Hmmm… I would question the ethics of both sides there. If it is true the department required a text for no other reason than to enrich the bookstore (but I doubt that…how does the bookstore benefit when it has not only to return students’ money but pay to ship the unused books back to the publisher?), then obviously that’s unethical. If the professor is asking students to buy a required text and then telling them, sotto voce, to return it and get a refund because he has some other idea about how the course should be run, that’s a bit stinky, too.

If the department requires a specific text, there’s probably a reason for it, and that reason would have more to do with academic rigor and integrity and less to do with some sort of sweetheart deal with the campus bookstore. So when a professor writes a syllabus that says she’s requiring the text (syllabi generally have to be filed with the department, and many departmental chairs review them each semester) when in fact she has no intention of using it, she’s undermining the program’s integrity and she’s lying to her colleagues.

The undermining goes further than is evident on the surface. Every few years, accredited schools undergo audits and reviews by their regional and national accrediting organizations. These reviews invariably include rigorous demands that the school show how it evaluates the quality and effectiveness of its own programs and the achievement of its students. Course syllabi are submitted as part of this process. So, if professors routinely are ignoring the requirements printed in their syllabi, then they are deceiving the accrediting agencies — oh, let’s be fair: they’re lying — and the school’s accreditation is a worthless sham.

The syllabus is a contract between the institution and the students. If I were a graduate of such a college and I could actually prove that this practice was widespread and routine, I would report it to the school’s accrediting agencies.

Textbooks are surprisingly profitable. I still earn a small royalty on the Essential Feature, even though it’s long out of date. Writing a text that gets widely accepted for those monster lower-division courses that fill gen-ed requirements all over the country can go a long way toward funding your retirement. However, if it drops off the market after two or three years because all the copies are being recirculated in campus bookstores, then you’ll be trying to live on Social Security.

That said, there’s really little excuse to charge $80 for a freshman comp book — that’s the price of a new copy of Seyler’s Read, Reason, Write. Exc-y-ooze me??? This thing is an ordinary paperback, with no arcane knowledge and no expensive graphics. True, they probably had to pay reprint fees for some (but I’ll bet not all) of the 100 or so short articles they reproduced (some of them are in the public domain). I’ve done anthologies…it doesn’t cost 80 bucks a copy to buy reprint rights for stuff like this. No question about it: some textbooks (not all) rip off the student.

Also, many depts have custom texts, which have no value outside the institution. This is a money-maker for the dept. Before you start screaming, realize that this pays for things like xeroxing exams for students in this era of budget cuts.

Often adjunct faculty at community colleges are unaware that campus bookstores have exploitive policies, such as refusing to take unused books back after a certain date. The instructor may not have known that revising the course in midstream would cost the students so much.

My son finished up this past semester with a Power Plant Tech AAS degree, now if only there were jobs out there ($25-$35/hr possible.). At least, he’s debt free.

Cheers to 2010!

Immediate post-graduate plans? Travel around the country in an RV with a friend. LOL – You can only guide them so much! If that actually happens, hopefully he’ll gain lots of story ideas for his eventual fame and fortune in Tinsel Town.

I think two years in community college is the best advice of all!