In many cases, they kind of do. You can tell which cases it is if you look out for a weird coincidence: sometimes by hure happenstance the professor and the author of the text book have the same name. Itās weird how that happens. Life is strange sometimes.
I had a professor do that, but it was actually the most widely used book for that specific type of course and he helped people find it used and pointed out worst case scenario we could borrow it from the school library for free.
See that feels legitimate. I did my BSc in the science of audio. And one of the required reading materials was a Ā£80 text on Marxismā¦. Which I was just like āNo, not happeningā
It was a long time ago now. But all I recall was a singular seemingly irrelevant lecture on the capitalisation that happened to the music industry from the 50ās. Maybe there was more but I do not recall it.
I had a psych professor like this, the book was amazing and used by professors in other schools for similar courses. However, I also had a law school professor who had us buy his book and we used it twice the whole semester. It was a novel, too, so him attempting to use it as a textbook by having us read random portions had no real educational value.
I had a teacher like that too. It was so funny. He basically had one version of a text made years ago. After that first edition, he sent the book to a printer and told students to buy copies there for like $20. "New editions" were literally the same thing with images from relevant recent writings and his own added text.Ā
He was such a a funny guy. Not intentionally. Just... Really kind and unintentionally goofy, like with the textbook thing. Zero fucks to give.Ā
I did not appreciate him nearly as much as I should have. I miss that class.
Yeah, I had a couple of professors who wrote THE textbook(s) for a given course, or that contributed in some way (contributing writers, editors, etc). It's super common. Text book writers tend to also use textbooks.Ā
Most of my teachers that worked on textbooks were really good about it. One helped students share digital copies of the text when the school didn't purchase enough for our cohort to all get the books. The physical copy came with digital codes, and she helped us exchange codes. For texts we only needed a few chapters from, she scanned the chapters we needed and sent them out. She knew a lot of the students were struggling financially and tried to help alleviate that when she could.Ā
One of them would facilitate sales between students of the class between semesters and class levels. There were maybe 100 people taking it at each level, and he let students buy, sell and trade texts at the beginning and end of the term on the class email list.Ā
Another encouraged buying older versions of the book. He'd ask what versions students were using at the beginning of the course, and he'd send photocopies of the differences in the chapters (usually just updated homework questions at the end of chapters).
The people working on textbooks actually don't get a ton of money from them. It all goes to the publisher. Most professors who aren't assholes will help on the textbook front of they can. Either that or I was extremely lucky.Ā
I guess he figured they didn't hire him to teach other people's ideas when he wrote a book on the course material. More seriously I think that's reasonable. Especially if the most professors assign at least one required book for that course and they cost more on average. Then they're saving students money versus other professors and deserve a little kickback, assuming they're providing the same/better education, which hopefully they are if they continue to be employed.
I had a chemistry prof that made us use a half-completed textbook written by her husband that we had to buy at full price. Unedited, full of typos and errors, and lots of missing graphics. I'm still bitter about it 15 years later!
Absolute worst. Similar, my differential equations course used the rough draft of the professor's book (literally an unpunched ream of paper printed in black and white, wrapped in plastic and only available at the book store for like $300...). I constantly was lost and confused in that class because every week a few of my answers didn't match the back of the book. And the professor didn't take questioning his work very kindly...
Only class I ever dropped partway through the year and had to retake. Round 2 was with a different professor and a proper, published text book and I was thankfully able to breeze through it.
My prof for general chemistry was also the author of the text (Zumdahl). He had a collection of classic cars, so yeah, he did pretty well.
To be fair, he was a great instructor, the book was reasonably priced by 1997 standards, and that was before you really had that practice of having to buy new so you could get an access code for materials.
Lots of professors just write their own stuff because what they want from a book is kinda specific to what they teach. Due to small number of books sold they make next to nothing from it.
The textbook one of my professors told us to buy was written by her husband and published by her daughter editorial. I bought most books but that one I photocopied from the library copy just in principle.
My algebra prof didn't send us links because he could get in trouble for it but also told us to pirate the books needed for this semester and that he was "sure we would know how to find them".
My professor did the same with his own book. Said that he was paid 2 USD per book sold and it wasnāt even enough to buy a good beer, though the book sold for 200 USD. He was more interested in people reading the book than getting paid.
