When associate professor of English Jill Ingram was looking for an edition of William Shakespeare’s Love Labour’s Lost to teach in her English 1600 class, she looked to her own research for class material.
“I was able to get some really good stage editions on film that I was using for my own research, and so I just thought it would be a real shame not to use that for my class,” Ingram said. “And so I ended up using that edition of Love Labour’s Lost for that class because it just fit the class theme so perfectly.”
Ingram, however, is aware of the stigma against professors using their own books.
“There is kind of an unstated rule in academia that you probably shouldn’t use your own books because it looks like you are kind of promoting yourself, or promoting more sales of the book — so that’s kind of frowned upon, and so I was hesitant to do it,” Ingram said. “But there was no other really film- or stage-oriented editions of the play that I could find, so that’s why I used my version.”
The American Association of University Professors addresses the practice of professors using their own textbooks on its website in a statement on reports and publications. Several universities, including Virginia Tech, Southern Utah University and Cleveland State University, have regulations that don't completely bar the practice of professors using their own books in class.
The rules vary from university to university, but most either require that the book to be approved by a committee or that the professors make no profit from making it compulsory for students to buy their book.
The neurology department at Case Western University, for instance, gives students the professors' works for free as a perk of the program.
While professors at Ohio University are not allowed to personally sell their own books, they are permitted to require their own book if it is sold elsewhere, according to the OU faculty handbook. The professors must go to a departmental committee for any royalties acquired.
Megan Hancyzk, a freshman studying child and family studies, experienced a professor using his own book in class for the first time in Psychology 1010. Hancyzk supports professors using their own books in class.
“Sometimes in textbooks they use fancy words that don’t really register I guess, and this is in his own words,” Hancyzk said. “It’s how he talks in class, and so it helps me understand a lot better.”
The cost of the textbook might be a factor in whether students are in favor of their professors using their own books. Though Hancyzk said that psychology textbook was less expensive than the rest she had to buy, Emily Brumfield, a junior studying nursing, could not say the same about the book she had to buy for her Communications 1010 class.
“It was a pretty small book, and, even though it was handwritten by him, it was pretty expensive,” Brumfield said. “It was overpriced, in my opinion. It was absolutely unnecessary.”
