Seems it was recommended by his department ( and written by two professors there). He said he wanted to use s 75 dollar text and open education resources ( In this day an age why not, its math and really hasn’t changed in hundreds of years.) Technology has changed teh world by making access to information free, soon it will change education ( but not if the old guard has anything they can do about it )
^Ok. I think most schools would give their teachers the freedom to choose the textbooks.
From the school: http://news.fullerton.edu/2015fa/textbook-costs.aspx
The authors of the expensive book (Goode and Annin) happen to be the chair and vice chair. The instructor in question, Bourget, used a book by Strang for linear algebra and free online differential equations material. Odd that Bourget did not choose a free online linear algebra book as well (e.g. https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~linear/ , http://www.math.brown.edu/~treil/papers/LADW/LADW.html , http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/ , http://linear.ups.edu/ ).
Schools should put out bids for books on basic subjects. Math is a perfect example since the material in anything upto diffeq was worked out a few centuries ago. Also make it criminal [maybe a little overkill] to sell an “international” version at a cheaper price.
I had a professor who did this 30 years ago in Thermodynamics, one of the best general engineering professors I ever had. He did not get tenure.