“Because I Like Mine the Best,” an Open Letter From a Professor Who Requires Students To Buy the Textbook He Wrote

Dear Students,

I am delighted to announce that you will all be required to read Foundations of Social Psychology by Professor Jeffery Ward (that’s me!) this semester. After carefully evaluating a number of textbooks, I have come to the conclusion that the book most suited to our studies just so happens to be the one I wrote. What a coincidence!

You may be wondering whether any sort of bias influenced my decision. It didn’t! Teaching from a book authored by one of my peers would mean I would have to evaluate and consider opinions that aren’t my own. Why bother with that when I already know that I agree with myself 100% of the time?

You may also be wondering whether I will make any of the copies my publisher gave me available. I won’t! In my years of teaching I’ve found that spending $200 on the required course material is most conducive to student’s learning. This has nothing to do with the considerable profit I’ll be making off of the 200 students in my lecture, all of whom will need the latest edition of my book. I myself have concluded that students who spend half a month’s rent money on a required text are most likely to take the course seriously. And don’t you even think about trying to buy any used pervious edition for cheaper. It’s true that I only changed about three paragraphs from the previous edition to make the newest one. But I jumbled up the page numbers and chapter sequence, so good luck following along with the rest of the class, ya cheapskates!

             

Sincerely,

Professor Jeffery Ward