What a sacrifice! Ian Ayres gets to write a self-aggrandizing article in the New York Times, all for the low, low price of $11.

Gee, and here I thought that my professors were bright and hardworking folks because their names appeared on my textbooks. Silly me. They didn't write those textbooks so they could be better professors - it was all just a big scam! I smell a class action suit in the pipe. Perhaps Professor Ayres could represent us. The retainer agreement will pay him $11 after recouping his costs - and then we'll pressure him into giving it back to us.

Seriously, who cares. As someone who went to a mid-tier lawschool (1) I was impressed that my professors knew the subjects they were teaching well enough to write casebooks and treatises on them; and (2) I knew they weren't millionaires. If I was going to pay a royalty to someone, I'm glad it was them.

Actually, it is $11 per student, which in a first-year class could amount to a fair amount of money. I had a professor do the same thing when I was in school (only donating the dollars to a charity -- I think our summer fellowship program -- instead of refunding them) and it probably cost him several hundred dollars per semester.

Is this required? No, because as Eugene and everyone else recognizes, the conflict such as it is should hardly disable a professor from using his or her own work in class. But it was a welcome gesture nonetheless.

I had two professors in undergrad who assigned their own books. Both effectively declined royalties. One actually gave students a crisp $5 bill on the first day of class as reimbursement. The other wrote a check for his royalty amount times the number of students in the class to the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity.

It's a little different ball game in law school, I think, especially for casebooks, where there are for many classes, maybe 2 or 3 options out there.

Gene hit the nail right on the head. I had Professor Ayres for contracts, and he was quite good. That said, most of what he has written about (particularly in the New York Times) is trivial. This piece is not merely trivial; it screams out "hey, look at me, I'm a good guy and I need validation."

"The state ethics commission has ruled that assigning books for which we'll receive royalties is abuse of our position of authority."
But it's not. If I wanted to abuse my (dubious!) "authority" for self-enrichment, I'd make students buy me scotch, or whatnot. I assign books based on whether I think they serve course needs, and right or wrong, that's my call, not anyone else's. If in my judgement, the most suitable textbook is my own, which would probably be why I produced one in the first place, that's the proper thing for me to order. Denying me the royalty thus serves no purpose but to be punitive. It's presumably ok for me to earn royalties if a colleague orders the book. I see no reason why I should not. As commenter Cecilius points out above, students should find it impressive that they have a prof expert enough to produce a publishable textbook in the first place, and they'll be paying royalties to someone no matter what. There is no "conflict of interest" - so the State's heavy-handed attempt to solve the non-problem is likely pandering to yahoo concerns about unscrupulous profs, etc.

A greater danger may be that other professors on faculty feel obligated to assign a book written by a colleague. I know this happens, even when they don't believe it is the best book. (O.K., I know of one such case).

At least one medical school guards against this conflict by prohibitting the assignment of a text that is written by a faculty member and by banning such books from the school bookstore. In at least one case, that means that students have difficulty getting access to one of the best reference books, widely used at other schools.

A number of my professors during school authored textbooks in the area that they were teaching. It was one of the reasons I chose the school that I did. I would have been highly suspicious of a professor who didn't assign a textbook he/she authored (relevant to the course). At least I can't think of a good reason why a professor wouldn't assign his/her own text. Modesty? Puh-leeze. Lucre? None of my professors seemed poor, but neither were they wealthy. I don't think the modest royalties impacted them one way or another. However, I can come to lots of bad reasons why a professor wouldn't assign his/her text.

I suppose things might be different in law, but in disciplines like mathematics the worst part of the professor's-own-book is the lack of intellectual diversity.

Say I'm teaching a course on linear algebra and multivariate calculus (you remember those from undergrad, right?) I have a very well-defined point of view on the material, which I might write into a textbook. However, if I choose that selfsame textbook as the text for the course then my students have been deprived of another vantage on the material. I lecture from my viewpoint and the book repeats it. If that's not the best viewpoint for a given student, so much the worse for him.

On the other hand, if I pick a text by another author with a slightly different approach -- albeit one I'm not intellectually opposed to -- then students who find the approach from my lectures might be able to learn the material from the text, or maybe by putting the two together they'll be more enlightened and can pick and choose which approach works best for them in various situations.

