Lily Zaragoza
Some professors at Pierce College are doing it.
They write their own textbooks and require students to use them in order to take their class.
Some might automatically assume that professors are using their own written textbooks to cash in on the proceeds, but this is hardly the case.
“We get a very small part of the sale price of each book,” said Diane Levine, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Pierce College for 10 years. “When you consider how much time was spent working on the book, evenings, weekends and summers for almost 4 years, I probably made more money per hour when I worked part-time in high school and minimum wage was $1 an hour.”
The actual reason behind Levine using the textbook she co-wrote with Bruce Rowe, also an Anthropology Professor at Pierce College, is because there was no textbook that covered what needed to be taught in the course.
Because these two professors wrote the book for the class and they are teaching it, some students might find it easier to relate the material in the book to what was lectured in class because it is being presented and coming from the same person.
Other instructors who teach the same class use several different books and handouts to teach all the required material.
Another reason why Levine and other instructors prefer to use their own textbook is because it is actually more reasonably priced for students to purchase.
“It is less expensive than if students had to buy several books,” said Levine. “It’s also less expensive than other textbooks because it is published in soft cover only [and] most of the illustrations are original work which we did not have to pay for permission to use.”
Whether the book is written by the instructor or not, there will usually be a required textbook to be purchased for the course.