Faculty perceptions of the scholarship and utility of writing college-level textbooks

Abstract

The literature and most anecdotal evidence suggest that higher education faculty members hold writing college-level textbooks in relatively low esteem as a scholarly activity. A structured inquiry conducted among tenured faculty and department chairs which separated notions of scholarship from expectation of utility disclosed a surprisingly high regard for the scholarship required in writing textbooks. However, the expectation of utility or reward is much lower, suggesting institutional and financial pressures that act as major disincentives to textbook authorship. Both the regard for scholarship and the expectation of reward were also shown to display disciplinary variations.