Just curious if anyone knows the economics of textbook publishing? Comparing textbook buying ten years ago to now, I seem to recall many more used books being available, and a smaller gap between the cost to buy (new or used) and the trade-in value. Now it seems like the books I'm buying are consistently: over $120; not available used; and not accepted for buyback. I've switched to Half.com for all my purchases and sales, and am usually able to sell my books there for close to what I paid there a semester earlier, minus their commission. (I realize that this behaviour may be driving the lack of used books and buybacks - still, maybe if enough people do it we'll force a change in the business model!)

One other piece of anecdotal evidence - textbook sales is considered a feeder job for pharmaceutical sales. So if doctors choose what to prescribe based on who takes them golfing and out to dinner, who are the textbook sellers treating like this? I doubt professors are making their decisions that way; maybe they just don't realize the cost implications of changing the book every two years.

Any answers would be appreciated!

Aeon:

Thanks for the info. That strengthens my conclusion that we do have an economic ripoff going on. When you see prices and royalties soar above market rates, you are seeing market power being exercised. That part of Ayres's op-ed I agree with. The students are a captive market and they're being squeezed.

I've just started dental school and this is the first time I've ever had a professor using the textbook he wrote - our histology teacher is Dr. Gartner and we're using Gartner &Hiatt's histology text and atlas. I can hardly object since they're the same books I used in college and that my brother used in medical school. I'm actually kind of excited that we're going to be taught by the guy who wrote the books. Ironically when I took a histology course at a different school the teacher said that in order to save us money instead of using the same atlas and textbook combination that pretty much everyone uses (presumably gartner &hiat) she was going to assign us a combined atlas/textbook so we only had to buy one book. So while everyone else saved money with buying only one book I wound up with three.

Avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

It's interesting that you believe students recieve a greater benefit by having a book that "holds" the same point of view as the professor. In physics (my field) it is fairly clear that having access to distinct points of view while learning a subject is clearly beneficial. That it might not be so in other fields is something I had not considered but now that you mention it I can see there would be differences. In particular in physics there is less chance of conflict of opinion on the correctness of the subject, while learning several distinct ways of approaching the same problem can be essential.

I don't find Eugene's defense of making money from assigning his book persuasive.

He says "the conflict of interest is illusory." It is probably more proper to say that the conflict is real, but likely insignificant. If Eugene truly was assigning the best book available and is not influenced by his added income from the sales, he should feel comfortable giving up the added income.

Although he probably did not write the book for the added income, he did probably write it for the added noteriety. And while he probably does not conciously assign his own book for profit rather than as the best material available, human beings commonly adjust their reasoning to match their self-interest.

I first encountered this as a freshman undergrad. My economics assistant professor -- a young, enthusiastic guy and an excellent teacher -- had edited a small paperback volume of topical economics essays. It was published by a tiny academic publisher and sold for about ten bucks (new). I think he made about 50 cents per copy.

His solution? He invited the entire class to his apartment for dinner, splitting the class in three because his small Pasadena apartment simply couldn't accommodate more.

It may not be workable with a law school lecture class of 150, but the general point remains true: recognize the perceived conflict, address it, and try to have some fun by coming up with a creative solution. I've forgotten what other classes I had that semester, but I have fond memories of that intro to economics and that rubbery chicken with melted American cheese dinner.

On the other hand, I had a class in the late 1990s in which the professor assigned a casebook written in the early 1980s. The professor in question was not one of the casebook authors, but for a variety of reasons, it is possible (but very unlikely) that he had a financial interest in the books. A more likely motivation was that the professor and the authors were friends. But regardless of the motivations, I wound up learning antitrust from a casebook that was 15 years out of date.

The conflict of interests involved
is illusory only if one's ear
is already made out of tin.
This dubious practice in natural sciences
(in undegraduate education) is
fairly widespread, and the students
exploited have no real recourse.
It's rather obvious that the refund of
royalties generated by the author's
text-books asignement power should be both
ethical and prudential.

it struck me that the conflict of interest is illusory

You know, I've done a modest amount of ethics work, and I find that most people faced with a conflict of interest issue feel that way.

Many feel that insigificant amounts of money start at six or seven figures.

I think you've breached a great topic, one that you need to revisit from the perspective of students as clients. It makes sense that a professor owes a student at least the duty an attorney owes a client. Would an extra $1,100.00 profit every four months be ok or not? When and when not?

