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We had an economics professor that had a $110 textbook with tear-out homework assignments that needed to be completed in pen. He said that he did so in order t

We had an economics professor that had a $110 textbook with tear-out homework assignments that needed to be completed in pen. He said that he did so in order to make sure the publishing company would keep printing them, intentionally and openly ensuring there wouldn't be a used book market. His justification is in the syllabus here https://economics.byu.edu/Documents/Syllabi%20-%20broken/20135%20Kearl%20110-1.pdf https://economics.byu.edu/Documents/Syllabi%20-%20broken/201.... Looking back, and having printed a book, I'm 99% sure that's BS. Or, at best, you could print the book much cheaper yourself.

Jtsummers 10y ago
A history course I took, the profs did the same (pair of them at the school that wrote the textbook together). Tear out assignments, I photocopied and submitted that (not marked down). But they frequently updated it so even though I took care of my book, I couldn't resell it for much anyways. The textbooks were still around $80 or so, so this did nothing to keep prices down.
- pyre 10y ago
  > I photocopied Didn't you read the PDF!? > Photocopying of Assignments from someone else’s text is a violation of copyright laws, so please purchase your own text. You could have been sued!
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    Oh the horror! I was worth on average about $200 at the time so I guess they could've taken my lunch and rent money. I photocopied it from my own textbook and used it myself, I suspect that would've helped my case.
deathanatos 10y ago
> (The used book market actually drives up the price of texts – to see why, think of what would happen to car prices if used car sales were not permitted.) My best guess is he is trying to argue that if you disallowed used car sales, you'd get better economies of scale on new cars, as more would need to be produced to fill the void left my used car sales. While it might drive the price of a new car/textbook down, I still think it would drive the average amount paid by drivers/students up, which is what we really care about (as students, at least; obviously the textbook companies would love to sell more books). In fact, this seems to a case of the broken window fallacy[1] — a textbook case, one might say. ;-) (In that, if you essentially destroy the used text book's value by not using them, that this is somehow beneficial.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
- nicholas73 10y ago
  That's bad news, because not only is he a crook, he is an ivory tower economist who is going by gut feel (i.e. useless opinion). In the real world, prices are not just set by cost - actually most of the time it is set by what the consumer can pay. Cost is just a lower bound, but that's still bad news for the professor since car companies already enjoy plenty of economy of scale. Similarly, publishers a captive market like student textbooks are not going to lower prices. Printing is not the cost - it's not novels sitting on a bookshelf with no idea whether it will get picked up or not. tl;dr The guy is both a tool and an idiot.
- pg_bot 10y ago
  I think the point the professor was trying to make was that the increased supply of used books incentivizes the publishing company to print a new edition, which all of the students will be forced to pay for. This is analogous to how car companies update their models on a yearly basis.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  When an economy's health is largely measured by movement of money, this does in fact help. If that were the only or best metric. In a consumption-oriented economy it may be considered that. Creating things that last years, decades, generations, doesn't keep the economy "moving" in this sense. It can cause some sectors to fail (a sort of boom-bust). If you create a near perfect product that lasts decades, you have an immediate need to ramp up production (to meet demand). Once the demand tapers off due to market penetration, growth slows, and then you shrink--potentially rapidly. If the product doesn't expire frequently (break, wear out, get lost, something) and is a non-consumable good, then your production needs to drop off or you need to make different things. I worked for an employer once that was in that situation. I saw it coming, but they straight up lied to the staff about what was coming up, how the future was great. Then we went from $500 million/year in revenue to $150 million/year because our massive ramp-up for production succeeded, now our product was in every system it needed to be in. New systems are made relatively slowly (big things, like airliners, but also smaller like military ground vehicles), and only needed our parts for maintenance (breakdown after ~10 years; maybe not break but need replacement/servicing) and the less frequent new production. By some metrics, this was a failure of the company (in fact, the division was sold off some time later). But it actually succeeded, it needed to pivot to maintenance and divert other resources to engineering other solutions (or let them go, which is what happened to many of them). They actually have pivoted, I'm told, at least some parts of it. They're doing more diverse sets of safety critical systems, including getting into the consumer ground vehicle market now. That need to pivot should have been obvious, but for some reason it wasn't to many of my peers, and the management ignored it (willfully) at least in their presentations to us.
Spooky23 10y ago
I've noticed that Economics professors seem to often do stuff like this. I had to take an economics statistics course my senior year due to some confusion over the then-newish AP Statistics exam -- I received credit, but couldn't apply it to my computer science major. The class was ridiculous, it was basically statistics 101/102, but used the first few chapters of the professor's Econometrics textbook, which sold for $150 circa 1998. He handed out the assignments at the beginning of the semester, and you didn't need to show up except for the tests. The test used textbook questions, and asked questions that referenced passages in his stupid book, including charts in chapters that weren't covered as part of the actual class.
hitgeek 10y ago
How does the author of the text claim to "not receive any royalties and have no economic interest in the text"
pyre 10y ago
> (The reason is that they simply do not go into sufficient depth for you to learn much about the application of economics; and, of course, they suggest that you are searching for articles rather than reading the good financial press on a daily basis.) So Internet articles are unacceptable because "they suggest that [you are not] reading the good financial press on a daily basis" ? Is that one of the stated goals of the course -- to force you into a daily habit of reading the print version of the Wall Street Journal?
muh_gradle 10y ago
This is just hilarious. The excuses Dr. Kearl makes in his own syllabus to justify the purchase of his substandard textbook makes me blush for him.
gertef 10y ago
That's why I chose not to attend a religious university (run by the most profitable religion cartel in the USA) in order to obtain a scientific education.
- cholantesh 10y ago
  Not sure I see the correlation; I have heard of similarly predatory behaviour at secular schools.
FireBeyond 10y ago
While his arguments have some "merit" from an insular economic perspective, this be fear mongering: > Photocopying of Assignments from someone else’s text is a violation of copyright laws, so please purchase your own text. Apparently he has never heard of Fair Use.

