Universities have disinvested from their presses just as much as their libraries
publicbooks.org
publicbooks.org
https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/series/outward-odyssey-a-p...
If you look here they have many other series on all sorts of topics:
https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/series/
I also often end up read books by other University presses.
For most, that means collaborating with others. UC system and B1G academic alliance are making moves, but it's herding cats. Even within universities, it's a nightmare of competing interests. How do you convince your faculty to publish through your own press or consortium instead of the higher impact factor journal owned by Elsevier?
If you ignore the hardest part of the problem; getting everyone to agree and coordinate, then yes it’s a simple problem to solve! You can simplify any problem like this, just ignore the hard part!
:D
This honestly sounds like something that should be doable by the university.
Also, just practically, the journals help a lot in assessing candidates. Even in fields just adjacent to mine, I might trust an endorsement by a good journal over my own judgments. Often I know the work of the editors there and value their judgment. Chasing after highest impact factor journal publications has its problems, but I haven't seen better proposals.
To bring this back to HN topics, anyone have tips on trying to suss out that trait in hiring managers during interviews?
Bigwigs at universities care about rankings, even if they are basically garbage.
We should all just mercilessly mock Harvard and its ilk, because they have the resources to do pretty much anything.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-lis...
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp...
Academic libraries and publishing are effectively being privatized and will be dominated by ever more rent-seeking. I don't see this getting turned around unless universities dictate to their faculty where they can publish, i.e. stop subsidizing their competition.
Also, isn't the case that it is mostly the "major" universities that have their own presses in the first place?
I think historically the larger presses were expected to be close to revenue neutral. They do well enough to limp along, but don't get the resources really needed to build new infra. As a cost center without significant tuition or grant funding, the library has little pull when provosts form their priorities.
Look at the size and growth of the university's endowment.
My local university press is a hit-and-miss affair. Some books have been real classics, some books have been laughably bad. The university press probably ranks low in institutional power pecking order and so have evolved to operate as little more than a vanity press for certain academic departments. The writing and editing of content proves to be only as good as the academic department pushing its publication. And that is often wanting. In my interest area of local history, my local university press, which should by rights be the top quality publisher, is all over the map in quality, while out-of-state university press books on our local history are uniformly excellent.
Had only ever heard of universities divesting from {x}
Regardless:
> The difference between disinvestment and divestment is nominal and appears to be one of scale. Disinvestment, meaning the sale of shares, can happen in small lots at any time to raise funds without losing control of the asset. Divestment or divestiture, on the other hand, usually refers to the sale of controlling shares. [1]
[1]: https://www.ansarada.com/mergers-acquisitions/divestiture
The same author may approach different publishers depending on their intended audience. e.g. Daron Acemoglu published "Introduction to Modern Economic Growth" with Princeton but "Why Nations Fail" with Crown (a division of Penguin RandomHouse).
It’s a lot easier than many folks suppose to reach the bottom of what the Internet has on a lot of topics—people toss around phrases like “all the world’s knowledge” and, oh boy, is that ever not true—and IME the next step is very often a few books from university presses.
But when you need tenure, and you need to get published, they're the 1000x more willing to publish you than one of the major popular presses.
* SICP: MIT Press
* Modern Compiler Implementation in ML: Cambridge University Press
* Creating Symmetry: Princeton University Press (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691161730/cr...)
It really depends on the nature of the book. If it's a first-year undergrad text that is likely to be purchased by thousands of students, a publisher like Addison-Wesley will be interested. If it's solidly mass market applied tech, like "Master Javascript in 32 Seconds" or something, someone like O'Reilly or Manning will probably take it. If it's more niche and technical it's likely to be a University press.
University presses do publish some absolute bangers. Creating Symmetry, for example, is an absolutely beautiful book combining maths and art. MIT has a great series on game design. Cambridge is very strong in machine learning and maths.