What about partners or trustees or fiduciaries? A bank taking an undisclosed profit? A bank requiring you to use a particular check printing service -- after all, you need checks and someone is going to get the check. IBM selling punch cards?

Lots of great things to analyze here.

As an undergrad, every one of my professors who used their own book paid royalties back to the students in cash. Most stated the main reason they did this was that they thought the prices of textbooks was too high. Giving the royalties back to the students was a way to reduce the cost of textbooks to a more reasonable value.

An equal number of professors didn't have published textbooks but had a collected set of notes they photocopied and sold at the bookstore. The content was comparable to a hardbound, published book at about 20% of the price.

It's also possible that professors feel guilty about profiting at the expense of students with much less liquid cash. That was certainly true for me. I had practically no money in support from my parents so I had to make my Stafford loan money last to pay for books, food, and rent for the semester. The higher the book prices, the more 99 cent ramen noodles I had to eat to balance it out.

And, by the way, my Comparative Politics prof assigned her own book, and has failed to compensate the class in any manner.

That's probably, though, due to the fact that it's paperback and only about 20 bucks.

It's also a pretty good book.

I should point out that any prep time saved by writing their own text books is many times over lost through the time spent in writing and maintaining a case book for law school. Eugene pointed at the thousands of hours involved.

There are several reasons for this. First, in many subjects, there are numerous relevant cases from which to pick. You have to pick the best ones to illustrate your points, and then edit them accordingly. They may not be the leading case in some subjects, just good ones to teach from. Add to this, that the text book writer must read a whole lot of cases just so he can be expert enough to do the job right. And then he needs to keep up on the current cases so he can issue supplements (and ultimately new revisions) keeping them accurate. Both are extremely time consuming (of someone's time - not necessarily the text book writers', as I have been drafted a couple of times).

I should add that my introduction here was by a prof who used his seminar classes to help write his text books. He would assign a paper (instead of giving a final), and most in the class would pick a topic. But for those of us who couldn't decide on a topic, or were more adventuresome, he would assign a chapter in his book. One benefit was that if you did a decent job, it was a guaranteed "A". But it was a lot more work. On the two chapters I initially wrote, I worked with him through the next summer constantly revising what I had originally done.

Yes, I see the irony in telling Professor Volokh that his students pay him to "tech" them.

Professor Skoble,

Law professors are not above the law. You saying that you think state ethics commission was wrong does not make the ethics commission wrong. And if that commission covers your state, I hope they prosecute you.

As a public employee, I would be forbidden to 1) profit from a book I wrote using government time or resources (including my unlimited-use Lexis account); and 2) do business with my own office even if I wrote a book on my own time.

The state figures that a salary is the government employee's reward for work done on government time with government resources. If Professor Skoble doesn't like that deal, he should find another job. But the same rules that apply to government employees like me should apply to government employees at law schools.

Also, Professor Skoble, did you use any resources that the students help pay for to write the book? Your office? Your computer? Your staff? Your research time? If so, the students already made their contribution. They shouldn't have to pay twice. You shouldn't collect twice.

I put “research time” into the list because students subsidize the research of professors. Professors have the paid "summers off" and paid sabbaticals in part so they can conduct research. My professors often blocked off time during the school year for research. So when professor Susan J. Behrens argued in a 9/19/05 NYT letter that her time writing the book was "unpaid," she was, to put it mildly, coloring the facts (unless she was on unpaid leave for that time, in which case, I apologize in advance to the professor).

I'm not convinced by Volokh's argument. Regardless of my motivations for selecting a text, if I profit from assigning it then I now have an interest in the selection other than providing the best instruction I can to the students. As Volokh pointed out, I might believe that my book is the best and so, for me, I see no conflict. But that doesn't remove the fact that I have two interests in mind: making money and educating students. These are not always orthogonal, and the "making money" vector may be rather short, but neither are they always parallel.

What about this situation: a botany professor owns (or co-owns) a local arboretum that is open to the public for a small admission charge which includes guided tours -- the professor himself conducts these tours on the weekends (and the university knows of his secondary employment, so nothing is being hidden). In the professor's Botany 101 class he assigns a field trip to the arboretum and meets the students just inside the gate. Of course, to get inside they need to pay the admission fee, of which a (small) part goes to the income of the professor.

