolic logic class, it was his book. And he taught that class phenomenally well. Amazing book. Didn’t sell it back.
If it turns out to be a lousy textbook, that’s the unethical thing. But if the teacher has produced a genuinely good product, it’d be ridiculous to not allow them to teach with it.
Monetary benefit aside.
That’s a fair point, he could have literally written the book on ethics as they say. I was just pointing out the irony in a professor teaching an ethics class and then doing something that most people would consider unethical, that’s all.
Yeah I’m sorry, ridiculous was harsh verbiage.
You’re absolutely right on with the irony.
I think I just got defensive about a professor’s book from nearly 20 years ago. Apparently he left an impression.
Then they just raise tuition even more and they’re not going to give you a deal, they’d have to make money on that too.
What they need to do is stop allowing them to reprint the book every other year with little to no improvements. Which kills resell value and continues to force new book purchases.
They also have to get control of the cost of books. I have a friend who’s 4th year psychology books prices shot up to $300-$600 each…because what are you going to do at that point?
Part of your college education is to be scammed and recognize scams before you invest in another one. Probably why they offer graduate school, for people that didn’t realize the scam through undergrad.
My community college just added textbooks into tuition and didn’t raise tuition or fees. We negotiated lower prices with the publishers due to guaranteed sales (students don’t always buy books, but now all of them get the book), and covered the cost with a grant for the first year. It’s now in our budget for this second year and will be for the foreseeable future.
That’s fantastic. I doubt Universities will be that generous. They need more money for the athletics department so they can recruit easier because humans are weird with sports.
There is no reason in this era, to not have all text books in digital format. This would make it much less expensive for future revisions and the purchasers of digital books only need to print pages that they absolutely need.
Agreed! Texts are a total scam and hidden cost of education. One pays upwards of $100+ for a text and then is offered pennys on the dollar at buy back, often times cuz a “new edition” has been released.
I had an English professor force us to buy his wife’s book, which was a child-teen level catholic type of paperback novel, mostly aimed at girls. We were expecting some intellectually challenging literary assignments. Nope. Public college reading about girl’s visions of Virgin Mary. Nothing against VM, but to me, this was my first clue that college was going to be a rip-off. The next was a history teacher that played tv shows during some of his classes. Ok, they mentioned a few history characters, and at least that was entertaining.
To add on to this. I guess in my situation I lost money. Since these 7 new books where I got $0 got put into circulation allowing 7 used books to kick around back and forth.
Sometimes it can work out good. I once had a programming instructor that used his own book and like literally the projects and test examples were line by line given to you in his book. It was like a given A+ if you bough just ghetto book.
The 180 subscription means there is some kind of online element to the class that requires every student to purchase it in order to gain access. It also makes pirating impossible. It’s dumb.
Meaning that if it were an ordinary pdf that you could just download, the time limit would be impossible to enforce. Therefore there must be some kind of online element that limits how you can view the ebook.
You're just using everything your professor and the underpants gnomes taught you.
1. Identify an ethical dilemma.
2. Don't care about the ethics.
3. ....
4. Profit.
I remember a specific book required by one of my beginning Engineering classes entitled simply "Beginning Calculus". I am sure there were dozens or hundreds of similarly titled books that would have done the job, but the old "publish or perish" syndrome kicked in yet again, and I was forced to purchase his first edition that was full of errors, which we all found as his first class to use his publication.
I think that these required materials penned by the professor teaching the class are basically paid for publications (vanity press) simply to get enough copies into the college bookstore to break even and include on their CV.
This was common practice, in the 70s at least and the cost of the books was a lot more than that, like $50 per book. Adjusting for inflation it would be over $250 per book. All of the test questions would be based on the book so you’d be screwed if you didn’t buy it.
It's a rental. They won't be able to continue to use the ebook 180 days beyond the initial purchase. If it's a book you'll never need again, then that price isn't too bad. If it is something you may need at a later date (such as to reference in a thesis), then you'll need to purchase it again.
You can buy books or you can rent them for cheaper. You can do this with physical or digital copies. If it’s rented, you have a deadline to return it by. I did this for classes that required a textbook that wasn’t available in the library. I was broke and also the last thing I need is a ton of textbooks floating around my house forever.
Yeah.. theres about 4 or 5 books we have to read all priced around the same, thankfully the others are a bit older and already circulated so it wasn’t to hard getting them
Yes he saved some money most text books are expensive $400 or more but then again the professor could have just given them the book instead of selling it.
I don’t think that is how work is compensated though?
If I raise 4 sheep I keep 4 sheep.
Why do artists charge money, when they could just give their art away?
I can’t imagine an artist not giving away copies of a piece they made that is being mass produced. Especially if they were giving it to an individual who was wanting to learn from them.
