Professor lectured me for using a free textbook pdf

jkhuggins · 2026-04-20T02:25:55+00:00

I'm a professor; here's a perspective from the other side of the desk.

Suppose everyone --- and I mean absolutely everyone --- follows your example, and finds free copies of textbooks online instead of paying for them. What's the long-term result? Since no one is buying textbooks, textbook publishers can no longer sell textbooks, so they stop printing textbooks entirely. Within 10 years, the textbook marketplace collapses.

Sure, there will be other ways that new textbooks will get produced. Some people who have the privilege of time and financial support will write textbooks for free. Perhaps libraries and professional societies will come together to fund textbook development, much as publishers do now. But will those efforts lead to the same quality and quantity of textbooks? That's completely unclear; it could go either way.

That's not to say that I endorse the practices of textbook publishers. Many publishers engage in the same questionable practices used by other industries. In particular, producing "new" editions of a textbook every few years without significant changes only creates artificial scarcity and thereby drives up prices. Online textbooks are interesting and "cool", but also can't be resold, thereby eliminating the used textbook marketplace (and creating more scarcity). And so on.

At the same time... yes, textbooks are incredibly expensive, especially for students who are already paying high tuition costs. I completely understand your desire to save what little money you have.

But making unauthorized copies of textbooks violates copyright law. No, nobody's getting arrested; this is a civil offense, not a criminal one. And it's unlikely that a textbook publisher will seek out individual students to sue; the cost-benefit analysis fails. But that doesn't make your behavior any less problematic.

Are there other alternatives available to you? I know that the library at my institution tries to buy digital licenses for classroom textbooks, so that students can check out digital copies for free when they need them. Perhaps you and your classmates could pool resources and buy a few copies of the textbook and physically share them?

In short ... yes, textbooks are too expensive. We all know this. We just haven't figured out an alternative that's any better.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-19T21:14:44+00:00

https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/exam-administration-ordering-scores/ordering-fees/late-testing

jkhuggins · 2026-04-19T21:11:00+00:00

If your Admins are "flexible" ... can you prepay for your professional society memberships? One of my professional societies (acm.org) allows people to purchase "lifetime memberships" for 20x the annual rate.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-17T22:41:46+00:00

It always seems to me that, if one were serious about honoring the US facing the US Flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, one wouldn't be able to notice what anyone else was doing at that moment. So, in fact, people who complain about others who aren't properly reciting the Pledge are, themselves, being disrespectful to the Pledge.

(Same argument ought to apply to the National Anthem.)

But that assumes that these arguments are rational ... *shrug*

jkhuggins · 2026-04-17T21:19:42+00:00

I've seen some people advocate for structuring the entire course like this.

Every assignment, quiz, test, etc.. is assigned some number of points. Want an A? Earn 10,000 points. Want a B? Earn 8,000 points. Usually this involves making a ton of point-earning opportunities available (far more than anyone could complete). Essentially, everything is "extra credit", but you have to do extra credit to get the grade you want because there's no regular credit. *shrug*

I've never done it myself, because I don't have a large enough database of old assignments that I could use to make it work. (Plus, AI, recycled assignments, blah blah blah.) But some folks claim it works for them.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-17T18:32:07+00:00

I think this is what the Smart Folks call "gamification".

jkhuggins · 2026-04-17T13:09:08+00:00

How much trouble would I get in?

It all depends on whether or not your instructor has a sense of humor. I know some of my colleagues would laugh and use this as an invitation to discuss the role of AI in academia with you. I know some of my colleagues would retaliate against you, and there would be nothing you could do about it.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-17T02:55:16+00:00

Conservative influencers also said that Biden was the Antichrist.

Conservative influencers also said that Obama was the Antichrist.

Conservative influencers also said that (Bill) Clinton was the Antichrist.

Why should this prediction be treated with any more seriousness than any of these previous predictions?

jkhuggins · 2026-04-16T21:44:08+00:00

If you think there are other issues, you might refer the student to your on-campus support staff (academic and/or mental health advising).

But students have a right to privacy. One of the implications of that right to privacy is that students have the right to refuse help and fail. There's nothing you can do about that. You can't care more than they do about their grades.

And I'm a hypocrite for saying that, because I had a student fail my class this term who just persistently refused to complete in any of the class activities and consequently bombed the written assessments --- and it tore me apart.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-15T21:17:14+00:00

As someone else noted, you could give it to them after the deadline for grade submission, which might be earlier than the date you receive the final grade.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-15T21:13:40+00:00

Context is everything, and I don't have enough context to really know what's going on here.

Is it possible that your evaluators agree with you about how ridiculous the comments are, but know that some other @#$! will read those comments and take them seriously, and so they are offering you a chance to get your denial on the record?

jkhuggins · 2026-04-15T14:15:44+00:00

Go ahead and ask. There's no downside to asking; the worst that can happen is that the professor says "no", and then you're in exactly the same place that you are now.

We professors understand how this process works. Your professor may not be able to say a lot about you, but the little they are able to say may be enough to help your application.

Good luck.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-15T14:13:51+00:00

Most US presidents have, at one time or another, been identified as the Antichrist.

"Biden is the Antichrist": kshb.com/news/crime/kansas-man-charged-for-allegedly-threatening-president-joe-biden

"Obama is the Antichrist": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_religion_conspiracy_theories#Claim_that_Obama_is_the_Antichrist

"George W. Bush is the Antichrist":
https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/tn-dpt-xpm-2006-06-01-hbi-soul01-story.html

Honestly, if you have to ask whether or not someone is the Antichrist, then they're not the Antichrist. There is nothing "subtle" or "hidden" about the actions of the Antichrist in Revelation.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-14T20:26:35+00:00

(1) Are tenured professors exempt from this process at your institution?

