The argument over a textbook at Cal State Fullerton combines many different issues in academia: the cost of textbooks, deference to authority, and academic freedom. A math professor wants to do something really simple: use different textbooks from other faculty who teach the same course, because he thinks that a different pair of books is better. Those books also happen to cost less. However, the standard $180 textbook happens to have been written by the chair of the department. [More]
