Ethics Quandary (Score 0)

This professor would have a serious ethics problem at most universities. If he was a part-time lecturer, one could understand his unwillingness to provide such content free. However, if he has used university facilities to make or distribute these lectures, he wouldn't (and shouldn't) be allowed to profit in most cases. He would also be in trouble if he used any copywritten materials in his 'sold' lectures (e.g. illustrations from the text). Also, most profs/lecturers aren't quite paid on an hourly basis. Semester or quarter hours - yes, but this doesn't necessarily translate into real hours. Lecturers are essentially paid by the job, no matter what time they put into it.

I'm a full-time professor, and I offer online content for me students. I also have students that miss lectures, tough rocks. I have decided (for now) not to publish recordings of lectures online. However, all my lectures are on PowerPoint. So I do publish TEXT from my powerpoint lectures on my website. However, I only do so a day or two prior to exams. I feel this is a compromise. This way, students have to push themselves to attend my lectures and use their textbooks in order to survive the quizzes they are given between exam days. And if they haven't followed along during that time, by exam time it will be too late for these notes to help them much. And no, I don't (and can't) charge them a cent for this.

My guess is that this guy will have to change his distribution model if he comes under any real scrutiny from admin.