<p>The problem is that the requirement that textbooks lists be presented at registration were clearly written by people who have no experience actually teaching at the college level. It’s not so much a problem for the Spring semester, but it is an enormous problem for the Fall because the course offerings list is decided 5-6 months in advance. Two major issues can emerge:
- At an institution that uses a lot of adjuncts or visiting professors, sometimes they have absolutely no idea who will be teaching some of the courses when the offerings list comes out (thus the “Staff”). Since it is rather gauche for one professor to dictate text selection to another professor (sometimes this happens in composition or introductory classes, but I find it to be a largely distasteful practice), and no one knows who will teach the class, no one really knows the texts that will be required. Sometimes a department chair will submit the text list that was used in the last iteration of the course, but a new instructor will not be bound to that.
- If a professor is offering any new preparations, s/he will design those courses (including selecting the readings) in the summer (well, 95% of the time). I’m teaching two new courses, one in the Fall and one in the Spring. I’ve been working on both of them all summer, and while I’ll still make tweaks to the one that will debut in the Spring, major things like the text list will be set, so when I’m required to submit a text list in late October for a class that starts in early January I can do so with confidence. However, when I was asked to submit my text list for my new Fall class back in March or whatever, I submitted “no texts” because I had no idea what I wanted to use because I hadn’t thought about the specifics of the course yet. I will stick to what I submitted and use lots of journal articles posted to Blackboard, but the whole situation is just silly.</p>
<p>The requirement also means that those of us who feel bound to stick by what we told the bookstore lose out on opportunities to incorporate the most recent academic literature–which is what we’re SUPPOSED to be doing. A lot of academic books get published over a 5-6 month period and three very, very good books that would have been great for a Fall 2012 class I offered were published in Summer 2012, but I wasn’t allowed to require them for my students. It was their loss.</p>
<p>I know textbook prices are terrible in some disciplines, but that textbook list requirement is a very bad method for trying to solve the problem.</p>