UCLA Finance Professor Goes Up Against College Textbook Cartel and Offers His Textbook for Free

The first edition (2008) of UCLA (Anderson School) Finance Professor Ivo Welch's Introductory Corporate Finance textbook was available through Prentice-Hall for $220, which is about the average outrageous price these days for most over-priced college textbooks.

The book is now coming out in the second edition at a new price: FREE for the online readable-only version (no printing), and $60 for the 736-page softcover print version through Amazon (available in mid-December).  According to the author "It will not be updated every two years for the sake of suppressing the resale market," which has become the new anti-consumer (student), anti-competitive industry standard.   
  
I've posted before about the unsustainable "college textbook bubble" (see here and here and see chart above), and Professor Welch's approach is one example of how that bubble is now starting to burst.  As Kevin "Angus" Grier commented on KPC in February: 

"These days, given that you could make yourself a pretty good free principles text just by downloading relevant Wikipedia entries, I don't see how these [textbook] rents can be sustained over the long run (I am aware that not all or perhaps not even a majority of the rents are going to the authors)."

Thanks to Professor Welch, I'm starting to hear a "giant hissing sound" of the unsustainable, inflationary college textbook bubble starting to deflate, and I encourage other professors to join in his efforts to challenge the college textbook cartel.