I do find that my philosophy and critical theory books are the ones that more heavily come from university presses. In general the humanities tend to have stronger presence in the university presses (largely because books, not papers, are the publication format of choice for those areas).
Paper copies of theses are still put in the library as well, with the cost of printing and binding borne the authors.
Meanwhile other countries just fund public education and subsidize tuition. shrug
The original intent was to offer a well-rounded education that includes physical activity. Healthy body healthy mind. Nerds who are also in shape. This concept is lost by creating a pro athlete caste within a school, students more respected for their success on the field than in the classroom. Maybe sports is truly subsidizing academics, but then again if 280 Million are spent on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQIGwxsVv1E, is there enough institutional focus on academics?
Ok correct me if I'm ignorant on this topic but give me more than that oneliner that I've read a couple times before.
But many big donors only care about how the school does athletically. They don't care about the education side - and in fact, if they could figure a way to ditch that "cost center" they would.
A cost center is simply a vessel through which money moves. Revenue, expenses, inventory, etc. all go through cost centers. Sure, the professors' salaries go through a cost center. So does tuition and royalties from TV networks.
This isn't a misinterpretation, it's just a different definition of the term based on context.
Maintenance on your building, IT infrastructure, etc. are more of what I think of. The "cost of doing business".
Basically, things you need to have for the business to function but spending more on them won't generate you more revenue, sales, etc.
With varying levels of indirection that's true of nearly all things a company does, though. When IT fixes some sale person's laptop that will have a direct positive impact on that person's sales, and thus on revenue. Spending too little on those IT people would have lost you revenue, conversely spending more might lead to more revenue.
In the end it's all a framework any company can apply as they want. You are right that a marketing department is much more likely to be judged by the company's revenue (attributed by department as much as possible), while maintenance or IT support is unlikely to be judged by that criteria. But imho that's mostly because it's really difficult to judge building maintenance by their contribution to revenue, not because it doesn't make sense to do so if you had the data.
if there is anything that doesnt "indirectly" make money for a company, then it should be cut immediately...
The whole cost center vs profit center is a highly political game anyways. Thats why engineering and IT is often thought of as a cost center (because they often care more about the product) wheras marketing, sales etc are usually profit centers because they are able to direct their skills inwards to make a case for their own existance.
Its a persuasion game about where resources will be spent to achieve most impact and for different companies the true answer will often be different. You need less marketing (but not none) if your product is premium. You need less product development (but not none) if your plan is to ship as much low quality garbage as possible. In between these the persuasion game is a distributed way of deciding strategy.
There is a sort of almost-idea of risk vs quality, where some areas exist soley to prevent future risk to the company (IT meltdown, no roof over head, legal liability etc) where the rest work on the buisness. But under that thought the vast majority of operations are profit
Do we really know what else goes on behind closed doors in terms of donor pressure?
Most of the information is digitized, which has better reach. Books that cannot be digitized yet due to copyright are held in storage until they enter public domain, and you can request chapter scans in the meantime or even check out the physical book. Separate special collections are kept for items whose physical existence is significant. Libraries are being repurposed as study spaces, which campuses otherwise tend to lack. Reference librarians are available online with extended hours.
The overall trend seems positive.
Similar arguments about presses. Mixed media is the future. Some schools invest in various learning platforms and knowledge hubs, sometimes collaboratively. A building doesn't facilitate such variety very well.
At the same time, Elsevier et al take larger and larger bites out of the budget for those digitized collections. The failure to invest in University presses will only exacerbate this in the long term. Attempts to provide an alternative to the for-profit parasites, e.g. open access platforms, wallow in grant funded misery with budgets considered laughable in the private sector.
Researchers choose to publish in Elsevier's journals, not for lack of a university press.
It's a complicated issue, but in general library budgets have been consistently shrinking for years/decades, even as the subscription costs for journal access from big for-profit like Elsevier skyrockets. It's even gotten to the point where universities with endowments larger than many nations' GDPs are struggling to afford publisher prices (see https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-univ...).
