
Math professor forced to use $180 textbook written by his boss - austenallred
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/bourget-688288-math-book.html
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spectralblu
I'm actually surprised that there's no policy on conflict of interest for
these universities. It's one thing to be charging through the nose tuition,
that's just further exacerbated by these professors that wring students for
personal gain.

Writing your own book is fine, but manipulating these books EA style (where
you buy a game that comes with a one time use multiplayer key, neutering your
ability to sell it afterwards) on the thinly veiled "improvements" is just
downright shady. I commented about this on the other math book to pdf
submission, but I had a professor did just this. He basically shuffled
chapters around and renumbered problems, making the previous year's book
worthless because the problems he assigned are numbered out of the new book,
and he refused to provide any mapping of new problem sets to old problem sets.
I had mentioned this to the department heads and none of them really cared at
all about this practice.

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wahsd
You are surprised? Have you been to an American University? It would be far
more plausible if you had said "that's exactly what I would have expected"

~~~
Pinckney
I graduated four years ago, and am currently in grad school.

As an undergraduate at a small private college, I can only recall two
professors who required their own books. One was a paperback physics reader
for a very large class, available from the department for $20 (or from
upperclassmen for less). The other was for a small math class, was not
unreasonably expensive, but also was not very good, but when the professor
left halfway through the semester with health problems, the department bought
us all copies of the new book. My professors were always accommodating to
anyone who wanted to buy an older edition, and in one case explicitly told us
not to buy the expensive new edition.

In my current department at a large public university, I know of only one
professor who requires his own book. It's about $40 and has only had one
edition since it was published 15 years ago. In most lower division classes we
use an in-house online homework system, although we don't have a good database
of problems for differential equations, so we've typically required the latest
edition of Boyce and DiPrima so students can use the publisher's homework
system. But we've started work on our own problem sets, and we are at the
point where we can use our own in-house homework system for it, if the
professor is willing to put in a bit more effort organizing and debugging
homework.

Anyway, this sort of exploitation is not typical in my experience.

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m3rc
As a student right now I staunchly refuse to ever pay full price from a
textbook, and if possible to not pay for one at all. The prices we're charged
are ridiculous, and the way professors profit even more so.

The worst example of this is, and I have no qualms about publicly calling out
this professor, is Dr. Alan DeSantis at the University of Kentucky. DeSantis
is rather prolific, he gets a lot of press for the university, and I'm pretty
sure he's our highest rated prof on RateMyProfessor, so I'm sure he knows he
can basically just do whatever he wants.

But for his freshman COM101 class, a class where you can basically get all the
content out of by just reading the Wikipedia entry on a handful of pop
psychology phenomenons, he required us to purchase a $40 "workbook" for taking
notes in. But this "workbook" was, quite literally, just his lecture
powerpoints with random gaps in sentences.

During lectures we had to fill in the blanks as the slides came up, or else
we'd have no idea what was going on because he used his own terms and names
for pretty much everything he was talking about.

~~~
ncr100
Wow that sounds like an insulting educational experience.

As if the teacher was really teaching "How To Be A Jerk." or "How to Copy And
Paste."

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grandalf
I had a math prof in college who would create a custom textbook for each class
week by week in latex... it was amazing.

~~~
cowsandmilk
I had a couple professors in college that created their own textbooks for
teaching and didn't charge students for them.

Some of them were good, but some were obviously poorly edited and explanations
were identical to lectures.

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aet
Last I heard you couldn't "force" a tenured professor to do anything. Dismiss
over a text book? laughable

~~~
dougmccune
51% of Cal State Fullerton profs are adjuncts [1], so I'd assume this
professor can be fired fairly easily.

[1] [http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/california-state-
univ...](http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/california-state-university-
fullerton/academic-life/faculty-composition/)

~~~
theOnliest
I had the same thought, but he appears to be tenured (has taught there 9
years, and is an associate, rather than assistant, professor):
[http://math.fullerton.edu/people/full-time-
faculty/item/bour...](http://math.fullerton.edu/people/full-time-
faculty/item/bourget-alain)

~~~
dougmccune
Thanks for digging, I was surprised his employment type wasn't mentioned in
the article, since it seems like it would play such a huge role in this.

