If a doctor tells their patients to buy medicine from a pharmacy that the doctor co-owns, no one would argue that they doctor wasn’t morally wrong. There would be an outcry and that doctor would lose credibility. But every semester professors do the exact thing to students that take their classes; professors who write textbooks and then require their students to buy the textbooks they have written.

I understand that professors need the money from the royalties they earn from their textbooks. It is hard to get by today on only one salary, things are very expensive and I sympathize because I know that first-hand because I’m a student. But I think it’s more than questionable to get royalties from students that are already paying their professors through their tuition.

I am not saying that professors shouldn’t write textbooks either. I believe that the knowledge they have should be shared — and yes for a little money. We are a capitalistic society after all and I don’t believe anything is truly free.  I believe in hard work and dedication and reaping the rewards from it.  Professors can charge other students to use their textbooks, but not their own students.

I also realize why professors like to use textbooks. They help keep things organized and cohesive, especially in big, entry-level classes. Textbooks help keep everyone on the same page. Textbooks also help students control their own learning — to some extent. It gives students the responsibility that is learned in college to become a functioning adult. 

So overall, textbooks are not bad. You could say they are a necessary evil. But what’s not necessary is forcing students to help pay a professor’s supplemental income. 

We all know that textbooks are overpriced. Why do you need to pay $150 for a new math textbook when all the concepts are the same but a word or two has been moved around in the text on the third page in the second chapter? But the prices of textbooks is a different subject. 

Iowa State University boasts that we have professors who are experts in their fields, professors who have written textbooks on the subjects that they teach. I don’t know about anyone else, but as a student I feel that I have come to Iowa State University to gain an education from those experts. I pay a lot in tuition to learn, so if I wanted to be taught just from a textbook that someone from Iowa State University wrote, I could go to a community college that offered the classes I need and use the same textbook for much less.

The professors that are renowned in their fields should teach a lecture style class. For example, I have one professor who doesn’t require textbooks in any of the classes he teaches. He writes down important names and terms on the board and they are accompanied by slides with pictures regarding those names and terms. He then gives verbal lectures that students take notes over. After every lecture, students then take six-point quizzes over each lecture. I have a lot of respect for this professor. He knows his subject very well and has an organized system of teaching students. He gives points for attendance, which are the six-point quizzes, he makes students review what was covered in class and all of the test material comes from those lectures as well.  I also know that this works in big lecture hall settings. 

If a professor wrote a textbook with someone else, that professor still has the legal rights to the book and can use material that they have written to teach.  I have another professor who gave us his book online for free.  Everything that we need to know for that class is on a website that he made just for his classes.

There really are no good reasons as to why professors make their students pay royalties. Students are taken advantage of because of the relationship of power between professors and students. If you don’t take a certain class, you won’t graduate. Sometimes you can only take a class with a certain professor to fulfill a graduation requirement, and for someone to take advantage of a student who is already paying so much to be there in the first place is wrong.

Unless people start caring, professors and students alike, things will not change. Professors earning textbook royalties from students will continue to be a problem unless it is spoken out against.