Textbooks aren’t cheap. And when they are required by the instructor, that makes students feel even worse.
College students pay an exorbitant amount of tuition to attend elite private schools, and on top of that is the cost of books and materials. In many courses, assigned textbooks often turn out to be unnecessary expenses, used only once or twice, with a price tag exceeding $100? In some cases, professors even author their own textbooks and make them required for their courses.
Where does the money that students pay for these required materials go? In some cases, right back into the pockets of the professors who made those books mandatory. Something about that just makes my skin crawl.
Students in the Miami Herbert Business School know all too well about situations like this with CyberText and other digital simulations. The issue with these types of assignments is that they are often mandatory and created by the designer of the class. If you want to make sure you receive a good grade, you need to pay for this additional assignment.
The same thing can happen with professors and textbooks. If I’m taking the class specifically for the professor, I’m already spending my time and money to have them teach me.
“We pay for courses taught by wise professors thinking we’ve paid to receive nuggets of their knowledge,” said an anonymous student studying marine science. “So when a professor’s required course reading ends up being a book they wrote, and the proceeds of purchasing that book go back to their own pockets, it seems like it’s a bit of a rip-off. Why can’t they share the wisdom from their book during class time? Isn’t that what we already paid for?”
She is not the only student who feels jaded by this situation.
“I don’t think it is ethical for professors to make mandatory material for the class so that the money goes back into the professors’ pockets. It feels like they have a monopoly or are using the system,” said senior engineering student Koa Wong. “I respect the grind, but the price for textbooks is absurdly high. I have had a class in the past where there are multiple errors in equations in each chapter, yet the professor assigns the textbook, which is his own.”
Wong is one of many students who experienced firsthand how professors manipulate their coursework for their personal value. Wong acknowledged that this situation might push students to seek alternative resources, such as free PDFs, to bypass purchasing the textbook. However, one could argue that a textbook written by the professor is the best resource for the class, as having the author as the instructor offers valuable insights.
Sam Angell, a junior studying sports and facilities management at the University of Minnesota falls somewhere in the middle of this debate. “I think if professors are truly putting the best materials forward for students, and it happens to be their own textbook, fine. But pushing mandatory materials that are only putting money into their pockets needs to be looked into.”
A senior in the Miami Herbert Business school, Dan Bennett, feels similarly. “I generally am able to see both sides of the argument. On the one hand, materials created by the professor would theoretically offer higher quality of resources than fully outsourcing to another company. However, the fact that the professor is profiting further from the sale of this required material is the issue I have personally. It feels ethically questionable at best for a professor to force students to purchase something which will directly give them a monetary kickback particularly as students are paying extremely high tuition to be enrolled in the professor’s class in the first place”
There are many professors who agree with students questioning the ethics of assigning their own material. Jeff Erikson, a computer science teacher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, argued that if a professor’s textbook is that good, plenty of other students from all over the country will buy it.
“This is a matter of considerable debate, but I fall squarely in the no camp. Requiring my students to purchase a textbook from which I earn royalties would be unequivocally unethical, unless I took concrete action to offset the conflict of interest,” said Erikson.
Recently, the University of Miami has implemented the ’Canes Course Pack, where students pay a flat fee of $400 per semester for all of their books and class materials. But, in classic Miami fashion, it often does not cover extra things like digital simulation and projects or case studies. This program is often far more expensive for students than spending money on books out of pocket. I couldn’t have opted out faster.
For the students who have opted into the ’Canes Course Pack, the reality of this ethical debate somewhat misses them, but for those of us who are paying per class, this hits close to home.
Several University of Miami professors across a variety of academic disciplines declined to provide a comment when asked about this situation.
Not only am I against the additional payment of a professor’s personal material, but I ultimately find myself thinking less of the professor and the class as a result. If a professor feels so strongly that their content is essential for the class that they teach then they can provide a free version to the students paying their salaries.
Students should never bear the additional expense of a teacher’s personal materials, as it presents a clear ethical dilemma in the commercialization of education.