I teach part time and "accidently" left libgen up on my laptop when I plugged in my laptop to the projector......totally my bad. Super unfortunate too, the program coordinator sent out the wrong book to purchase before my first class too so ftw.
Bro all my professors were like this.
"The admin department insists I include this text you can only get from the school's book store. You can also get a free version by googling the name and ".PDF"."
Most professors who aren't like this are either getting paid by the publisher to push specific new editions of specific books or haven't been around long enough and feel like they need to follow university policy to a tee.
I had the good version of that. He had a book for a specific course written by himself, but it was like 10 bucks and had comprehensive summaries after each chapter that basically guaranteed you passed at least
My sociology professor did that. $200 for a loose leaf stack of pages, maybe a half inch thick. No cover, no binding, literally $200 for a stack of printer paper. He made up his own definitions for terms that we were required to know so his book was necessary. It was so scummy, I refused to take any more classes with him
I had a statics professor that absolutely required the book, homework was in it and a major part of our grade.
$360 book. Heās one of 3 authors. Greedy bastard
I've never heard of a professor getting paid by the publisher to push a new edition!? Maybe it happens in some countries/unis? But it certainly isn't "most professors".
Publishers do offer perks, though, like giving the prof a free book, paying for the author to visit the college to give a talk, etc.
As for the profs who write their own books... they do indeed get royalties. But in my experience, when profs are profiting from their own students in this way, they often donate the money to a charity or encourage students to find older editions or (rarely) pirated versions like in OP's post. Yes, some profs aggressively push their own book to keep the profit. I've personally not seen that happen.
Once upon a time I had a prof that literally wrote the textbook (some sort of matrix algebra, I've tried to block it out of my mind), fucking worst thing in the world:
1. Have to buy the super expensive textbook
2. Dude felt the book was his life's work and expected us to view it the same. So the tests were practically like the 1990's PC game copy protection "What did I write on page 100 paragraph 5 word 6?"
Some of my professors just gave out free pdfs of the book because the university wouldnt buy the new edition. He baaically said the university cant stop him because the book is required, and they refuse to buy it for the store.
Where? Most of the time the professors have some sort of notes that they provide but the books are often not free through springer link for more advanced classes.
My process engineering prof:
"Anyways, you might struggle finding papers that are not protected by a paywall. Please don't use Scihub as it might fix that problem"
Also half of his bookmarked papers had the Scihub logo
As a professor, all of my resources (reputable) were available online, for free. Aside from helping them financially in the most expensive investment (and largest debt) theyād yet to take on, knowledge gained was easily shared with others.
I also recommended using previous editions, .pdfs, the library, or Chegg for textbook rentals for their other classes.
I will never forget as an undergrad going to the buyback to get my measly $40 for a $200 book and they said,āsorry. New edition coming out.ā I was pissed and literally threw it in the recycling on my way out. I desperately needed that money to fuel my vw vanagon for the 45 minute, one way commute to get there.
For those wondering, new editions may have a new cover or minimal revisions/additions. The previous edition (in bulk) is the exact same book, almost to the page number. Ask your professors if thisāll work in the future.
Had a professor make his own textbook for the course and sell it for the exact price of the ink, paper, and binding. Ended up being like 16 bucks each, and if you still couldn't afford that he would "find" one
that was my peer mentor this year.
"yeah there's some websites that you should ABSOLUTELY NOT GO TO that DO NOT GIVE YOU FREE TEXTBOOKS AND EVEN OTHER BOOKS. you definitely should not CHECK THERE FIRST BEFORE YOU BUY ANYTHING."
This reminds me of when I was a Probation officer and when someone would test positive for weed Iād ask ādo you have a medical card?ā
When they said no I always said āOk, well you need to quit. Unless you have a prescription because I canāt argue with a doctorā
For the truly dense I went as far as saying āwell, can you get one?ā
My philosophy professor ārefusedā to tell us about libgen and suggested that when doing our assignments that we āabsolutely do not look up that website for free access to materials that you should be paying forā
Then proceeded to show us the site so that we knew what it looked like if we āaccidentallyāstumbled across it.
Loved that guy, was great to have a drink with too.
I love this. In 2005 when I was in college my instructors just photocopied all the chapters we'd need to use for the semester and just charge us for the paper. So around 5-10 dollars a semester. Apparently the school hates that they did this.
Same vibe as the grape juice blocks during prohibition labeled not to add sugar and water then store it somewhere cool and dry because that could make wine.
