I'm a professor at a college and all things related to publishing companies greatly disgust me. I'm using a throwaway because I'm still employed at that place but I just have to say something.

Our students are coming from some of the poorest areas of the state and yet, the professors whom choose their books have no regard for that and choose expensive textbooks when cheaper alternatives are available. For instance, one class I teach most professors use a $150 version. I've tried (unsuccessfully) to get them to use a $50 book ($25 e-textbook), created by a less evil company, but they look at me with a strange disgust. I've tried explaining how our students are poor and they really don't care. Some of it is, they're lazy and don't want to change their teaching materials. The other part of it is more nefarious.

Previously at a campus wide area meeting, Pearson bought us breakfast. Pearson was allowed by the Associate Deans to pitch us their products for two whole hours. We had to cut our meeting short because Pearson was allowed to basically run our meeting. More so, while we were discussing important issues related to students, and grades, Pearson was allowed to stay in the room for the entire meeting. This was supposed to be college faculty only.

More nefarious behavior from Pearson, includes incredibly cozy relationships between supervisors and Pearson. Also, Pearson is allowed to input via the book store system the actual book orders because they have the supervisors passwords. Supervisors have given away their passwords to a corporation to do the inputting of the books.

This has led to many faculty showing up the first week of class with the wrong textbooks ordered and them wondering what the heck happened. For instance, professors this upcoming semester will show up with new editions (more expensive editions) that they did not authorize. I was friends with the bookstore rep, before they got upset and left and we had a long conversation over the shadiness of Pearson. She was so frustrated at how Pearson was able infiltrate the system and mess up so many book orders.

If students saw these backroom deals they'd vomit. I vomit. I vomit and have vowed not to use anymore Pearson books. I hate them as a company. Additionally, when I told another book rep from another company in competition with Pearson, he said such deals - Pearson giving breakfast, pitching their products to professors in such private ways, is standard practice.

I feel hamstrung by the system. The learning objectives/outcomes for courses are often curated by senior faculty whom instead of using independent thinking to create these items, do so according to ONE textbook. This means you have to by this one textbook, unless you know how to create great material on your own. For instance, the learning objectives for a class I teach are EXACTLY the same as the chapter headlines in the book we use. I want to use another book, but so few books cover exactly the same material as that book. I feel stranded using materials I don't want to use. More so, those senior faculty have negotiated the contract with the publisher and then make all of the adjunct faculty follow it. This means that all adjuncts (are there are a lot) are also hamstrung by this process too.

I'm open to doing an AMA on this.