So over the summer I need to take an English Composition and Critical Thinking course as my last GE requirement for transfer to a university. (I’m taking it at a community college)
I checked out the required book list today, and there are like 5-6 of them… all by the same guy. And he’s the instructor of the course!!! Now I’ve had to buy a book written by a professor before, before I dropped out of my first university BUT it was only one of several other required texts which were not by him, and was highly relevant to the specific subject matter of the course. This is just an English comp class, so the reading could be pretty much anything. And it’s community college, where most of the teachers do not even hold doctorates, only master’s degrees, so it’s not like he is doing cutting-edge work in his field that isn’t available anywhere else.
What’s worse is that the titles do not seem to be available on Amazon or half.com, only from the college bookstore - so I will be forced to pay their prices.
I’ve already pre-judged the guy as an arrogant asshole, but I really have no other option because the summer classes are very limited, and due to California budget cuts they already cut the second summer session of classes. I need this course. Now of course I could be completely wrong and he’ll turn out to be a downright smashing teacher, but I’m not holding my breath.
I think your instincts are correct. Someone doing unique research might have a reason for doing this, but either this guy is totally full of himself and thinks that no one else has covered the topic as well as he can, or he’s using the students to generate revenue for his books. Or both.
Are there any other community colleges in the area, or any other way to get this credit? English comp courses are usually pretty standard summer fare.
Also, complain to the head of the English department, if he’s not the head himself. I have no idea what the EC and CT book requirements are usually like, but I’d be very surprised if ANY teacher could cover most of the material in half a dozen books, especially in the abbreviated summer courses.
That does sound odd. You can take these kind of courses on line now, yanno (I know it’s a little late to be telling you that). My brother teaches online English for the University of Mississippi.
Wait. You’re complaining about spending ~$100-$120 for five books for one class?
My kids engineering books cost $150 each and they’re more than happy to send daddy the bill. I’d pay that bill without blinking an eye.
One thing you need to consider is that many JUCO/CC teachers don’t get paid very well. So instead of letting some big distribution author take home the book profit money a lot of these teachers develop their own text books using smaller publishing houses. Doing this has the added advantage of making the textbook follow the course structure.
It may be cheaper to publish smaller thinner books than one thick book depending on who he gets to publish them.
The multi-book is also a bonus for some students. It gives them the option to spread out their payments through out the semester. And if they decide to drop the class they have only risked part of their total book fees.
So I think you should hold off on declaring that teacher to be an asshole. Give him the chance to prove that himself.
I agree with your misgivings about the instructor . . . but by all means go to the first class and find out for yourself. It’s altogether possible that these books were specifically written as study aids for this particular class, rather than having you hunt down more expensive books by other authors.
True, but many get paid very well. I teach in the Cal State system, and in both places pay goes by seniority. Full-timers make a lot, part-timers make a lot after a hefty time commitment. I’ll join the pre-judging chorus, with caveats. One self-published reader, normal; one reader and one obscure self-authored book, no problem. Several? Weird.
There’s also a recurrent scam running where publishers come up to young professors and ask them to write a textbook. It’s very flattering, but the one who profits isn’t the professor, it’s the publisher. On the other hand, there are ways of bundling / customizing literary anthologies so that they have only the works you’ll be using and no extraneous stuff, which are then only available from the campus bookstore but which are really good deals. If this is the case, then you just have a dedicated professor, no bad thing.
Also, I’ll warn you, even if he’s the best professor in the world, when you’re taking a freshman requirement over the summer as a senior, you’re going to be a bit bored. The course is designed for where the average freshman was four years ago. You might have been beyond it then, but you’re certainly beyond it now. I’ve got to teach one of those in a few weeks, and the jaded, visibly bored seniors are always difficult. I end up feeling guilty for wasting their time and pitching the course too low, though I know they expect it coming in.
First of all, the Cal State system (CSU Fullerton, San Bernadino, Sacramento, etc.) is NOT a Junior College or a Community College, which is what BubbaDog was referring to when he talked about low rates of pay. While it’s a rung below the UC system, the Cal State system is still comprised of proper 4-year universities, not Junior Colleges and Community Colleges.