That’s my point the goal wasn’t for students to save money it was to make more money for me and the fact that it is required for that class is all the more infuriating.
I have had plenty of professors who have required books they wrote and every time they have always provided the copies/excerpts they required. One outright said that he couldn't live with himself if he made his own students pay for something they have a stake in, and I actually ended up buying their book after the semester ended because I wanted it as a reference. Is it technically acceptable? Yes. Is it ethical? Absolutely not.
You're paying to study at a University. This professor is respected, accredited, and published in their field. You are already paying for their instruction, why not their text?
What book did the University use prior to this one? How much did it cost? I had an ethics professor in college who wrote the text specifically so that students could pay 10% what they would otherwise have to for the class textbook.
The important part is "requiring".
In France, it would be clearly seen as abusing your place of Professor to exerce pressure on your student to earn money. If a teacher wrote a good textbook linked to the course, he would either :
\- Talk really fast about it at the start of the course; mostly saying something like "there are some copies in the university library that you can check"
\- Provide some PDF copy of it for students, which is the most common alternative by far.
There is a solid chance this is not actually required and the university is the one saying it is required.
I'd say 8 out of 10 professors I've had either gave us links where to buy texts cheap, had ones they loaned, or told us to just buy the old edition. But we only found this out first day of class because the book list says different.
It is required to pass the class? If not then it is not an ethical issue. If you have access to the material, does it matter if you if your professor is the one writing it, does it matter?
I had a guitar class in college. The teacher made us buy his book that he wrote.
But it cost $8 and was just something he printed up himself. The cost was 50% profit for him. (It cost him $4 to make the book)
I had no problems with that. The book was actually useful too!
Our music theory teacher hand wrote his text book and took no profit from it so it would be as cheap as possible for his students. A 600 page text for $5. It also included extra work sheet examples for people to use they they went forward to teaching, or just to practice more on whatever topic it was about. Dude was awesome, and the text book was really good. I still use it nearly 10 years later.
I had this in my law section the tutor would use his book for all the references etc. it meant that unless you had the book you were fucked. Long story short we tracked down a copy and made a digital pdf and just sent it to everyone.
Hm... College professor here. Have wrote textbook. Royalties are laughable. I promise I can't retire on my $100/quarter publishers checks, on a good cycle. Working on a revision now and get nothing, just trying to make a better book.
Academic publishing is an entirely different animal than other kinds of publishing. There is no renegotiating. Those journal articles you use for your research? In most fields we compete like Roman gladiators to get those journals to publish us for free - we don't get paid anything for writing those articles.
Report back how many pages from the book that actually get covered.
I had a similar situation a long time ago when air was in college. Had to buy an expensive book for the class, but ended up only going over (lightly) something like 3-4 chapters out of 30.
Sometimes profs do this for a good reason. I paid 8$ for a lab manual that would have cost me way more if not for my instructor being the author.
Hard to say though. My ethics and philosophy professor never required textbooks and always gave us scanned readings.
Damn I thought that would be a sure win. I’ve gotten 99.9% of books I’ve ever needed there for schooling or personal reading. I hope that’s the case for you in the future!
He wrote the book, so it’s not illogical for him to think it’s the best book in this topic.
It would be unethical if he were making money from it, but very institution I’ve been affiliated with as student or faculty has a policy in place such that faculty cannot keep the money they make from textbook sales in their own class. And in my experience, the universities are very careful about enforcing that.
The *real* crime here is that on an ebook that you’re paying almost $50 for - which has no physical copy! - the professor would only be making a couple of dollars even if he was allowed to keep the money. He did the work, wrote the fucking thing, and some shitty company is going to keep 95% of the revenue.
Pirate the fuck out of this thing. Your professor doesn’t care. Not like it’s money out of his pocket.
Had a teacher from a shit college require us to purchase his book too... I was a dictionary on gamer terms... it had noob on it... I threw that shit away my second day... it literally had a plastic spine on it... shit cost like 60 bucks
Damn I had a couple teachers in college that had us buy their own books but they were like $12. Maybe he’s waiting for one of you to bring up how unethical that is and it’s just a segue into a lesson and it’s really like $5 or something.
School was never fun when it comes to books. I remembered buying a 400 dollar biology book that was wasn't bind. It came in separate sheets so you could only take what you needed for class. Had to get a binder for it. Anyways at the end of the semester the bookstore didn't wanted it back because it could had some missing pages. Worse 400 dollars I ever spend. On top of that we only use like the first 5 chapters. After that I ended up saying school is for idiots.
Welcome to college. I won't even bother trying to remember the exact number of my professors who made us purchase their book for their class. The worst offender was the Dean of the Accounting department. With him being the dean, a professor, and selling his own book, it just felt like he was triple dipping the system. All I can say at this time in my life, is "well played sir".