The professor clearly has an interest in getting more people to his arboretum. He also has an interest in providing quality instruction to the students. The two interests are not necessarily perfectly aligned, and when not you have a conflict. The conflict does not go away just because it doesn't seem to be that important.

Apparently I need to defend myself from the Public_Defender, who is so put off by my position that he or she is hoping for my prosecution! 1, I do teach at a state school. 2, there is a state ethics board from which I had to obtain clearance, although I'm evidently in a different state than commenter Brophy, since the rules are different. 3, your conception of "working on the company's time" doesn't apply in an academic context. I'm in my office 40-50 hours a week, but I'm not contractually obliged to be here anything close to that. It's only "company time" during my scheduled teaching and office hours. But rather than spend the rest of the time watching TV, I spend it doing research, which indeed the college encourages me to do, and which is why they provide me with office space and a computer in the first place. As another commenter noted, the school and the students benefit when the faculty are productive scholars, and scholarship is both actively encouraged by the college, and seen as impressive by the students. So the idea that profs who write books are scamming unless they were on unpaid leave is nonsense. Sue Behrens' point is indeed correct - we don't get paid extra to do research. It's an additional burden we take on because we choose to. (Furthermore, and I realize this is slightly ad hoc, but my _current_ students did not "already pay for" my time writing the book. The students who were enrolled when I started the project had graduated by the time the book was actually published.)
Everyone who produces a book gets some financial reward. Why is it ok for the publisher, distributor, and bookstore all to make money off a work, yet not ok for the author or editor? I'm entitled to my (tiny) royalty payment no matter who buys the book. Regarding my own students, this is only a conflict of interest if I know my book is crap, and make them buy it anyway so I can cash in. Eugene's point, and mine, is that anyone who produces a textbook will be of the opinion (shared by a publisher) that that textbook is good and appropriate and contributes something to the educational process. If there had been another book I found entirely adequate to my classroom needs, I'd use it, and not have bothered to make my own.

I realize that this varies from college to college, but technically, no, I'm not _required_ to publish anything. But it is encouraged, and of course it certainly helps in promotion and tenure. I agree that part of our salary is intended to cover class prep time, but we're not literally paid to do research or compile textbooks, that's above and beyond the call of duty. As to your argument that my students have already paid me for the book via their tuition, remember that I teach at a state college, so you could just as well argue that all taxpayers in the state have paid me -- am I not entitled to the royalties from _any_ purchase of my books in this state?
As to my opinion being biased, as Eugene noted, our opinions are only "biased" in the sense that we all make judgements about course content and about which materials will best serve that content. It's missing the point to say "he prefers his own book -- that's because he's biased." The reason for undertaking to produce a textbook in the first place is dissatisfaction with the available textbooks. So I would have antecedently decided that the other books were inadequate, prior to the existence of my own, hence my preference for my own isn't "bias" in any objectionable sense.

You're starting to get nasty, and you're pseudonymous, so I think this will be my last reply.
Your position means that no college professor (except at Hillsdale) is entitled to royalties from book sales, period. I think you're wrong.
You're correct that, in practice, most profs need to publish in order to get tenured and promoted, and in many cases to get an appointment in the first place. But that's neither here nor there. I'm not "arguably" off the clock, I'm literally off the clock. I am _required_ to be in my classroom during assigned teaching hours, and in my office during scheduled office hours. Other times, I'm free to go home. Sounds like you're saying that if I went home and wrote my books, I'd be entitled to my royalties, but if I stay in my office at the collge to write my books, I'm not. That distinction seems to be arbitrary and without substance - and if accepted, would create an incentive for all profs to write at home rather than at school, meaning they'd be _less_ accessible to their students and colleagues. Seems to me the college would want profs to have the opposite incentive, that it's better for everyone if the faculty maintain a presence on campus. And indeed that's surely why any of us needs an office -- to give us an incentive to do our supererogatory work on campus. If it were only a matter of having a place to meet students 2 or 3 hours a week, we could have small cubicles or shared office space or assigned library carrels. But they give us offices with desks, bookshelves, computers. Why? To encourage us to stay on campus when we're doing our research and writing. Anyway, I bought my home computer with salary paid by the taxpayers, so on your argument I'm not entitled to royalties no matter where I write. Seems to me that the logic runs the other way: that I _am_ entitled to the royalties whether I write at home or at work. Writing at the office means I am more engaged with campus life, more accessible to the students, more available to colleagues. Do you think the incentive-structure should be otherwise?
As to your final point, before you complain that 50 hours a week is unimpressive by lawyer standards, remember that my salary is similarly unimpressive by lawyer standards. But in any case, my point wasn't to impress you with how much I work - I was simply distinguishing between the number of hours I'm literally required to sit at my desk (hardly any) from the number of hours I actually work (a lot).