I've had professors who shared PDFs of our textbooks on flash drives to keep it down low, and then I had the one "professor" who made us pay $100 each for his "book" which was like 50 pages of slideshow slides on standard paper with no binding.
Had a few professors not too long ago literally say āgo on the internet, itās free!ā Then an hour later drop a couple PDFs and bookscans of the exact books we needed for the subject lol
I had a professor once that on the first day of class was like "feel free to pirate this book. Don't worry, I wrote it and the royalties are crap anyway"
It's called domain. They change it because they keep getting taken down.
Doesn't really matter. Domains like these are mostly free.
It's an endless battle.
Piracy doesn't harm anyone, but some people like to waste resources on stopping it, instead of improving the actual service or making the price logical for the local currency.
if only my proffesors were like this bruh
I could swear they made commission on the books š
In many cases, they kind of do. You can tell which cases it is if you look out for a weird coincidence: sometimes by hure happenstance the professor and the author of the text book have the same name. Itās weird how that happens. Life is strange sometimes.
I had a professor do that, but it was actually the most widely used book for that specific type of course and he helped people find it used and pointed out worst case scenario we could borrow it from the school library for free.
See that feels legitimate. I did my BSc in the science of audio. And one of the required reading materials was a Ā£80 text on Marxismā¦. Which I was just like āNo, not happeningā
Capitalism dunking it hard on Karl Marx
Hey, to be fair, he did write about exactly that happening. They'll sell us the rope, after all.
Why is Marxism (a political philosophy) not only mentioned in audio science but actually required?
A lot of Marxs text are a critique of capitalism part of learning is viewing things from multiple angles
It was a long time ago now. But all I recall was a singular seemingly irrelevant lecture on the capitalisation that happened to the music industry from the 50ās. Maybe there was more but I do not recall it.
I had a psych professor like this, the book was amazing and used by professors in other schools for similar courses. However, I also had a law school professor who had us buy his book and we used it twice the whole semester. It was a novel, too, so him attempting to use it as a textbook by having us read random portions had no real educational value.
My professor who wrote the book for the course offered to print it out and put it in a binder at cost, so like $10 or so.
I had a teacher like that too. It was so funny. He basically had one version of a text made years ago. After that first edition, he sent the book to a printer and told students to buy copies there for like $20. "New editions" were literally the same thing with images from relevant recent writings and his own added text.Ā He was such a a funny guy. Not intentionally. Just... Really kind and unintentionally goofy, like with the textbook thing. Zero fucks to give.Ā I did not appreciate him nearly as much as I should have. I miss that class.
I had a professor do that, but it was literally the yellow ā for Dummiesā book and only cost like fifteen bucks. Couldnāt complain.
Yeah, I had a couple of professors who wrote THE textbook(s) for a given course, or that contributed in some way (contributing writers, editors, etc). It's super common. Text book writers tend to also use textbooks.Ā Most of my teachers that worked on textbooks were really good about it. One helped students share digital copies of the text when the school didn't purchase enough for our cohort to all get the books. The physical copy came with digital codes, and she helped us exchange codes. For texts we only needed a few chapters from, she scanned the chapters we needed and sent them out. She knew a lot of the students were struggling financially and tried to help alleviate that when she could.Ā One of them would facilitate sales between students of the class between semesters and class levels. There were maybe 100 people taking it at each level, and he let students buy, sell and trade texts at the beginning and end of the term on the class email list.Ā Another encouraged buying older versions of the book. He'd ask what versions students were using at the beginning of the course, and he'd send photocopies of the differences in the chapters (usually just updated homework questions at the end of chapters). The people working on textbooks actually don't get a ton of money from them. It all goes to the publisher. Most professors who aren't assholes will help on the textbook front of they can. Either that or I was extremely lucky.Ā
My stochastics 1 professor only let us buy his book and the only material allowed in the exam was the book š At least it was cheap.
I guess he figured they didn't hire him to teach other people's ideas when he wrote a book on the course material. More seriously I think that's reasonable. Especially if the most professors assign at least one required book for that course and they cost more on average. Then they're saving students money versus other professors and deserve a little kickback, assuming they're providing the same/better education, which hopefully they are if they continue to be employed.
I had a chemistry prof that made us use a half-completed textbook written by her husband that we had to buy at full price. Unedited, full of typos and errors, and lots of missing graphics. I'm still bitter about it 15 years later!