Decreasing library budgets plays into this, but at its heart I think that there's a crisis of purpose as well. By not investing in open access publishing infrastructure themselves and not modifying the incentives for faculty review and tenure, universities have put themselves at the mercy of these for-profit publishers and are suffering for it. It's hard to blame faculty who are vying for one of the ever-diminishing tenured spots for publishing their articles in the best journals they can, regardless of whether they'll be behind a paywall, especially when the bar for tenure keeps getting higher and higher.
So we find ourselves in a situation where universities and public funding agencies are paying academics to conduct research and do peer review, then faculty are giving the results to a for-profit publisher, who then sells access to the work right back to them at an astronomical fee.
I'm hopeful if not optimistic that at some point, universities might choose to break out of the cat-and-mouse game they're in by investing in open access publishing and incentivizing their faculty to use it rather than continuing to feed for-profit publishers' wild profits. I've seen some (too limited) action on the first part of that but pretty much none on incentivization part. Certain funding agencies are starting to require open access publication as a condition of some grants, but the change has been slow.
University presses could handle the implementation (I know, more easily said than done, but they have the expertise). Cost reduction would appeal to university administrations.
People do organize themselves and accomplish things, and with (guaranteed?) savings, (no?) opposition, (wide?) support, this one seems like low-hanging fruit - from my very outside perspective.
I should note that I am writing this response as somebody who is a professional researcher and scientist, not as an undergraduate student who needs to find a few references for a term paper. My needs are quite different than others and the library needs to cater to a wide range of people at all levels of research.
Many universities are in fact repurposing libraries as "study spaces" or as "learning centers". This often means dedicating more space to meeting rooms and desks, etc. To get that space, libraries either put the books in storage or quite frankly sell the books, especially books that are not checked out that often. Many of the technical books that I own are former library books. Moreover, even well-resourced government labs (like DOE national laboratories) are selling their books. I know because I have bought some (albeit through a third party). Putting books in storage is the better option, because at least the books are available, but it removes the ability to browse the shelf for adjacent books (a highly underrated research method) and often requires preparation to request books and then wait for them to arrive in a reading room. That said, it is far better to put the books in storage.
The availability of reference librarians is often greatly overstated. A library like the Library of Congress still has excellent reference librarians who often can perform apparent miracles to find difficult to locate information, but at university libraries, if I ask for a reference librarian, I often end up with an undergraduate assistant who does not really know much and cannot help you if you have a specific question to ask about locating something in a particular collection or how to use certain equipment like microfilm readers. Perhaps the undergrad can help other undergrads out, but when I was in grad school I never found this practice helpful when I needed specific information that I was already having difficulty finding.
To summarize, this trend may benefit some people, but it comes at the expense of in-depth researchers and their needs.
I will end by quibbling with that notion that "most of the information is digitized". The problem is that the Internet is so large that you can easily spend your whole life without ever realizing how shallow it really is in a single subject. Only once you go deep in that subject do you realize how much is not yet digitized in the first place. Yes, much information is digitized, but based on my experience, it is not "most". Some day that may change, but for the time being, physical libraries still play an important role here.
It's no more burdensome than it would be with more library funding. Storage is always necessary because big universities own several times more books than they could ever hope to shelve in their increasingly crowded campuses. Digging deep into a subject's history can require materials that don't exist in sufficient quantities for every interested library to have one, necessitating inter-library loans at a minimum.
FYI Every online library catalog I've seen has a "browse shelf" feature.
And how many times do you need to be shown how to use the microfilm machine?
I tend to agree that storage is not a bad option, but so many libraries just cannot be bothered and would rather discard or sell materials.
Fair point about the "browse shelf" feature of online catalogs, but I was talking about the ability to just open an adjacent book and just browse through the book itself. Instant access in other words. This is much more difficult if requesting things from storage, though the trick is to request several dozen books at once from storage. That is reasonable at some libraries but others will be greatly annoyed if you do that, due to limited shelf space for holds/requests.