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fiveoak
For anyone wondering since I didn't see it in the article, it seems like the
$76 book is "Introduction to Linear Algebra" by Gilbert Strang. Not sure about
the free book though.

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micwawa
I'm currently teaching out of Stewart because that's what the general
curriculum for our department is. Stewart died an insanely rich man, and I'm
sure will keep making slight modification of his calculus textbook from the
grave.

However, I tell my students in the syllabus, which I post online well before
the class starts, that calculus is centuries old and that they are not
required to pay through the nose for this textbook. I regularly go out of my
way to facilitate using older textbooks.

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rz2k
Hmm:

>“You acted contrary to department policy when you did not use the single
assigned textbook for MATH 250B sections,” the school reprimand states.

Universities may be large institutions that require many decisions to be put
on autopilot with official policies, but this issue seems like a clear example
of something that is not unimportant enough to be handled with use of "policy"
as a magic word. As colleagues that hopefully possess some intellectual
sophistication, they should at a minimum explain their interpretation of the
relevant policies and why their impact is positive, or alternately explain why
the policy is worth preserving in the face of producing a worse outcome in
this specific instance.

Considering that according to the article, the past two governors of the state
for the entire university system have pushed toward a greater attention to
textbook prices, it seems even less likely that a department can get away with
undermining the ethical standards of the American Association of University
Professors by using the word "policy" like some talisman.

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spike021
This is normal at my school as well.. Typically if I bought everything on the
syllabi of the courses I'm taking, my bill would easily be greater than $300.
Probably even closer to $500. Pretty much books that cost anywhere from
$150-250 or so each, with even used copies at least half if not more of the
price for a new copy.

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glitcher
>However, with a multi-section course, which is the case in Bourget’s
situation, “the individual (faculty member) would have to work with the other
people ... to make the best decision together on what those materials would
be,”

What exactly do they mean by multi-section?

In college I had a very large, expensive calculus book that covered 3
semesters of calc classes. In that case I appreciated the uniformity of using
one mandated textbook.

But if that is not what they meant by "mulit-section" then I question why such
strict enforcement.

By and large most college textbook requirements do feel like a scam, and it
only seems to be getting worse over the years.

~~~
siegelzero
Multi-section most likely means that there are several different sections of
the same course running simultaneously. In addition, there are probably
different professors teaching these sections.

I can understand part of the argument here - it would be important to maintain
consistency among the different sections, so that students who take the class
from Professor A learn basically the same material as students who take
Professor B. That being said, the material presented in a low-level class like
this hasn't changed in a long time, so any book should suffice.

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bsder
I did have a professor that taught the class with the textbook he wrote. To
prove that he believed in the book and not the revenue, he donated the
royalties from our class from the book into the student fund.

~~~
micwawa
Any professor who understands the first thing about marketing and adoption
should do this. Jack Lee taught me smooth manifolds out of his own book that
he gave to us for free. 10 years later, I'm teaching out of that book, so my
students are paying for it.

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ivan_ah
> soaring textbook prices

Yeah textbook prices are really out of order --- the calculus text at my
university is $130+, which is just insane.

<selfplug>Anyone interested in a cheaper option for mechanics + calculus
should check out my text:
[http://noBSgui.de/to/MATHandPHYSICS/](http://noBSgui.de/to/MATHandPHYSICS/)
</selfplug>

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imaginenore
Students should pitch in for one copy, scan it, make a PDF.

And then just to be a dick, post it online on some Chinese/Russian server and
email the link to the professor anonymously.

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imaginenore
I wonder what stops a professor of a required class to charge $1,800 per book.
Or $18,000.

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jsprogrammer
It's probably past time to be recording all audio and as much video as
possible when you are not in your home.