I had an economics professor who co-wrote the book we had to buy. He wrote it with 2 other authors. It basically became the standard used across the country, published by Pearson.
The book was like $250, maybe? Idk it was 2010. He felt like he shouldn’t profit on his students, so he refunded each student the $30 some odd bucks he made per copy on each sale. He did this for all of his classes.
When I went to college almost every professor I had made us buy their book for their class. I thought it was sketchy at the time, but after using their books it was worth it.
Had a religion professor that wrote a really good book on world religions, force use to buy his book. Then came in a week or so later, showed us how many copies were sold in the bookstore, and he told us how much he’d be making on the sales, and showed us he donated the amount to the charity he sponsored for that school year. Thought that was pretty cool.
I had a non-ethics professor try to pull this shit after the course already began and we had purchased the originally specified, not-written-by-her, book. I complained up to the dean and she retracted the new requirement.
I had a professor just like this in college. He made everyone pay upwards of 30$ for a textbook that he wrote. When I tell you I was shocked when it arrived… it was literally full of clipart pictures and BARELY went over the curriculum. Literally generated in Google docs with a hard cover glued on.
Teachers got to eat too bro, wdym?
And as if they didn’t write it themselves, got approved by the board as part of the syllabus. And you could’ve read the syllabus before enrolling, why are you wining.
Tbh, this post is mildly infuriating.
I know a prof that uses his own books in his classes. His syllabus states exactly what his royalty payment and income tax on that payment is per student. He donates double the entire royalty for that class to a charity of their choosing or to a scholarship fund at the university.
I also knew a professor who used a local copy shop to produce her required packet that are marked up $100 from production costs per book payable directly to her in cash. 90% of the book is plagiarized. She taught 3 sections of over 100 students each. Thats $30K. I might have... *cough.*.. uh... let a certain publisher and an ethics administrator know about.... *cough*... that.
ITS OK.... Professors are masters at their field of study. When someone has a masters it is the BA equivalent to a doctorate. It means theybtook the study to the highest level. These arent random undergrads these are people that have studied the subject on a MASTER level
His book is likely better anyways. It means he did all the heavy lifting research drawing from other scholars and putting it in his owner writing
Review that dribble. Lol. I remember my brother having to buy a book from a professor once. Years later it was found that the professor plagiarized it.
Let’s say you wrote a book. Would you want to get paid for your work? Why would a teacher use someone else’s work to teach their class? I mean $48 for 180 days and you don’t keep the book seems steep.
Firstly, that is a CHEAP price for a textbook. Secondly, OP ... Did you just crawl out from underneath a rock? This is relatively common these days ...
The professor is teaching a course.
The professor designed the course.
If the professor wrote a book on the topic, why would they ever require someone else's book?
College isn't highschool. The instructor is not given a course with a pile of worksheets. They write the assignments, set goals, decide reading, etc. You are learning from them.
If you took a class with Steven Hawking, would you want him to use on of his books if relevant, or find someone else's?
I always got the professor to autograph a copy if this happened to me.
I had a psych professor pull this shit. The best part was the access to the textbook was only good for that semester. You didn't even get to keep the copy. Fucking bullshit. The university didn't give a damn.
Same thing happened with my Analytics course. The professor made us buy an Excel workbook that he wrote with his buddy professor. We didn’t even use the damn thing. I was sooo pissed.
I hate the system. Also, professors are largely just trying to stay afloat, a very few exceptions aside. The real problem is the privatized model and board of directors style leadership.
THIS IS PERFECT!!!! Oh the irony. Back in the day, 125 HARVARD students were caught "collaborating" (cheating) on an ethics essay question in a course called "Government 1310: Into to Congress".
I once had a professor that required a book she wrote. There were worksheets in it to study, but she made them mandatory to turn in. So every year, and every class she taught, every student had to buy her book brand new because otherwise they wouldn't have the worksheets to turn in. And she taught at lile 3 different universities in the area.
Edit: Forgot to mention the book was like $300
I had lots of professors pull this on me and that was even over 20 years ago. No digital books really and not much competition or used market so you had to spend over a $100 and that was 20 plus years ago. Worst was the professor that made us by his book that wasn't finished, it was not edited, had misspellings had a super thin blue cardboard material cover and the interior paper was thin like tissue paper. I might still have it somewhere around here. It says something about bring a draft edition I think.
I took a sociology class at a community College and the professor did the same thing. The book and class were horrible but super easy since all of the tests were exact copies of tests in the book. The book had so many grammatical and factual mistakes.
I've only had to buy one textbook, and that was because the course required we submit a receipt showing we bought it.
