Professors Lose Royalties to Gain Students’ Trust
Posted on May 30, 2008
Filed Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Mike Dang
Students already pay faculty salaries with hefty tuition checks, so should profs be allowed to squeeze another $100 out of students by requiring them to buy a book the professor penned? One school doesn’t think so, according to the Daily Utah Chronicle. The University of Utah’s Academic Senate recently amended the Faculty Code of Rights and Responsibilities to prohibit employees from receiving royalties when students are asked to buy faculty-written books for their courses. The president of the senate said they didn’t want students to think the teacher was assigning something for personal profit. Some faculty members argued royalties from the books are minimal, and others suggested teachers’ cuts should be collected and donated to charity.
According to the Federation of State PIRGs students spend about $900 a year on textbooks. With students scrambling around to find used books, maybe this debate should move on to what professors and college administrations can do to make textbooks more affordable. They can worry about cracking the bestseller lists later.
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