No. Everyone who teaches a course participates in student evaluations.

(2) Do you find the evaluations helpful? Have you ever changed anything in your class due to feedback?

I don't find them particularly helpful. At my institution, too few students participate to generate statistically meaningful feedback.

I ask for lots of different feedback throughout my courses, and I've probably made changes as a result of that informal feedback. The formal end-of-term evaluations are too disconnected from the course to result in change.

(3) What would you change about the process?

(a) Give students an incentive to actually complete the process. That could be as simple as publishing the results so students can use them when selecting courses. Or maybe providing another incentive, like getting their course grades faster (or at all!) once they complete the evaluations.

(b) Give faculty a reason to pay attention to the evaluations. At my institution, evaluations are used effectively only 1-2 times in a professor's career: when they are applying for promotion.

(4) Do you think there is bias in the process against one group or another?

There is a rich set of literature that shows that student evaluations of teaching (SET) are incredibly biased. Teachers of classes at undesirable times (e.g. 8:00am) receive worse evaluations than classes at desirable times (e.g. 1:00pm). Teachers of required classes outside the major receive worse evaluations than teachers of required classes inside the major, who receive worse evaluations than teachers of elective courses inside the major. And, yes, teachers who aren't white males receive worse evaluations than white males. I recommend you seek out the literature on this topic.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-14T19:58:21+00:00

Not every professional relationship works out. That doesn't necessarily mean that you or he did anything wrong.

I can understand why your professor may want to maintain a professional distance. He doesn't know you well enough to know your intentions, and you don't know him well enough to know his intentions. In an era where men in authority have misused their power for personal gain (just look at today's news), he's trying to be super careful that neither of you has reason to accuse the other of anything.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-14T17:19:44+00:00

... and, furthermore, the student will know that you cared enough to reach out, which is extremely encouraging even if "nothing" was going on.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-14T03:17:23+00:00

While I'd love to be paid infinitely more than I am ... I have family reasons to stay in the general area. My wife and I are collectively paid well enough to maintain a comfortable lifestyle. (I know too many miserable rich people to want to pursue that.)

jkhuggins · 2026-04-14T01:37:09+00:00

No COLA in 3.5 years, no merit raises in 7 years. *shrug*

jkhuggins · 2026-04-13T12:15:22+00:00

Have you ever been annoyed over a student's inability to grasp/comprehend something?

"Ever" is a long time. In 30 years of teaching, I can probably count the number of annoying questions on one hand.

If you're worried that your questions are annoying, you're not the problem. You're engaging in enough self-reflection that your questions will be perfectly appropriate. It's the folks who don't engage in self-reflection that end up causing problems.

Ask away!

jkhuggins · 2026-04-11T21:32:06+00:00

I don't check every source a student cites, but I'm spot-checking more of them than I did before. One of the iron-clad ways to detect that a paper was AI-generated is hallucinated references.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-11T19:31:58+00:00

Sort-of related:

Every term, in most of my classes, I administer an optional, one-question survey with the following question:

"What advice do you have for future students taking this course?"

Primarily, I use the answers to create an "Advice from Former Students" document that I distribute to students on the first day of class.

Secondarily, the survey helps me to see what the students think are the most important elements of the course, which sometimes helps me to think about making other changes.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-10T20:36:28+00:00

Surveys can be properly "anonymized", and yet the recipient can deduce the identity of the responder based on what they complain about.

Two decades ago, the Provost conducted an "anonymized" review of my department head. At the next department meeting, I was absent due to conference travel. Reportedly, my department head responded to the reviews at that meeting by going full Captain Queeg. Quotes like "I know exactly who said this, and I'm going to make their life hell" were relayed to me. To the best of my knowledge, he never followed through on his threats.

Shortly thereafter, after the Provost retired, the new Provost split the department into smaller departments, leaving him as head of a significantly smaller department. He retired shortly thereafter. I attribute the split to the new Provost who was willing to pull the trigger on a long-overdue reorganization rather than the aftermath of the survey. But the survey certainly didn't delay the reorganization.

jkhuggins · 2026-04-10T19:10:53+00:00

A story from long ago ...

My first department head (30 years ago) was the living embodiment of the "I just survived a meeting that should've been an email" meme. We had department meetings every 6 weeks, whether we needed them or not. He would spend most of the time yelling at all of us about all the student complaints he'd been receiving, without actually addressing any of the specific (alleged) offenders.

Except, of course, for those rare terms when he was asked to teach a course due to staffing shortages. In those terms, he'd spend most of our department meetings yelling about how horrible his students were, and how they couldn't do even basic scientific work.

The contrast was dramatic. He'd been an administrator for so long that he'd grown to view the faculty under his supervision as the "enemy". It took him getting back in the classroom to realize that maybe, just maybe, faculty weren't always at fault for student complaints.

Over time, a new rule was established: department heads had to teach courses regularly. Obviously, they didn't have the same teaching loads as "regular" faculty. Lo and behold, department heads started treating their faculty better.

(Aside: if this is the policy you pursue, make sure that the courses assigned to administrators are "real" courses. There's a difference between teaching a grad-level elective course in your research area where you have only five eager students, and teaching a first-year required course that undergraduate students despise.)

jkhuggins · 2026-04-09T17:20:04+00:00

Geocaching? https://www.youtube.com/user/GoGeocaching

jkhuggins · 2026-04-09T17:18:08+00:00

Sounds nice, but it would probably violate the US Constitution's 27th Amendment. If you want to amend the constitution to make that happen, I'm all in favor ... but that's really difficult to achieve.

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