Honorable intent, pure motive, and trivial amounts of money have never been sufficient justification. This stinks.

John Steele -- I'm afraid that I really don't understand your comment. Specifically, what is the rent that textbook publishers are seeking, and in what way are their prices supra-competitive?

John Steele -- I think you're operating from some incorrect assumptions (at least based on my own experience working for one academic publisher):

1. By far, the main determinant of the price of any book is the number of copies that the publisher thinks it can realistically sell. Most publishers know from experience approximately how many copies of a given text they will sell. They then take their projected costs (acquisition costs, wholesale discounts, editing and design costs, advertising/marketing costs, and distribution costs, as well as the bare cost of getting the thing printed), add a little (very little) for overhead and a return on investment, and divide the sum by the number of copies they expect to sell. That's why a 500-pp. reference book published by Oxford U. Press will sell for a third of the price of a 200-pp. reprint of a 19th-century treatise by the Law Book Exchange. It's not based (in any substantial way) on the number of pages or size of royalties. It's based on the number of copies that can be sold, and it's capped by the "ouch" factor as reported back by sales reps.

A lot of authors used to complain to us (and other publishers) that if we charged less, we would sell enough additional copies to more than make up for the lower return on each unit. Sounds good. But many a publisher has gone into the red trying to put it into practice. The market for most upper-level texts is simply not that big, regardless of the price. The market size is a given, the costs are a given (although more and more publishers have been skimping on editing and typesetting, shifting those responsibilities to authors, their computers, and their loyal secretaries), and so the price has to move accordingly.

Therefore, I believe the statement that "the prices are so much higher than their cost, than competitively priced books of similar length, etc." is incorrect. Thus, this is not a basis for concluding that the prices are supra-competitive.

2. Royalties in this area of publishing are not big. When you're considering royalties, you need to look not at the portion of each book's price that goes to the author, but at the total amount paid by the publisher to the author (i.e., the acquisition cost). Most academic authors receive a few thousand dollars in exchange for the "privilege" of having a book published. This is peanuts when compared to the amount of brains and time that goes into preparing a text. The royalty amount may seem big on a per-book basis because it's being distributed over a much smaller number of books than would be, say, the royalties on Freakonomics. But in absolute terms, the amount is negligible.

3. Finally, I don't see any rent-seeking here. Upper-level textbook publishers produce a product that they market to professors. A publisher hopes that the number of professors who will choose its book, and the number of copies that will be sold for each prof's class, will meet or exceed the publisher's projections. In order to get word out on its titles, the publisher gives away review copies, mails brochures and catalogues to profs in the field, and sends sales reps to campuses and academic conferences. Profs who think the book will be useful for whatever they're teaching ask their campus bookstores to order it and assign it to whoever chooses to take the associated course. The bookstore sells what it can and returns the rest to the publisher for a refund. Where in this process is there a rent? I see a free market at every step, except perhaps for the situation where all students must take a certain course from a certain professor. And even in that situation, there aren't enough such courses that they can drive textbook pricing. (The situation is of course different for texts adopted by public school districts; I do not understand that to be the topic here.)

Just read your last post, Guest2...

I'm beginning to wonder why publishers never ask students what they think of prices?

Guest 2,

Thanks for that info, although I think we may not be in agreement on this one. I see lots of evidence of supra-competitive pricing, rent chasing, and rent dissipation in the textbooks I'm familiar with.

Guest 2:

Sure.

GAO report 05-806, the report in question.

JoseP, if I did what you suggest with my text (an anthology), I'd surely be violating copyright. The only proper procedure was to publish a text and secure permissions. Like the author or editor of any book, I'm entitled to a percentage, albeit a tiny one, of the sales. Why exactly am I entitled to royalties if a colleague (or a stranger) uses my book, but not when I do? You seem to suggest that we're all so corrupt and irresponsible that we'd order a lousy and inappropriate text just to make 5 or 10 bucks. Come on, give us a little more credit than that.