Jtsummers 10y ago

A history course I took, the profs did the same (pair of them at the school that wrote the textbook together). Tear out assignments, I photocopied and submitted that (not marked down). But they frequently updated it so even though I took care of my book, I couldn't resell it for much anyways. The textbooks were still around $80 or so, so this did nothing to keep prices down.

pyre 10y ago
> I photocopied Didn't you read the PDF!? > Photocopying of Assignments from someone else’s text is a violation of copyright laws, so please purchase your own text. You could have been sued!
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  Oh the horror! I was worth on average about $200 at the time so I guess they could've taken my lunch and rent money. I photocopied it from my own textbook and used it myself, I suspect that would've helped my case.

deathanatos 10y ago

> (The used book market actually drives up the price of texts – to see why, think of what would happen to car prices if used car sales were not permitted.) My best guess is he is trying to argue that if you disallowed used car sales, you'd get better economies of scale on new cars, as more would need to be produced to fill the void left my used car sales. While it might drive the price of a new car/textbook down, I still think it would drive the average amount paid by drivers/students up, which is what we really care about (as students, at least; obviously the textbook companies would love to sell more books). In fact, this seems to a case of the broken window fallacy[1] — a textbook case, one might say. ;-) (In that, if you essentially destroy the used text book's value by not using them, that this is somehow beneficial.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

nicholas73 10y ago
That's bad news, because not only is he a crook, he is an ivory tower economist who is going by gut feel (i.e. useless opinion). In the real world, prices are not just set by cost - actually most of the time it is set by what the consumer can pay. Cost is just a lower bound, but that's still bad news for the professor since car companies already enjoy plenty of economy of scale. Similarly, publishers a captive market like student textbooks are not going to lower prices. Printing is not the cost - it's not novels sitting on a bookshelf with no idea whether it will get picked up or not. tl;dr The guy is both a tool and an idiot.
pg_bot 10y ago
I think the point the professor was trying to make was that the increased supply of used books incentivizes the publishing company to print a new edition, which all of the students will be forced to pay for. This is analogous to how car companies update their models on a yearly basis.
Jtsummers 10y ago
When an economy's health is largely measured by movement of money, this does in fact help. If that were the only or best metric. In a consumption-oriented economy it may be considered that. Creating things that last years, decades, generations, doesn't keep the economy "moving" in this sense. It can cause some sectors to fail (a sort of boom-bust). If you create a near perfect product that lasts decades, you have an immediate need to ramp up production (to meet demand). Once the demand tapers off due to market penetration, growth slows, and then you shrink--potentially rapidly. If the product doesn't expire frequently (break, wear out, get lost, something) and is a non-consumable good, then your production needs to drop off or you need to make different things. I worked for an employer once that was in that situation. I saw it coming, but they straight up lied to the staff about what was coming up, how the future was great. Then we went from $500 million/year in revenue to $150 million/year because our massive ramp-up for production succeeded, now our product was in every system it needed to be in. New systems are made relatively slowly (big things, like airliners, but also smaller like military ground vehicles), and only needed our parts for maintenance (breakdown after ~10 years; maybe not break but need replacement/servicing) and the less frequent new production. By some metrics, this was a failure of the company (in fact, the division was sold off some time later). But it actually succeeded, it needed to pivot to maintenance and divert other resources to engineering other solutions (or let them go, which is what happened to many of them). They actually have pivoted, I'm told, at least some parts of it. They're doing more diverse sets of safety critical systems, including getting into the consumer ground vehicle market now. That need to pivot should have been obvious, but for some reason it wasn't to many of my peers, and the management ignored it (willfully) at least in their presentations to us.

Spooky23 10y ago

I've noticed that Economics professors seem to often do stuff like this. I had to take an economics statistics course my senior year due to some confusion over the then-newish AP Statistics exam -- I received credit, but couldn't apply it to my computer science major. The class was ridiculous, it was basically statistics 101/102, but used the first few chapters of the professor's Econometrics textbook, which sold for $150 circa 1998. He handed out the assignments at the beginning of the semester, and you didn't need to show up except for the tests. The test used textbook questions, and asked questions that referenced passages in his stupid book, including charts in chapters that weren't covered as part of the actual class.

hitgeek 10y ago

How does the author of the text claim to "not receive any royalties and have no economic interest in the text"

pyre 10y ago

> (The reason is that they simply do not go into sufficient depth for you to learn much about the application of economics; and, of course, they suggest that you are searching for articles rather than reading the good financial press on a daily basis.) So Internet articles are unacceptable because "they suggest that [you are not] reading the good financial press on a daily basis" ? Is that one of the stated goals of the course -- to force you into a daily habit of reading the print version of the Wall Street Journal?

muh_gradle 10y ago

This is just hilarious. The excuses Dr. Kearl makes in his own syllabus to justify the purchase of his substandard textbook makes me blush for him.

gertef 10y ago

That's why I chose not to attend a religious university (run by the most profitable religion cartel in the USA) in order to obtain a scientific education.

cholantesh 10y ago
Not sure I see the correlation; I have heard of similarly predatory behaviour at secular schools.

FireBeyond 10y ago

While his arguments have some "merit" from an insular economic perspective, this be fear mongering: > Photocopying of Assignments from someone else’s text is a violation of copyright laws, so please purchase your own text. Apparently he has never heard of Fair Use.