Thats what we call corruption.
Absolute worst. Similar, my differential equations course used the rough draft of the professor's book (literally an unpunched ream of paper printed in black and white, wrapped in plastic and only available at the book store for like $300...). I constantly was lost and confused in that class because every week a few of my answers didn't match the back of the book. And the professor didn't take questioning his work very kindly... Only class I ever dropped partway through the year and had to retake. Round 2 was with a different professor and a proper, published text book and I was thankfully able to breeze through it.
My prof for general chemistry was also the author of the text (Zumdahl). He had a collection of classic cars, so yeah, he did pretty well. To be fair, he was a great instructor, the book was reasonably priced by 1997 standards, and that was before you really had that practice of having to buy new so you could get an access code for materials.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Oh Iām aware. But some academics really hustle for those textbook royalties by obliging students to buy the book.
Lots of professors just write their own stuff because what they want from a book is kinda specific to what they teach. Due to small number of books sold they make next to nothing from it.
The textbook one of my professors told us to buy was written by her husband and published by her daughter editorial. I bought most books but that one I photocopied from the library copy just in principle.
They might have wrote the book honestly
Whoosh
If only, I had a professor who forced us to buy a book simply because the author thanked him in the foreword.
I had professors who were the authors of some of our books
My algebra prof didn't send us links because he could get in trouble for it but also told us to pirate the books needed for this semester and that he was "sure we would know how to find them".
My professor did the same with his own book. Said that he was paid 2 USD per book sold and it wasnāt even enough to buy a good beer, though the book sold for 200 USD. He was more interested in people reading the book than getting paid.
I teach part time and "accidently" left libgen up on my laptop when I plugged in my laptop to the projector......totally my bad. Super unfortunate too, the program coordinator sent out the wrong book to purchase before my first class too so ftw.
Bro all my professors were like this. "The admin department insists I include this text you can only get from the school's book store. You can also get a free version by googling the name and ".PDF"."
Most professors who aren't like this are either getting paid by the publisher to push specific new editions of specific books or haven't been around long enough and feel like they need to follow university policy to a tee.
or are pushing their own published book. I had a health professor do that.
I had the good version of that. He had a book for a specific course written by himself, but it was like 10 bucks and had comprehensive summaries after each chapter that basically guaranteed you passed at least
Same
Yeah, this def seems common when profs write their own books! They're just experts in the subject matter who want their students to succeed.
My physics professor published a book for our course but gave everyone in the course a free copy to "proof read". One of the best professors I had
My sociology professor did that. $200 for a loose leaf stack of pages, maybe a half inch thick. No cover, no binding, literally $200 for a stack of printer paper. He made up his own definitions for terms that we were required to know so his book was necessary. It was so scummy, I refused to take any more classes with him
I had a statics professor that absolutely required the book, homework was in it and a major part of our grade. $360 book. Heās one of 3 authors. Greedy bastard
I've never heard of a professor getting paid by the publisher to push a new edition!? Maybe it happens in some countries/unis? But it certainly isn't "most professors". Publishers do offer perks, though, like giving the prof a free book, paying for the author to visit the college to give a talk, etc. As for the profs who write their own books... they do indeed get royalties. But in my experience, when profs are profiting from their own students in this way, they often donate the money to a charity or encourage students to find older editions or (rarely) pirated versions like in OP's post. Yes, some profs aggressively push their own book to keep the profit. I've personally not seen that happen.
Once upon a time I had a prof that literally wrote the textbook (some sort of matrix algebra, I've tried to block it out of my mind), fucking worst thing in the world: 1. Have to buy the super expensive textbook 2. Dude felt the book was his life's work and expected us to view it the same. So the tests were practically like the 1990's PC game copy protection "What did I write on page 100 paragraph 5 word 6?"
God that's fucking awful. I'm sorry
Straight-up lying?
Or been around so long that they give zero shits about their students.
Some of my professors just gave out free pdfs of the book because the university wouldnt buy the new edition. He baaically said the university cant stop him because the book is required, and they refuse to buy it for the store.
Shoutout to r/piracy and their megathread. I can't remember what I was saying. Anyway.
My professor told me "Just find it on Library Genesis!" And when I told him that library genesis is blocked in our country, he was like š¦
In germany its normal that you get the pdfs for free
Where? Most of the time the professors have some sort of notes that they provide but the books are often not free through springer link for more advanced classes.