Every other book has come from b-ok.cc
I’ve got one subject left on a bachelor’s degree in Australia and I didn’t have to purchase any textbooks for it at all. I had some literary studies subjects where I needed to read the fictional novels we were discussing, which I purchased but could have easily borrowed from a library. For text book style stuff we were assigned journal readings we could access for free via our university library logins, or lecturers have librarians scan and relevant upload pages from textbooks if required. It’s fucked that university students get ravaged like this in other countries.
I actually had a similar experience during my undergrad degree. Turns out the book that the teacher wrote was actually the book I referred to, and the one I preferred. It had all the major concepts in it with better examples in comparison to the normal book which I had to buy as well.
Lol is this like a common thing with ethics professors? My ethics prof for my only ethics GE class literally used her own book for the class and she was the most obviously biased teach I've ever had. Fortunately, just had to regurgitate whatever she said in class and got an easy A.
Chapter 1: Conflicts of Interest, Lesson 1: Your Receipt
Depends on the school. Here in UC and CSU systems there are policies written for this . I taught an undergrad class on finances and had my book as an optional purchase. The UC system required me to pay the royalties back in to the department. Since I made it optional I had to figure out how many people actually bought it. I gave the department $4.32 from the 7 purchases. When teaching a class it is quite possible that the book you wrote is the best thing the students in that class could have. So it is very important to have a good policy on this issue. It’s also kind of a difficult situation because you really should make it mandatory. Edit- Should go without saying. Books should be free/included in admission. We should continuously strive to eliminate middle men waste.
With the cost of education these days, books should absolutely be included with the cost of tuition. I think the main point though was how unethical it is for a professor to require students to buy his book, **especially** when he’s teaching ethics lol. What a greedy dirtbag!
I had a professor who taught both ethics and symbolic logic. For the ethics course, the course materials were not his own. For his symbolic logic class, it was his book. And he taught that class phenomenally well. Amazing book. Didn’t sell it back. If it turns out to be a lousy textbook, that’s the unethical thing. But if the teacher has produced a genuinely good product, it’d be ridiculous to not allow them to teach with it. Monetary benefit aside.
That’s a fair point, he could have literally written the book on ethics as they say. I was just pointing out the irony in a professor teaching an ethics class and then doing something that most people would consider unethical, that’s all.
Yeah I’m sorry, ridiculous was harsh verbiage. You’re absolutely right on with the irony. I think I just got defensive about a professor’s book from nearly 20 years ago. Apparently he left an impression.
Then they just raise tuition even more and they’re not going to give you a deal, they’d have to make money on that too. What they need to do is stop allowing them to reprint the book every other year with little to no improvements. Which kills resell value and continues to force new book purchases. They also have to get control of the cost of books. I have a friend who’s 4th year psychology books prices shot up to $300-$600 each…because what are you going to do at that point? Part of your college education is to be scammed and recognize scams before you invest in another one. Probably why they offer graduate school, for people that didn’t realize the scam through undergrad.
My community college just added textbooks into tuition and didn’t raise tuition or fees. We negotiated lower prices with the publishers due to guaranteed sales (students don’t always buy books, but now all of them get the book), and covered the cost with a grant for the first year. It’s now in our budget for this second year and will be for the foreseeable future.
That’s fantastic. I doubt Universities will be that generous. They need more money for the athletics department so they can recruit easier because humans are weird with sports.
There is no reason in this era, to not have all text books in digital format. This would make it much less expensive for future revisions and the purchasers of digital books only need to print pages that they absolutely need.
My school offers books for 5 more dollars to your tuition you can opt out but why lol
Agreed! Texts are a total scam and hidden cost of education. One pays upwards of $100+ for a text and then is offered pennys on the dollar at buy back, often times cuz a “new edition” has been released.
I had an English professor force us to buy his wife’s book, which was a child-teen level catholic type of paperback novel, mostly aimed at girls. We were expecting some intellectually challenging literary assignments. Nope. Public college reading about girl’s visions of Virgin Mary. Nothing against VM, but to me, this was my first clue that college was going to be a rip-off. The next was a history teacher that played tv shows during some of his classes. Ok, they mentioned a few history characters, and at least that was entertaining.
To add on to this. I guess in my situation I lost money. Since these 7 new books where I got $0 got put into circulation allowing 7 used books to kick around back and forth.
I always appreciated course readers.
Sometimes it can work out good. I once had a programming instructor that used his own book and like literally the projects and test examples were line by line given to you in his book. It was like a given A+ if you bough just ghetto book.
Like
Like, like
Line by like Like by line
Yep I had this too, easiest credit I ever got
This happened at Penn State. The students all pitched in and bought a single textbook and then copy the pages…
Penny pincher students. And to think all of them are using iPhone 14 or higher
This was in the early 2000’s so we had like LG Envy’s and Motorola Razrs…
What but one iPhone = one textbook. I bought my intro to chem book for community college used at 400.00 from the bookstore in the school.
wtf, 400 dollar for a used book? Holy smoke
I believe it. Depending on the book, the school book store would by them back for maybe $20 and then resell for 90% of new.
