Natalieposton's Blog

Ian Ayres is a guest blogger for Freakonomics, an opinion blog on nytimes.com. He wrote a post recently arguing that professors should reimburse their students  with the royalties they collect from the sale of the their book as a course text. I’ve never put much thought into why some teachers will assign books that they have written as a course text. Ayres disclosed that he earns $10.50 in royalties for every book he sells! At MSU a typical class I take has at least one hundred students in it, but I have had courses with upwards of six hundred students. Imagine how tempting it would be for a professor to assign their own book to a class that size; they could make 6,300 in addition to their salary. I know that monetary gain is not the sole reason for professors to assign their own books, but I really liked Ayres’ decision to take a stand against it.

Daniel Hamermesh, another guest blogger, responded to Ayres’ post with his own titled, “Why My Students Don’t Get Rebates.” He said that the practice of reimbursing students would only really be acceptable in a small class. It is harder to discern in a large class which students bought the book new, or if they actually bought it at all.  In that case, he donates the royalties to the university, not the individual students. This is also a very generous practice.

I, personally, have never met a professor that has discussed this in class or ever actually donated any of the royalties back to the university. I am really glad that this topic has come into discussion. In the end of his post Ayres encourages students to ask their professors for money back, that’s actually the reason Hamermesh even posted; a student asked him for a rebate. I think its great that I stumbled on this blog because I am going to be more skeptical when a professor assigns a book he wrote, and I will encourage my classmates as well.