Both the Public Defender and JoseP are negelcting Eugene's (and my) observation that anyone who writes a textbook will necessarily be of the opinion that that book is the most appropriate for a course. Combine that with the facts that it is our responsibility to select books that are appropriate for a course; that profs, not deans or politicians, are in charge of textbook selection. If I've edited or authored a new textbook because I judge the extant textbooks to be inadequate, I'd be irresponsible if I _didn't_ order it. The Public Defender's analogy is, well, not analogous, since public defenders aren't in the same position relative to their law office that professors are to their students.

Penta -- Thanks for the link.

I note this conclusion, from the report's abstract: "While many factors affect textbook pricing, the increasing costs associated with developing products designed to accompany textbooks, such as CD-ROMs and other instructional supplements, best explain price increases in recent years. Publishers say they have increased investments in developing supplements in response to demand from instructors." I don't see anything nefarious about this. Instructors tell publishers they want more X, and publishers are supplying it. The author's telling the publisher his book should have more X (let's say solely because the author thinks more X will make more money for him) would not cause publishers to react; the demand has to come from the market as a whole.

Public Defender -- I often have found your comments insightful, but I have to say that, on this issue, I think you're way off.

But as to salary, based on the job announcements I've seen, most law professors (even non-tenure-track professors at schools well out of the top 40) start about where a public defender with ten years of experience makes. In the world of government lawyers, professors are very, very well-compensated. (I obviously cannot speak about the salaries of philosophy professors.)

That is similar to the federal judge compensation issue. I could get a line a mile long of people who would gladly trade their current jobs for one as a federal judge.

Interesting stuff.

I'm enjoying reading it.

And I forgot:

The professor/textbook writer then gets promoted and receives accelerated pay raises because she receives acclaim as the author of the "leading text in the discipline," a text written on University office equipment in the 28 hours in which the professor would otherwise be free to sit in a bathroom stall reading the newspaper?

I still ask the academics who read this, explain why it is OK for you to use your employer's facilities for personal profit when it would be unethical (and possibly criminal) for almost everyone else to do the same whether they are in the public or private sector.

Or do you think that non-university public and private sector employers should relax their ethical standards?

D'OH!! I meant "explain." Always use preview, always use preview, always use preview...

It's not a question of "should." It's a question of contract. A biochemist's employment contract with Pfizer does not permit him to make a profit off of what he does as part of his job with Pfizer. The PD's employment contract (however dispersed it may be across various regs) with "the people" does not permit him to run his own law practice out of the PD's office. However, the prof's employment contract with his school does permit him to keep any profits from sales of a text he wrote on school time and with school facilities.

If the school doesn't like it, it can change the terms of the contract (at least with respect to new hires). If the students don't like it, they can take their business to different profs or different schools.

There's no reason why the prof "should" have the same terms of employment as a PD or a biochemist.

But the question is should the contract of employment contain that term? Should, say, a state government permit state professors to profit from government staff and facilities, but not non-academics?

You say there are "differences." What are those differences, and why do they matter?

"But the question is should the contract of employment contain that term? Should, say, a state government permit state professors to profit from government staff and facilities, but not non-academics?"

I think the answer depends on the employment market. Presumably, in view of the current state of affairs, state governments have found that they can obtain good enough non-academic employees while not permitting such employees to keep profits from what they create with office resources, and have also found that they can't obtain good enough academic employees while imposing the same restrictions on them.

Public Defender, you imply that everything has to be exactly the same for all state employees. But that's silly. Cops get to carry firearms, state college profs cannot. Why should they get "special treatment"? Obviously, because their job is different from mine. It's true that we all work for the state govt., but the resemblance pretty much ends there. The governor gets a limo, and I don't - what's up with that? So profs can go to the dentist at 10:30, or leave early if the kid is sick, or use the office space to write a book. BFD.

Bud:

If you think that there's "one right answer" in a math class you obviously miss the point of having multiple views on the subject. With the exception of (the late, of late) Serge Lang, no mathematician would assert the existence of a unique "right" answer to all but the simplest problems. I can't imagine the situation being any different in other technical fields.