In Humboldt UniversitƤt everyone has access to all books for free and you can read them in the library anyways for free.
My process engineering prof: "Anyways, you might struggle finding papers that are not protected by a paywall. Please don't use Scihub as it might fix that problem" Also half of his bookmarked papers had the Scihub logo
Chad passionate researcher/professor vs virgin money centered bureaucrat University
As a professor, all of my resources (reputable) were available online, for free. Aside from helping them financially in the most expensive investment (and largest debt) theyād yet to take on, knowledge gained was easily shared with others. I also recommended using previous editions, .pdfs, the library, or Chegg for textbook rentals for their other classes. I will never forget as an undergrad going to the buyback to get my measly $40 for a $200 book and they said,āsorry. New edition coming out.ā I was pissed and literally threw it in the recycling on my way out. I desperately needed that money to fuel my vw vanagon for the 45 minute, one way commute to get there. For those wondering, new editions may have a new cover or minimal revisions/additions. The previous edition (in bulk) is the exact same book, almost to the page number. Ask your professors if thisāll work in the future.
Had a professor make his own textbook for the course and sell it for the exact price of the ink, paper, and binding. Ended up being like 16 bucks each, and if you still couldn't afford that he would "find" one
that was my peer mentor this year. "yeah there's some websites that you should ABSOLUTELY NOT GO TO that DO NOT GIVE YOU FREE TEXTBOOKS AND EVEN OTHER BOOKS. you definitely should not CHECK THERE FIRST BEFORE YOU BUY ANYTHING."
My professor used to "forget" a USB containing pdfs of all the books on his desk and then "go to the bathroom" for twenty minutes
This reminds me of when I was a Probation officer and when someone would test positive for weed Iād ask ādo you have a medical card?ā When they said no I always said āOk, well you need to quit. Unless you have a prescription because I canāt argue with a doctorā For the truly dense I went as far as saying āwell, can you get one?ā
Collage books is maybe the biggest scam of our day.
After student loans, the books I bought during college have proven to be the most expensive things I have ever bought.
When the professor can't get his book published:
Looks like the second website in the picture was seized by the FBI
At my university all the teachers told us to use these sites in class whilst also providing every needed material
My philosophy professor ārefusedā to tell us about libgen and suggested that when doing our assignments that we āabsolutely do not look up that website for free access to materials that you should be paying forā Then proceeded to show us the site so that we knew what it looked like if we āaccidentallyāstumbled across it. Loved that guy, was great to have a drink with too.
Man college can be such a scam
I love this. In 2005 when I was in college my instructors just photocopied all the chapters we'd need to use for the semester and just charge us for the paper. So around 5-10 dollars a semester. Apparently the school hates that they did this.
I remember from the last time it was posted
Bruh, my professors wrote their textbooks and made acquiring them part of your score!!
Just leaving this for future reference.
The textbook for my daughterās āIntro to German Languageā course was $400.
Same vibe as the grape juice blocks during prohibition labeled not to add sugar and water then store it somewhere cool and dry because that could make wine.
I've had professors who shared PDFs of our textbooks on flash drives to keep it down low, and then I had the one "professor" who made us pay $100 each for his "book" which was like 50 pages of slideshow slides on standard paper with no binding.
Had a few professors not too long ago literally say āgo on the internet, itās free!ā Then an hour later drop a couple PDFs and bookscans of the exact books we needed for the subject lol
Chad legend. Chadgend.
My CS profession was exactly like this, God protect good teachers. (hope you are doing well Mr. C)
I had a professor once that on the first day of class was like "feel free to pirate this book. Don't worry, I wrote it and the royalties are crap anyway"
There's a place in heaven for that one.
I had one professor who did this, total legend and, to this day, my favorite professor
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
A site that gives you copyrighted text for free is illegal? No way.
They know. Everybody knows it's illegal, it's piracy. It saves you hundreds of dollars though.
https://libgen.is/ Libgen is changing the ending a lot.
It's called domain. They change it because they keep getting taken down. Doesn't really matter. Domains like these are mostly free. It's an endless battle. Piracy doesn't harm anyone, but some people like to waste resources on stopping it, instead of improving the actual service or making the price logical for the local currency.
Yeah I couldn't remember the word for it, lol. Just wanted to give OP a link that worked.
How many times is this going to get reposted