You are right that I do not need to be shown how to use a microfilm machine, but often different libraries or archives have different practices and conventions about how to use their machines, especially for the purpose of preserving the microfilm. Being shown how to use it is more about learning their conventions and practices so that you can continue to have access to their collections later, and also to learn any issues with the machines themselves. For example, some institutions like the Smithsonian require you to wear special gloves when handling microfilm and limits where you can save any scans. Other places are completely free-form, but different machines have different quirks or could be down at the moment. Quirks include blurry images, need to wind the reels in a certain way, slow fast-forward (problem for longer reels), missing parts, susceptibility to nearby vibration, etc. If the undergrad helping you doesn't even know what a microfilm machine is, I doubt they can truly help you figure out how to get this particular machine working right. I ended up figuring this stuff out myself, but I would have preferred some assistance from a professional to be honest.
As someone who works in the field, I'm not actually sure what you mean, and am curious. can you point me to an example of a "browse shelf feature" in a library catalog you have used and found helpful? I'm just curious to see what you are finding, and liking.
For example, consider this book at the University of Maryland's library:
https://umaryland.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1594752
Scroll down to the bottom to see "Browse the Shelf". Notice that the call numbers are sequential.
The Library of Congress has a similar feature even though only librarians are able to access the stacks:
https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/searchBrowse
I don't mean to come off as dismissive of the feature. It is pretty useful! But I also value shelf access and just being able to dig into a book at a moment's notice.
The library of congress version is currently unavailable, perhaps it's gotten too much traffic from HN!
the umaryland version, @sheepshear do you personally find this feature useful, you use this feature? Or you were just giving it as an example for others who might want it?
Either way, this is a good example of the kind of "browse shelf" feature you were speaking of, looking more or less like this?
Previously, when university libraries had books and paper journals, anyone could read them. Now, members of the general public are not licensed to read electronic content there.
So digitization has reduced the reach of the content, not increased it.
Tuition inflation is absurd. The goal is to grow learners, not set them back.
Honestly, start with the latter. See what happens. Maybe include a first-loss provision for schools with an endowment.
I'd be in favor if it was only for people who pursue certain degrees that we need. But going to party schools? Going for the cliche "underwater basket weaving" degree? The money being funneled into building a new pool and rock climbing wall for one of the dorms?
No, no, and no!
I think that's the idea. It sounds rather painful to me? But the status quo is also very weird?
that's no different than what we have no. we don't need everyone going to college especially to major in history of tampons type degrees.
the end goal is for loan companies to decline people who won't be able to repay their loans given the expected value of their degrees. (Your future earning potential is the collatoral for your loan).
For people that want to "expand their horizons", they can go watch khanacademy on youtube.
That's the old Brit way of thinking, and we sent that packing over a century ago.
I'd thank you to not return us to the 'good old days.'
As in health care I don’t think there is a market solution. Government needs to mandate lower prices for them.
The Stanford's get unlimited free laundry.
Government isn't going to get involved here because most are private, for-profit masquerading as nonprofits while fattening up their endowments.
If you're a university, the goal is to fill up your university with satisfied customers and increase revenue.
If you're a student, the goal is to form social networks that you can later use to help in business.
If you're a politician, the goal is to increase college attendance rates.
If you're a hard-line right winger, the goal is actually to set undesirable groups back, but that's a pretty fringe position.
If you just want to learn and grow, you should avoid the university system entirely.
I disagree with this. The university system is really good for exposure, assuming that people who are attending the system actually take advantage of the exposure. e.g. I was able to take dedicated lessons in multiple languages, artistic mediums, theories in various fields, by experts in each field. Many of these experts were presenting their work for free outside of lessons, and often times provided free food and drink to boot! Also, because my institution was larger, we often had scholars travel here to present their various works and even little get-togethers where multiple scholars from multiple fields collaborated and presented work. For free! With free food and drink!
