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

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.