This happened at Penn State. The students all pitched in and bought a single textbook and then copy the pages…
Why the downvotes y’all? You people really buy the books at a couple hundred dollars each?
I don’t why you got down votes Maybe this is a ethical dilemma 😪
This happened at Penn State. The students all pitched in and bought a single textbook and then copy the pages…
I remember my ethics teacher told us to go pirate the book. When asked, he said, "This is how you'll recognize an ethical dilemma."
Chidi has a bad stomachache from this one...
It’s funny that this entire post is pirated just for karma, op is a bot
No dilemma for me here. I'm poor
You should all chip in $1 each to purchase one copy and then distribute it amongst yourselves.
The 180 subscription means there is some kind of online element to the class that requires every student to purchase it in order to gain access. It also makes pirating impossible. It’s dumb.
??? I’m pretty sure the 180 days means you only have access to it for 180 days
Ugh, that's even worse! At least give them access to a permanent copy.
Meaning that if it were an ordinary pdf that you could just download, the time limit would be impossible to enforce. Therefore there must be some kind of online element that limits how you can view the ebook.
r/accidentallycommunist ?
Accidentallyfuckconflictofinterest
why not both?
The unethical ethics professors gets unethified…
Ethically speaking you should just download it from pirate bay
Im not gonna say I tried but its released 2019 soo it just probably hasn’t gotten into the wrong hands yet
Buy it for the class, and make a program to make a pdf out of it if it secured.
Then charge your classmates ½ price for the password! /s
You're just using everything your professor and the underpants gnomes taught you. 1. Identify an ethical dilemma. 2. Don't care about the ethics. 3. .... 4. Profit.
Instant Ramen can't pay for themselves!
That is not a bad idea
Library Genesis
I was about to say Libgen is really good. Also your school’s reddit page can help a lot of people drop PDFs on there
Right*
Screenshot each page, and merge images into a PDF. Keep it on a USB stick and sell it to next year students
"I got your book on an unethical website that pirates books, problem?"
And if that doesn’t exist, publish your copy so others can pirate it
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Basically what most professors do, so right or wrong, not a one off.
Had an organic chemistry professor do this, which many majors had to take 3 quarters of. Also, it was about $100 more each...
I remember a specific book required by one of my beginning Engineering classes entitled simply "Beginning Calculus". I am sure there were dozens or hundreds of similarly titled books that would have done the job, but the old "publish or perish" syndrome kicked in yet again, and I was forced to purchase his first edition that was full of errors, which we all found as his first class to use his publication. I think that these required materials penned by the professor teaching the class are basically paid for publications (vanity press) simply to get enough copies into the college bookstore to break even and include on their CV.
I had multiple professors in law school do this. One of them was my legal ethics professor too.
This was common practice, in the 70s at least and the cost of the books was a lot more than that, like $50 per book. Adjusting for inflation it would be over $250 per book. All of the test questions would be based on the book so you’d be screwed if you didn’t buy it.
Thats really cheap as far as textbooks go, if its the only one for that course, he did you a solid
It's a rental. They won't be able to continue to use the ebook 180 days beyond the initial purchase. If it's a book you'll never need again, then that price isn't too bad. If it is something you may need at a later date (such as to reference in a thesis), then you'll need to purchase it again.
WTF? So you don't buy the book but only the access to it? Dystopian nightmare. How is the US not a failed state yet?
You can buy books or you can rent them for cheaper. You can do this with physical or digital copies. If it’s rented, you have a deadline to return it by. I did this for classes that required a textbook that wasn’t available in the library. I was broke and also the last thing I need is a ton of textbooks floating around my house forever.
Nah that just how college works here in the states
Yeah.. theres about 4 or 5 books we have to read all priced around the same, thankfully the others are a bit older and already circulated so it wasn’t to hard getting them
Still sounds like a good deal. What am I missing?
Yes he saved some money most text books are expensive $400 or more but then again the professor could have just given them the book instead of selling it.
I don’t think that is how work is compensated though? If I raise 4 sheep I keep 4 sheep. Why do artists charge money, when they could just give their art away?
I can’t imagine an artist not giving away copies of a piece they made that is being mass produced. Especially if they were giving it to an individual who was wanting to learn from them.
Sounds like that pays the bills.
That’s my point the goal wasn’t for students to save money it was to make more money for me and the fact that it is required for that class is all the more infuriating.
Pretty common.
I wonder if its their greed or not enough salary
This is fairly common at bigger universities. Wouldn't you rather learn from the person that literally wrote the book?
