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 Monday, May 3, 2004
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[This comment originally appeared on my blog, #328, on April 26, 2004.]
Last week in La Voz, our student newspaper, a colleague who serves on the Academic Senate declared that it was a conflict of interest for any faculty member to assign their own textbook to their own classes. Here's the passage from page 5 of the April 19, 2004 edition.
Senator Constance Cole said that it is always unethical for professors to benefit professionally and financially from assigning their own texts in their courses.
"We owe it to them to use a different source," she said of students. "You're already paid for teaching. You shouldn't double your profit by using your own book."
[The full news article hasn't been archived yet, so I can't link to it right now. Above quote added on April 27, 2004.]
The general tenor of the discussion implied that faculty were exploiting students by making them read their own textbooks and reaping huge profits. This plays into a current controversy on campus about the cost of textbooks sold through the bookstore. But I want to focus strictly on the notion that it's ethically wrong for a scholar to assign his own intellectual work to students. There's a part of me that struggles to see this as any kind of legitimate position. But since I can imagine circumstances where a faculty member would self-publish material and then charge exorbitant prices for those materials, there's room for ethical debate here.
To start with, I'll argue from personal example. In 1996, HarperCollinsCollegePublishers published my textbook Experiences. The idea for this textbook first developed about 1986 when I found no satisfactory readers for our "English 100b" course. I toyed with the idea of developing a reader and wrote a list of possible topics for the readings. While I clipped articles that fit my topics, I really didn't get serious about the project until after 1990. I first proposed collaborating with two colleagues, but we couldn't find common ground. Then, as various publisher's reps came to the office, asking if I was working on anything, I'd mention my textbook idea. Several encouraged me to prepare a prospectus. I finally did that and sent it off to six publishers whose reps had indicated interest. Four of the publishers sent it out for review. Two responded positively, though one wanted a second round of reviews. I signed a contract with Harper Collins and started serious work on the manuscript, testing lessons and readings in my classes as I went. I worked actively on the book from 1991 to 1995--editors changed three times during this process, which resulted in a year's delay in publication. It appeared late in 1995 with a 1996 publication date.
The contract provided a good advance for a first book, one that was not earned back by sales. I would use the book whenever I taught "English 100b" because it was the best book available for the course and I knew the material inside out. I would teach two sections of this course each year, with a total of 50 students. The contract provided a 12% royalty on each book, which initially sold for about $25. That meant that in a given year I would earn $150 from my own students, a sum that I never saw since it was simply credited against my advance. But even if I taught my entire load with this course and sold 200 books, I'd make $600 for the year. As a senior faculty member, my total yearly income is now over $100,000, including summer teaching. The only way I could earn significant income from a textbook would be if OTHER faculty adopted it. The notion that a faculty member is ripping students off, $3 at a time, is laughable. What the publisher is doing with the other $22 is worth a different conversation.
The book is now out-of-print. I've written another textbook which is now looking for a publisher. So last fall, I used part of my reader and part of my new text with my "English 100b" class. The bookstore sold the writing book which was produced at our Print Shop. Because both Longman's (they bought up HarperCollins just as my reader came out) and the bookstore would not risk a copyright violation, I provided xeroxes from the reader to students at cost. The results? Normally the class is capped at 25. I admitted 30. 28 completed the course. 24 passed the Writing Assessment Test outright. Three others missed by one point and successfully appealed. That means 27 of the 28 completers became elibible for First-Year Composition in a course that relied entirely on my own text material from which I received nothing, not even the $3 credit against royalties. So what's the ethical issue?
I'm a member of the "TYCA" Teacher-Scholar Committee. We are trying to expand the notion of scholarship for two-year college faculty. Certainly one significant, and worthy, form of scholarship is writing and publishing a textbook in your field. Spending 4 to 6 years developing a textbook and getting it reviewed positively by your peers and having a commercial publisher take it to press seems a laudable effort, something we should encourage all community college professors to do.
Professors who have thought through their field and their courses clearly enough to succeed in publishing a textbook should be particularly effective in those classes. How would students not benefit from a professor working with material he or she knows thoroughly and feels committed to?
Where's the ethical problem?
| Posted by jocalo@a... on 5/3/04; 2:00:18 PM |
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