Skoble said:

Cold Warrior, you're missing my point about the hours, as did Ethesis earlier. Is this a straw man, or are you not reading me carefully? _Of course_ we have more than 12 hours a week of things we're required to do! My point has been that there's no _particular_ time or place we have to do them. Take grading papers, for example: I have to read them, write comments on them, grade them, enter the grades. But whether I do it during "regular business hours," or at night, or over the weekend is up to me.

I went back and re-read the entire thread, and I believe your characterization is correct. My apologies.

My broader point remains. I don't like instructors assigning their own texts without acknowledging at least the appearance of impropriety and taking measures (I suggested fun, creative measures) to eliminate that appearance.

And I do believe that text/casebooks that are a product of the instructor's teaching duties should be considered the intellectual property of the institution. The institution should be free to distribute the texts to students taking the class (with fees to defray the copying/publication costs only), and the institution should negotiate contracts with publishers if the textbook will be used by other institutions. If the institution profits (either in a tangible way by making money from sales, or simply by increasing its prestige), then the institution ought to give the professor a promotion or raise.

Hmm, this is too much like dealing with the target of an investigation than discussing a practice.

You aren't the target of an investigation. You aren't doing anything that violates any legal duties you have (in my opinion, this isn't legal advice). I'm not saying that you've sold your principles for $70.00 (though I know people who have sold out for less).

So, reviewing, with some white space to make things easier to read:

"whether selection should be influenced by side-profit issues." You imply that my 10-dollar profit influences my judgement in text selection.

No, no, no. Conflict of interest analysis from a legal standpoint doesn't care whether or not you are actually selling out or whether there is any influence whatsoever. It is the possibility of an influence, not the actuality.

I was assuming you had a foundation in the area. My mistake.

While I've been known to gripe about my low salary, I assure you I'm not so poor that 10 bucks is enough to make me abandon my principles.

Joke taken.

Again, remember that before I had a textbook to be biased towards, I would have had to have decided that I wasn't too happy with the existing ones. That's what prompts profs to produce their own

My general thought was that writing a book was affected more by tenure requirements, etc.

I can't recall offhand whether I said this here or at my own blog, but since 1999, I've made all of 70 bucks on my own textbook, and that includes students not at my own college.

How many copies sold? I'm amazed (no offense). At ten dollars a copy that is only seven copies.

So the idea that I keep using it because of "side-profit issues" is pretty thin.

And not the point of the analysis. I'm (one) not talking about you as an individual and (two) not talking about what actually happened in any individual case, but rather the possibility of influence.

It is much like the various rules about self-dealing and deals with clients.

I use it for the same reason I made it in the first place: because given the way I conceive of the course, no other text was satisfactory.

Good.

So it's hardly a "sub-optimal choice": anyone who writes a textbook will necessarily think it's better, else why write one? (Additionally, the publisher will have to agree that it fills an unfilled niche, or is otherwise meritorious, or they won't publish it.

Well, that is a stretch ;) About the publisher, that is.

Furthermore, you said "nope" at just the place where I was making the point about instructor autonomy

My mistake, I was too terse.

No, I do not disagree about whether or not professors should have autonomy.

That isn't the issue.

The conflict of interest issue is whether or not the possibility of a side profit should be able to enter into the equation (not whether it does with any particular professor, but whether the possibility should be allowed to exist).

- apparently, then, you think profs should not have discretion as to text selection. I think you'll find that a tough sell; profs value academic freedom, and fortunately, most of us have contratual arrangements which protect that.

I communicated poorly.

Third, and this was seriously disturbing, you imply that I was defending sex-with-students, when plainly I was not

No. No. No.

I am not implying that you are defending, engaging in, or thinking of, sex with students. It seemed clear to me that I was merely using that as an example of another area where there is a conflict of interests and where professors in general (not you in particular) disagree with what seems clear to outsiders.

so either it was your intention to slander me, in which case this conversation is over, and I'll be asking Eugene to disallow your comment-privileges, or you misunderstood my argument.

Feel free to do what you feel appropriate, which, obviously, does not include sex with students.


Here's the exchange again:

You: "like having sex with students, selling them textbooks comes up as well"

Me:"like having sex with students, selling them textbooks comes up as well" That's obnoxious, as well as a terrible analogy.

You: Sorry I was too terse for you to understand that I was addressing that there seem to be two common conflicts of interest issues that come up over and over again, not making an analogy. Though, in that line, it is interesting to see how professors defend both practices.