Second, i guess you and i might have different definitions of “a lot” when talking about remuneration. My wife also teaches in the Cal state system. She’s been there just over a year, and is a full-time, tenure-track faculty member. She earns less than $60,000 a year. I don’t consider that “a lot” of money for someone who had straight A’s in college, and who then spent another 6+ years earning a Masters and a Ph.D.
Finally, when you say that pay is “by seniority,” this gives the impression that simply hanging around will improve your pay considerably. But if you are tenure-track faculty, and you want promotion to Associate Professor and then full Professor (with the pay increases that go along with that), you can’t get it by simply hanging around and teaching. You have to produce scholarship (books and/or articles in refereed journals) and perform service, in addition to your teaching load, in order to move up the pay scale.
All that said, i still think that setting five of your own books for a summer course is taking the piss a bit.
Why am I not at all surprised that someone teaching critical thinking is going to fall on the smug side?
I’ll tell you why. Although CT is a crucially valuable skill and one widely paid lip service to in academia, it actually exists more often as a rhetorical device, usually with the phrase “lack of” in front of it, used to express the inferiority or fuckedupness (fuckedupedness?) of some group of Others or even society at large.
Put simply, 7 out of 10 people who use the phrase “critical thinking” are self-appointed snarkmeisters. Doesn’t discredit CT itself, of course, but it does call into question whether it can be taught in an openminded way, if only because so few seem to do it.
Of course, in the past CT was not taught as such, but handed down with your subject matter as part of the all-male, nut-cuttin’, Socratic-breakdown ethos of teaching. The question then becomes: is there a way to do it that respects the individual, rather than adopts the goal of breaking them down?
No doubt. This is the 5th GE required class I’ll be taking at the community college. (basically when I went to university the first time I was aimless and unorganized and was just taking classes that seemed interesting to me to find out what I wanted to major in, rather than doing the GE req.s, so I’m paying for it now) The academic bar is not very high. But this is also the last one I have to take before transferring to a 4-year state school, so I’ll just be happy to get it over with.
No comparison. Textbooks for engineering (or science or math) tend to be big and heavy, usually hardcover, printed in multiple colors, with diagrams and pictures, formulas and equations (which are trickier to typeset than just plain text), problems sets, and other goodies. It takes a significant amount of time, effort, and expertise to write even a bad one.
The books Rigmarole is talking about could easily be BS that the writer threw together in a couple of weeks.
So yeah, I’d say this smells like a racket. That, or a test:
“Are we really going to need these books?”
“Aha! You’ve just passed your first test in critical thinking!”
It is insane to suggest that the reason a professor assigns their own book(s) is because of the royalties. Less than a dollar per book times 30 students? You think the professor assigns their own book for $30 per class? That’s just stupid.
The reason a professor assigns their own book is that the book was probably written for that course. That’s it. Most textbooks are just publishable versions of lecture notes.
mhendo: I’m aware of the difference between the three tiers of California’s public higher education. I’m sorry about your wife’s salary — rest assured that as a lecturer in the system (non-tenured), I’m earning less that she is with the same qualifications, and that without any job security. I’d like to think we both deserve more!
Many of my colleagues teach in multiple tiers, which is how I know something about the pay. In two cases where I work now, they are lecturers, non-tenured, who have been teaching 20+ years, and they make a lot more than $60K. Essentially, they pull down a full-time salary in the Cal State system teaching three or four classes a semester while moonlighting at the junior college for another half-salary.
There are, of course, many many people who are underpaid, particularly those who are new to the system. Equal pay for equal work!
Did you take into account the fact that, in the OP’s case, it wasn’t the instructor’s book (singular) that was assigned, but 5–6 books by the instructor?
I once had a professor assign her text for her class. As far as I could tell, it was a perfectly viable choice of textbook. She was concerned about the perceived conflict of interest, though, and gave each of us an envelope with $1.36 in it, to refund the royalties she received. So just maybe the professor will have a little surprise for you.