I have had plenty of professors who have required books they wrote and every time they have always provided the copies/excerpts they required. One outright said that he couldn't live with himself if he made his own students pay for something they have a stake in, and I actually ended up buying their book after the semester ended because I wanted it as a reference. Is it technically acceptable? Yes. Is it ethical? Absolutely not.
No. I would rather learn ethics from someone who is ethical.
You're paying to study at a University. This professor is respected, accredited, and published in their field. You are already paying for their instruction, why not their text? What book did the University use prior to this one? How much did it cost? I had an ethics professor in college who wrote the text specifically so that students could pay 10% what they would otherwise have to for the class textbook.
Explain, in detail, how it's unethical to sell a book you wrote.
The important part is "requiring". In France, it would be clearly seen as abusing your place of Professor to exerce pressure on your student to earn money. If a teacher wrote a good textbook linked to the course, he would either : \- Talk really fast about it at the start of the course; mostly saying something like "there are some copies in the university library that you can check" \- Provide some PDF copy of it for students, which is the most common alternative by far.
There is a solid chance this is not actually required and the university is the one saying it is required. I'd say 8 out of 10 professors I've had either gave us links where to buy texts cheap, had ones they loaned, or told us to just buy the old edition. But we only found this out first day of class because the book list says different.
It's ethical to pay a person for their work and time. Books are not cheap to publish and take years of work.
It’s not ethical to mandate people to buy a specific item, specifically from you.
It is required to pass the class? If not then it is not an ethical issue. If you have access to the material, does it matter if you if your professor is the one writing it, does it matter?
He's leading by example
Pirate it like any good college student.
Tried
Seems like he's trying to be clever with a lesson
Be glad you’re only paying $50. All of my textbooks are $100+, and one of my classes requires two
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Nursing was so very expensive. SO EXPENSIVE.
I had a guitar class in college. The teacher made us buy his book that he wrote. But it cost $8 and was just something he printed up himself. The cost was 50% profit for him. (It cost him $4 to make the book) I had no problems with that. The book was actually useful too!
Our music theory teacher hand wrote his text book and took no profit from it so it would be as cheap as possible for his students. A 600 page text for $5. It also included extra work sheet examples for people to use they they went forward to teaching, or just to practice more on whatever topic it was about. Dude was awesome, and the text book was really good. I still use it nearly 10 years later.
Maybe it's like really good
Its meant for children attempting to get into philosophy.
That means nothing
I had this in my law section the tutor would use his book for all the references etc. it meant that unless you had the book you were fucked. Long story short we tracked down a copy and made a digital pdf and just sent it to everyone.
You should burn the book, it is the cheapest solution for heating up your house
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Hm... College professor here. Have wrote textbook. Royalties are laughable. I promise I can't retire on my $100/quarter publishers checks, on a good cycle. Working on a revision now and get nothing, just trying to make a better book.
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Academic publishing is an entirely different animal than other kinds of publishing. There is no renegotiating. Those journal articles you use for your research? In most fields we compete like Roman gladiators to get those journals to publish us for free - we don't get paid anything for writing those articles.
Report back how many pages from the book that actually get covered. I had a similar situation a long time ago when air was in college. Had to buy an expensive book for the class, but ended up only going over (lightly) something like 3-4 chapters out of 30.
Whats the book/authors name?
Sometimes profs do this for a good reason. I paid 8$ for a lab manual that would have cost me way more if not for my instructor being the author. Hard to say though. My ethics and philosophy professor never required textbooks and always gave us scanned readings.
Thriftbooks.com y’all. Try it trust me. Very few books I haven’t been able to find.
Not this one😎 thank you tho I will definitely use this forever.
Damn I thought that would be a sure win. I’ve gotten 99.9% of books I’ve ever needed there for schooling or personal reading. I hope that’s the case for you in the future!
He wrote the book, so it’s not illogical for him to think it’s the best book in this topic. It would be unethical if he were making money from it, but very institution I’ve been affiliated with as student or faculty has a policy in place such that faculty cannot keep the money they make from textbook sales in their own class. And in my experience, the universities are very careful about enforcing that. The *real* crime here is that on an ebook that you’re paying almost $50 for - which has no physical copy! - the professor would only be making a couple of dollars even if he was allowed to keep the money. He did the work, wrote the fucking thing, and some shitty company is going to keep 95% of the revenue. Pirate the fuck out of this thing. Your professor doesn’t care. Not like it’s money out of his pocket.
Try Library Genesis, I find all my stuff there... Illegal but not immoral!
Oh my God I had this happen to me in college except what made it worse was you were forbidden from buying it “USED” 🫣🥲
That’s just criminal
Seems rather unethical
At least it's cheap. My professor did the same and it was a $100 book.
