Should math professor force students to use $180 textbook, written by his boss?

This is sad and is symptomatic of how broken the education systems are, not just in the US but in many parts of the world.

Going slightly off-topic (or rather accelerating the discussion a bit): I personally feel that fixing these issues in higher education will not be solved by MOOCs or 'democratization' of access to university level education. The change will have to come from industry. Until the current age of connectivity university grades/degrees/certificates etc were the easiest way to gauge a person's abilities and suitability for a job (especially when the person did not have or could not prove, prior experience) and they do act as a filter (unless you live in complete denial about reality). However, I don't think that it needs to be so. I wonder, how can we replace this (admittedly flawed, although working well for the most part) filter of educational qualifications ?

It's rather ironic; as I student I don't think I ever had a bad experience when professors selected books OTHER than the latest edition Pearson/McGraw was hawking. It meant that they actually put some effort into the course, rather than just taking the materials from the publisher and making it up at they went along.

There's a slight change in emphasis in the title in this shorter version, the professor in this case is trying to fight this scam, but being overrules by the boss who wrote the book. Kudos to him for fighting this.

Should he? No. Can he? Evidently.

The ethics here are fetid.