By Professor Doom
It’s really is
amazing how often a professor saying to administration, “we should treat our
students honestly” is viewed with condemnation. I know I received many
smackdowns for asking for changes in policy that would help students, but this
story is particularly interesting:
Now,
there’s a big potential for conflict of interest in textbooks: the professor
writes the book, then forces his students, a captive audience, to buy them. The
professor makes money off royalties, no matter how terrible the book is, and
the students get…well, they get the privilege of having a professor who knows
the material well enough to write a book on it.
Despite the possible benefit,
administration, very comfortable with giving themselves arrangements that
enrich themselves despite conflicts of interest, nevertheless at most schools
make it policy that faculty cannot profit from books they sell to their
students; in this case, the royalties get donated to the university, or the
department, and the money is used for scholarship.
Faculty have integrity, acknowledge the
conflict of interest, and don’t complain…it’s a shame we can’t force admin to
play by comparable rules.
Anyway, the department head in this case
has written the book, and, while he’s not teaching the course, is in a position
to force students to buy his book…thus getting around the usual “conflict of
interest” prohibitions.
The professor in this case doesn’t much
like the book his boss is forcing him to use, and would rather use a different
book. Can a professor use whatever books he wants for his courses? Usually,
academic freedom allows this, although course textbooks are often picked by a
committee. Anyway, the professor decided to exercise academic freedom over his
book choice, and smackdown followed:
University officials
threatened Alain Bourget last year with discipline as serious as dismissal
after Bourget taught his sophomore-level course, Introduction to Linear Algebra
and Differential Equations, with his preferred books.
As an aside,
there has been huge growth in enrollment in differential equations-type courses
the last few years. The “big oil boom” is one of the few industries remaining
that are providing high-paying jobs in exchange for very expensive degrees…I
suspect oil’s rapidly dropping price will soon lead to a “big oil bust” soon,
however. I used to teach at a huge state school famous for its engineering
programs: it had about 50 differential equations students every semester; now
300 or more students are taking this fairly advanced and specialized course.
Anyway,
the faculty decides “I’m not going to force my students to buy a $180 book I
don’t like, I’ll make them buy a cheaper book that is better, in my opinion.”
Admin
wasn’t about to let this minor act of defiance go unchallenged:
The university says he
violated policy and went against orders from the provost and former dean of the
math and sciences college, according to the reprimand letter.
Now, for
what it’s worth, the $180 book is popular, I’ve even used it for courses:
The book, “Differential
Equations and Linear Algebra,” was written by Stephen W. Goode and Scott A.
Annin, the chair and vice chair of the university’s math department.
I know this isn’t the best place for a review of a
book on an obscure topic, but I’ll be quick. This textbook gives fine
explanations of many concepts, and one can gain good understanding of
differential equations from it.
The book
does have some weak points. Its variation of parameters type problems (and
discussion) could be a bit more approachable. Its discussion of linear algebra
is too abstract, made all the worse because the book’s problems generally don’t
use the linear algebraic results except in very circumstantial ways—you could rip
these chapters out of the middle of the book and be able to do everything else,
even the later chapters, just as well. The worst problem is the book is
extremely lean on applications—a student can easily master all the theoretical
material in this book, and be completely unable to actually apply any of it to
any real world problems. In short, it’s a nice mathematician’s book, but not so
good for engineers, more focused on “how do I use this to answer questions”
than in abstract theory. As most people taking the course nowadays are planning
to become engineers, the latter issue is fairly critical.
I’m
hardly the only one to share such concerns (honest, I wrote my quick review
before reading the professor’s):
Bourget dislikes the book
because it’s what he describes as a “succession of topics with little
connection among them.” The Goode-Annin text also lacks practical examples,
which are important to students in this course, most of whom are engineering
majors, he adds.
So, the professor found some good books, one that
cost less than half of the “forced” text, and another that was free. Free. For
what it’s worth, most textbooks, even the expensive ones, can be purchased as
PDFs for very little cost. Admittedly, the legality of doing this is
questionable at best, but I don’t force my students to purchase anything, and I
respect they might want to save several hundred dollars a semester.
Integrity…it really needs to come back to higher education.
In November 2013, the
university assembled a committee to discuss Bourget’s concerns with the
Goode-Annin book. No consensus was reached, so no changes were made to
department policies, according to Bourget’s reprimand letter. Bourget was to
continue using the Goode-Annin textbook.
Having
integrity, Bourget just went ahead and helped his students in the way he
thought was best. A committee found him in grievous error for trying to help
his students. I’ve written before of the kangaroo campus court system. I’ve
been on both ends of this corrupt system, and much like many committee
decisions, it was insultingly bad:
Fellow math professor Tyler
McMillen, who was part of the committee to discuss Bourget’s concerns, said the
meeting was “kind of a joke.” There was no agenda, no minutes taken and no
motions passed, he said. Neither Goode nor Annin was part of the committee.
Hey, at least the textbook authors weren’t on the
committee; I’ve seen quite a few such committees where the conflicts of
interests were hysterically blatant. I’ve also seen committee decisions that
look like they were written by chimps. Generally, textbook choices are
considered every few years, there’s obviously something odd going on here, even
if the book is perfectly serviceable:
Up until that committee meeting,
there had been no discussion of text selection for the Math 250B course over 25
years, which means the Goode-Annin book has “never been questioned,” said
McMillen, a friend of Bourget’s.
Seriously,
it’s not even possible to consider that there’s been some improvement in
explanation of the topic over the course of 25 years? It’s far more likely that
conflicts of interest have clouded the judgement of some people here.
The
faculty member, having no conflict of interest, made a decision to try to help
his students as best he can. He’ll try to appeal the rulings against him, but,
having myself made similar appeals to integrity and been rebuffed by people
that simply don’t understand the word, I don’t hold much hope for him.
No comments:
Post a Comment