Only part of the business of a university is to teach. For most universities far more time is allocated to research than teaching. At my university, professors

Only part of the business of a university is to teach. For most universities far more time is allocated to research than teaching. At my university, professors split time between teaching, research, and service (where service is things like department chair or serving on a committee). Depending on your position, the breakdown of these varies. So, department chairs do less teaching (or possibly none) because their time is needed for service instead. As others have pointed out, a wiki for any material is kind of a non-starter as it would depend on the IP rights at the university. At mine, all IP is owned by the creator (with the university having non-exclusive rights to use it), with a few exceptions. Most professors I know don't assign their own books. In my department, I only know of one (or two depending on how you count it). The one is a grad course and is really one of the few on the topic (and is actually written by ten different authors, not just the professor). My supervisor assigns his advanced dynamics text for his course, but they're sold through the copy centre (at the standard copy rate) as they're bound photocopies. I think they were under $30 which is far less than alternatives. My university requires that all Master's and Ph.D. theses (not thesii) be made available electronically (as PDFs) as has since 2002. So, they don't just sit on a shelf. So, both my Master's and my Ph.D. thesis are on the web for anyone to download (and I have them linked from my LinkedIn page). Many universities require graduate theses be made available electronically, so I don't see where your issue is with that. I can't see a wiki being any better than a simple search engine for theses. For example, one could have material that fits all over a wiki in one thesis. My Master's research is still being cited by two very disparate disciplines. Both theses of mine are easily found using Google Scholar with appropriate search terms (i.e., ones applicable to the content). My Master's even has two citations just last year. How is one supposed to put links on a CV for pages edited by many authors? I know of no professors who are wined and dined by textbook publishers. I know that publishers send review copies and they do meet with professors, but all the meetings I know of have happened in professors offices or a meeting room.