Spending Students Money

Spending Students’ Money

The Wall Street Journal bribes college professors to get us to spend our students’ money. The Journal gives college professors free subscriptions if the professors force their students to subscribe. In fairness, the Journal is often a useful classroom tool, and students buying it through their college classes get reduced rates. Still, by giving professors free subscriptions, the Journal creates incentives for professors to misappropriate their students’ money.

Textbook-choosing time provides professors with their best opportunity to waste students’ money. When professors buy books with their own money, they certainly take price into account. When we choose books for our students, however, it doesn’t cost us anything extra if the books are expensive, especially since publishers always provide us with a free personal copy. Professors have no reason to worry about prices when deciding which textbook to use. Consequently, college textbooks are, page per page, several times more expensive than other hardcover books. The greatest potential for abuse manifests itself when professors assign their own books for class. In return for making my students pay $30 each for this book, I might get $1.20 in after-tax royalties. While I would of course be fired for forcing my students to directly give me $1.20, few would object if I required them to purchase Game Theory at Work. Indeed, students are often impressed when their professor wrote the textbook. Private liberal arts colleges like Smith don’t charge that much in tuition, so it seems only fair that I be able to use my textbook-assigning power to extract a little more money from my students’ parents.

To reduce the problems caused by professors’ spending their students’ money, colleges should give professors financial incentives to minimize the cost of the books we make our students buy. To amplify this problem, publishers should bribe professors to assign expensive textbooks. Perhaps McGraw-Hill could give professors five frequent flyer miles for every dollar our students spend on their textbooks.