Charles Horton, a computer sciences professor at the University of Alabama, required his students to buy a textbook he’d written, published by a company he owned.
The you have to buy my book so I can make some money bit is as old as the hills, of course; but Horton went one better by owning the publishing company!
You can’t argue with his results: Over many illustrious years of teaching, he made close to four hundred thousand dollars in this way.
However, this is apparently a felony.
Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=47664
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
February 26th, 2015 at 7:23PM
I think he’s just earned his MBA.
February 27th, 2015 at 11:33AM
I am a little confused by this. Two of the masters courses I took at included books written by the professors. Both were in paperback and neither was expensive (one I bought used and the other new but neither cost more then $50). If I found out they wrote those books and did not assign them, I would think it was odd. UD, I know you have covered scandals with one example being an online book costing $500 or so and which was replete with errors. But if you were asked by the ed department to teach a course on teaching poetry wouldn’t you assign your book, Teaching Beauty?
February 27th, 2015 at 11:57AM
Van: No, I wouldn’t. There’s a conflict of interest. I know there’s a gray area here – if you’ve written the definitive textbook on torts or something, you’d probably be within your rights to assign it. If you’re one of the editors of a Norton literature anthology of course you’re within your rights to assign it. But there’s an unavoidable element of self-dealing here, and I think the best position to take is one in which you very seldom (if ever) assign books in whose sale you have a personal interest.
Look at it this way: I’m teaching the course on poetry. By definition, students in that course, via my lectures, will be getting a large dollop of my take on poetry. Is it right for me to double down on that, and make them read my book as well? When there are plenty of other books out there that need to be in the course to give depth and variety to the subject?
To me, this sort of gesture often feels both narcissistic and provincial. As I say above, it doesn’t have to be. But it often is. And when you add the element of personal financial enrichment, it looks (to me) like a no-go.
February 27th, 2015 at 1:02PM
Interesting take. I hadn’t thought of the broadening views issue. I guess I would wonder about the self-confidence of the professor who did not assign his or her own text. One of the courses I took was Prof. Rentschler’s course on Nazi era film and his book, Ministry of Illusion (great book) is the leading text on the subject as far as I can tell. The other was a course of Japanese history and one of the professors has written a text on modern Japanese history (and has regularly update it) and assigned that text as well.
February 27th, 2015 at 4:07PM
UD and Van, thanks for clarifying. BTW-some of the comments on the linked article are worth an eye-roll.
February 27th, 2015 at 10:11PM
I know a prof who does assign his book…and then gives his students the portion of the royalties that he is paid for those copies.
February 27th, 2015 at 10:36PM
Anon: I’ve heard of that practice too.