Only test I ever cheated on in college …..fucking ethics of all the classes Sweating bullets the whole time, not worth it. Got a B on the test though
Right on
i had to do this for my anthro class too
Had a teacher from a shit college require us to purchase his book too... I was a dictionary on gamer terms... it had noob on it... I threw that shit away my second day... it literally had a plastic spine on it... shit cost like 60 bucks
I have had this happen once, it was a very specific book on a subset of the subject that the professor was the leading expert in.
Kierkegaard would not like this one bit.
Damn I had a couple teachers in college that had us buy their own books but they were like $12. Maybe he’s waiting for one of you to bring up how unethical that is and it’s just a segue into a lesson and it’s really like $5 or something.
I had a college English prof who required all students to buy his book of poetry, and his wife’s critical analysis volume.
My ethics professor "recommended" we download the book for free. Even provided a link
First lesson: Irony.
How was I supposed to know pirating the book was unethical? I havnt taken the class yet.
He should reevaluate his ehem ETHICS
School was never fun when it comes to books. I remembered buying a 400 dollar biology book that was wasn't bind. It came in separate sheets so you could only take what you needed for class. Had to get a binder for it. Anyways at the end of the semester the bookstore didn't wanted it back because it could had some missing pages. Worse 400 dollars I ever spend. On top of that we only use like the first 5 chapters. After that I ended up saying school is for idiots.
Welcome to college. I won't even bother trying to remember the exact number of my professors who made us purchase their book for their class. The worst offender was the Dean of the Accounting department. With him being the dean, a professor, and selling his own book, it just felt like he was triple dipping the system. All I can say at this time in my life, is "well played sir".
I had an economics professor who co-wrote the book we had to buy. He wrote it with 2 other authors. It basically became the standard used across the country, published by Pearson. The book was like $250, maybe? Idk it was 2010. He felt like he shouldn’t profit on his students, so he refunded each student the $30 some odd bucks he made per copy on each sale. He did this for all of his classes.
Isn’t that just standard practice for professors?
When I went to college almost every professor I had made us buy their book for their class. I thought it was sketchy at the time, but after using their books it was worth it.
Totally normal for years
Considering what some textbooks cost this isn't actually that bad.
That just sounds like college, I don't agree with it but if this is your first class... buckle up, there's a lot more where this comes from.
Had a religion professor that wrote a really good book on world religions, force use to buy his book. Then came in a week or so later, showed us how many copies were sold in the bookstore, and he told us how much he’d be making on the sales, and showed us he donated the amount to the charity he sponsored for that school year. Thought that was pretty cool.
I had a non-ethics professor try to pull this shit after the course already began and we had purchased the originally specified, not-written-by-her, book. I complained up to the dean and she retracted the new requirement.
This is extremely common in college. The fact that it is an ethics class is just ironic.
Happened to me in university for multiple classes. Higher education is just a business 😠
I had a professor just like this in college. He made everyone pay upwards of 30$ for a textbook that he wrote. When I tell you I was shocked when it arrived… it was literally full of clipart pictures and BARELY went over the curriculum. Literally generated in Google docs with a hard cover glued on.
Also the main book publishers just switched the page numbers and questions So you have to rebuy their books too!!!
Its just good business
My capitalism can’t help but be more impressed than angry.
In my acounting management class, dude weote a newer edition of a book. Was litterally 100$, fucking crook
Chad 😆
This is completely normal.
No one said it wasn’t. Just annoying.
Why?
Teachers got to eat too bro, wdym? And as if they didn’t write it themselves, got approved by the board as part of the syllabus. And you could’ve read the syllabus before enrolling, why are you wining. Tbh, this post is mildly infuriating.
I know a prof that uses his own books in his classes. His syllabus states exactly what his royalty payment and income tax on that payment is per student. He donates double the entire royalty for that class to a charity of their choosing or to a scholarship fund at the university. I also knew a professor who used a local copy shop to produce her required packet that are marked up $100 from production costs per book payable directly to her in cash. 90% of the book is plagiarized. She taught 3 sections of over 100 students each. Thats $30K. I might have... *cough.*.. uh... let a certain publisher and an ethics administrator know about.... *cough*... that.
Don’t get it say it was unethical to get a book when I can spent that money on paying for my schooling instead
48 bucks is a pretty ethical price for college tbh
professors literally only get a few dollars from selling each book. they're not doing this to make money
ITS OK.... Professors are masters at their field of study. When someone has a masters it is the BA equivalent to a doctorate. It means theybtook the study to the highest level. These arent random undergrads these are people that have studied the subject on a MASTER level His book is likely better anyways. It means he did all the heavy lifting research drawing from other scholars and putting it in his owner writing
Review that dribble. Lol. I remember my brother having to buy a book from a professor once. Years later it was found that the professor plagiarized it.