I can't get a single dedicated language instructor for my life nowadays, it's bullshit apps or stuff oriented towards children only. Same if I wanted to learn the basics of, say, a performance art, or painting. The best system I have nowadays for learning is mostly hacker spaces and maker spaces, but they're specialized in what they can teach me and don't often have the kind of dedicated experts "office hours" or anything like that.
You tend to have some younger screw-up, unmotivated students, especially at entry level classes; some younger students that are there for economic or other reasons; some older students going back to school for life reasons; and then some older students who are intellectually curious and doing it for enrichment.
What the make-up of a class, and the resultant culture is, is a crapshoot. But it can be outstanding.
If you avoid the standard college classes, you get a pretty wide cross-section of the people in the community. Math 101 is mostly going to be college-age kids.
Heck, even my Bio 101 professor was abnormally brilliant. She'd been a researcher at Harvard Medical School who worked on highly experimental treatments in a ward full of terminal patients and just finally burned out from being around so much death all the time, so there she was in Los Feliz three blocks from Scientology world headquarters teaching at a community college, probably the hardest class I've ever had to take.
Exactly. I'm fairly knowledgeable about my STEM specialization but in university I had access to great language learning and exchange programs, top-notch political science and philosophy departments, architecture departments, etc. I remember bumming around in philosophy seminars not because I was a philosophy student (though I did take some philosophy classes) but because I found it so interesting. As long as I didn't increase the grading burden on any of the grad students/professors, everyone was happy and the quality of instruction I received was fantastic. In the real world the closest I have is books I read or MOOCs where a lot of people are in it to get a certification or a badge of completion rather than just marinate in ideas.
Based in recent history, most recently on spending cuts in the proposed house spending bill, this appears to be well within the mainstream of the Republican party.
FWIW, I'm well aware the GOP has also contributed greatly to that debt.
The purpose of higher education in the US to create a market for student loan debt and generate revenue for states. The US is a capitalist society, and education is not a right, it's a privilege, and student loan debt is a billion dollar industry. We saw how the states nearly rioted over the possibility of being denied the revenue from student loan interest if it was forgiven. Believing education is about educating people is about as naive as believing hospitals are about healthcare, or houses about shelter. All of it is entirely about profit, debt and tax revenue.
So much of how the US works (or doesn't work) makes perfect sense when you realize this. Education, business, tech, government, the media, pop culture - it's all grift, top to bottom. It's all carnies and frauds and sociopaths working angles and trying to squeeze you just a little harder to wet their lips with one more drop of your lifeblood.
Whether a society is capitalist or not does not define whether education is a right or a privilege. Another mistake is defining a country as capitalist and then shutting down any remaining capacity to think about it. Most countries contain a mixture of economic principles at work, so a surface level knowledge of capitalism that seems stuck in the 1800s will only leave you appearing naive and outdated.
Which country is it again that created the internet and has helped expand education not only locally, but globally for all mankind to benefit? Which country is it that created the greatest video platform on Earth, populated with a vast wealth of university lectures and documentaries on top of allowing people casually sitting at home to speak their mind for anyone to see (within reason)?
The U.S. is not without its problems as any country, but we're familiar with many of the problems we have which were already solved once before within the last century. Young people trained on cynical ideologies are highly suggestible, almost encouraged to see certain events as validation for that cynicism. It becomes their organizing principle, no longer looking for what solutions are being produced by a system or what uncorrupt motivations someone might have for any given decision. Only the negatives.
Those shouldn't be called "universities", then.
Good intramural sports would serve far more students.
point taken though, maybe the choice of sports does not fit the ideal.
The wealthy want beautiful new buildings and a good football team, and a high-touch experience for their kids. They are happy to pay administrators lots of money to deliver on those things.
I think libraries are adjusting fine to accommodate these needs. Really, the most important building in any educational institution is still the library, even in 2023. What libraries fail (start failing (?)) at is their archival responsibilities. And apparently, from the article, their publishing responsibilities too.