Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Maybe Al Gore is onto something...

You’re point about the nature of text books and custom course material sounds basically the same as what I was trying to make. That textbooks are written in a more constrained form since the theories they present (sometimes multiple theories if none is dominant) are generally more accepted, where as most higher level courses I took were as you say “more applied and research” but I would also add often more theoretically eclectic. In the most advance courses I took most of the study was outside of and often inconsistent with the dominant paradigms.

I always understood and accepted professors sourcing their own material especially when referencing papers they’ve written since they’re teaching theses courses in conjunction with their own research. However, that didn’t stop it from bothering me when a professor required a book he wrote for the course only to use say 2 small sections out of it that could easily have been copied out (royalties paid) and put in the course reader. But I guess professors need to make a living and have egos too.