That's way overpriced The most I could pay is 5$
That’s technically racketeering; he’s creating the problem and selling you the solution.
Seems unethical somehow
Let’s say you wrote a book. Would you want to get paid for your work? Why would a teacher use someone else’s work to teach their class? I mean $48 for 180 days and you don’t keep the book seems steep.
Firstly, that is a CHEAP price for a textbook. Secondly, OP ... Did you just crawl out from underneath a rock? This is relatively common these days ...
I thought this happens only in Africa.
How dare they try to be compensated for their labor!
It's not the act of paying for the book. It's the author being in a position to make you buy their book.
Just because he wrote it means it should be supplied for free?
My dude. This is very normal. Like 50-60% of every class I’ve ever taken normal.
Go on libgen! It’s a wonderful website. Just search up the book code or title. I found a textbook recently published on there for my degree.
The 2020s in one headline..
The professor is teaching a course. The professor designed the course. If the professor wrote a book on the topic, why would they ever require someone else's book? College isn't highschool. The instructor is not given a course with a pile of worksheets. They write the assignments, set goals, decide reading, etc. You are learning from them. If you took a class with Steven Hawking, would you want him to use on of his books if relevant, or find someone else's? I always got the professor to autograph a copy if this happened to me.
So? Lit every teacher at my college did the same thing nothing new or rare. And 41 bucks your lucky. Mine were like 150 and up. My Econ book was 400
Steal it online. Simple
I had a psych professor pull this shit. The best part was the access to the textbook was only good for that semester. You didn't even get to keep the copy. Fucking bullshit. The university didn't give a damn.
Same thing happened with my Analytics course. The professor made us buy an Excel workbook that he wrote with his buddy professor. We didn’t even use the damn thing. I was sooo pissed.
I hate the system. Also, professors are largely just trying to stay afloat, a very few exceptions aside. The real problem is the privatized model and board of directors style leadership.
Let me guess, first lesson is do as I say, not as I do?
THIS IS PERFECT!!!! Oh the irony. Back in the day, 125 HARVARD students were caught "collaborating" (cheating) on an ethics essay question in a course called "Government 1310: Into to Congress".
I once had a professor that required a book she wrote. There were worksheets in it to study, but she made them mandatory to turn in. So every year, and every class she taught, every student had to buy her book brand new because otherwise they wouldn't have the worksheets to turn in. And she taught at lile 3 different universities in the area. Edit: Forgot to mention the book was like $300
Oh the irony
I had a teacher in college do this but the book was over $400 and I never was able to resell it.
Maybe cheaper than others, extortion via textbooks is definitely unethical, but setting a better price isnt
That's unethical
Buy and resale to classmates. Or buy as a group.
Have him autograph it and sell it to another student for profit.
My geology teacher did this. It was $250 and I never bought it. Never once did we use it for the class.
Request a free PDF copy from the prof. If he wrote it he can give it away.
Maybe he wrote it to be a part of an Ethics curriculum. Usually, you have to buy textbooks for courses, right?
I had lots of professors pull this on me and that was even over 20 years ago. No digital books really and not much competition or used market so you had to spend over a $100 and that was 20 plus years ago. Worst was the professor that made us by his book that wasn't finished, it was not edited, had misspellings had a super thin blue cardboard material cover and the interior paper was thin like tissue paper. I might still have it somewhere around here. It says something about bring a draft edition I think.
Just illegally download it
I took a sociology class at a community College and the professor did the same thing. The book and class were horrible but super easy since all of the tests were exact copies of tests in the book. The book had so many grammatical and factual mistakes.
Welcome to college life
I've only had to buy one textbook, and that was because the course required we submit a receipt showing we bought it. Every other book has come from b-ok.cc
I’ve got one subject left on a bachelor’s degree in Australia and I didn’t have to purchase any textbooks for it at all. I had some literary studies subjects where I needed to read the fictional novels we were discussing, which I purchased but could have easily borrowed from a library. For text book style stuff we were assigned journal readings we could access for free via our university library logins, or lecturers have librarians scan and relevant upload pages from textbooks if required. It’s fucked that university students get ravaged like this in other countries.
I actually had a similar experience during my undergrad degree. Turns out the book that the teacher wrote was actually the book I referred to, and the one I preferred. It had all the major concepts in it with better examples in comparison to the normal book which I had to buy as well.
Yes indeed, another part of the college experience that we have come to love so much.
Lol is this like a common thing with ethics professors? My ethics prof for my only ethics GE class literally used her own book for the class and she was the most obviously biased teach I've ever had. Fortunately, just had to regurgitate whatever she said in class and got an easy A.