As a class, especially in the discussions at The Chronicle, there was an amazing amount of success. I would assert that any outsider reading this should realize that (a) you are not defending sex with students and therefor (b) the discussion on that point is not about you but about the general cultural blindness to conflict issues, not your specific issues, if any.

I wasn't defending the one, I was differentiating it from the other. That's pretty plain, have another look.

I agree that the points are different.

As a matter of law, I don't think that the professor-student duty, as it is usually defined, rises to the fiduciary lawyer-client. That is why professors are allowed to exploit the relationship. It is not even as protected as the employer-employee relationship in a state like Texas (where it is pretty weak).

Which, is, of course, why the sex issue is a good reference point because over and over again, professors are allowed to marry and/or date students without it being a breach of ethics (compare to psychotherapists or lawyers and their patients and clients).

So yes, there is a conflict of interest.

Yes, in similar situations, the conflict results in sub-optimal choices that benefit the party with power.

However, it is probably not the type of conflict of interest that is actionable or that would result in a breach of professional ethics.

Honestly, I was hoping to see a deeper analysis, as there is one and a lot to go on once you start looking at legal ethics (and this is a law related blog).

Ok.

Enough attention on what is a non-issue, though if I were trying to slander you I would imply that you had missed the point on purpose in order to sidetrack the discussion.

Though, if I thought that, I wouldn't have replied to you.

So, I'm not saying you are having or defending sex with students and I'm not saying that you've gotten so irritated and side tracked because you missed the point for reasons other than my terseness.

Which brings me back to the real point and the real issue.

There is a conflict of interest.

The issue is:

1. Is it meaningful?
2. If so, does it implicate concern in regards to the duties held by professors?

I've seen specific examples of what looked a lot like abuse in introductory classes (like the math class example above -- only in introductory physical sciences) where hundreds of kids each semester were mandated to buy a book that changed/was updated on a yearly basis. Your book is obviously not in that category. You aren't talking tens of thousands of dollars a year in book income, it appears less than twenty dollars a year.

But, I'm not sure that there is a breach of a legal duty in this case. Unlike if a trustee were taking a profit from selling food to the beneficiaries of a trust. Sure they have to eat and someone will make a profit, and ... but the law doesn't allow the trustee to be the one to take that profit.

So, I don't see anything wrong from a legal standpoint.

At least this has had more depth than the debate at your blog, though that was spirited as well.

Me:"I've made all of 70 bucks on my own textbook, and that includes students not at my own college."
Ethesis:"How many copies sold? I'm amazed (no offense). At ten dollars a copy that is only seven copies."

No, no: I don't get 10 bucks a copy, I meant in any given semester, I might make 10 bucks _period_. It's sold several thousand copies, but (a) the royalty is less than a buck per book, (b) I only get half that, since I had a co-editor, and mostly (c) half of the budget for obtaining copyright permissions was charged against royalties, so the first $3,500 that I was "earning" on paper I didn't actually receive, the publisher kept it to pay itself back so to speak. Also, (d), in any quarter in which sales don't reach a certain number, I don't get paid at all. So my net earnings over the life of the book has been around 70 bucks, despite fairly decent sales, not only to my own students. I'm not complaining, mind you - as I have been saying, the point of doing the textbook was because I didn't like anything else that was available, but getting a check for 70 bucks is nice too. Obviously if the book were more popular or if I had been shrewd enough back then to negotiate a better deal, we'd be talking about more money, but I'd still make the same argument: profs rightly enjoy autonomy in textbook selection, profs have a duty to choose the best book available, I produced a text because I found the alternatives unsatisfactory, ergo when I teach that class, it's proper for me to order that book.
But as you note, perhaps we're just spinning our wheels here and should just agree to disagree. Minimally, I can assure you I'm in compliance with state regs.

But the label "conflict" is not dispositive. I think the question is whether it's a disabling conflict. For 99.99% of profs who are authors, I don't think it is. The outlier may be the situation someone described above, where profs write an entry-level text that they then are in a position to, and do, assign to thousands of students every year and unnecessarily revise every year

Analysis is spot on to that point.

Thereafter it is much like applying an assumption of the risk analysis to a workers compensation claim.

However, I think we agree that Aeon J. Skoble is not subject to any claim of a disabling conflict of interest, which is a good place to let the discussion end.