Academe Degree Zero by Di Leo Jeffrey R.;

Author:Di Leo, Jeffrey R.; [LEO, JEFFREY R. DI]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2022-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8 Academe Degree Zero

Mythologies of the Book in Academic Culture

DOI: 10.4324/9781315636184-8

Academic Book Culture in Crisis

There are many signs that the culture of the book in American higher education is in crisis. For starters, there is the hotly debated question of whether the book should remain the “gold standard for tenure,” or, as Lindsay Waters, executive editor for humanities at Harvard University Press recently asked, whether the scholarly world should once again make the essay the standard of achievement.1 There is also the issue of how to balance the rising cost of producing and publishing books with shrinking university press and library budgets. One solution has been for presses to make sales and marketability increasingly important factors in publishing decisions.

Whereas, in the past, an intellectually compelling but unmarketable book had a good chance of acceptance, more and more academic presses are rejecting otherwise strong manuscripts for fear of losing money.2 Accounts of manuscripts being turned down for financial rather than scholarly reasons are on the rise.3 Part of the reason for this change in publishing practice is the decrease in library purchasing of university press books; in the past, presses could count on a much higher minimum number of sales than they can today.4

These current financial decisions by scholarly presses have a direct affect on the ability of scholars to publish their academic books with university presses, and add to the difficulty of maintaining the book as the gold standard for tenure. if academics expect to be able to publish their solid scholarship with scholarly presses for purposes of promotion and tenure, but scholarly presses refuse to publish solid scholarship for financial reasons, then the book crisis in higher education is indeed a vicious circle. But these faculty and administrator problems regarding tenure and book publication are not even the end of it—students too are involved in the crisis.

The rising cost of textbooks for university courses is a major cause for concern among students. A report by the Government Accountability Office found that over the past twenty years, the price of college textbooks has risen twice as fast as the inflation rate.5 Another study found that since 1994, college textbook prices have risen four times the rate of inflation, with the average student spending $900 per year on textbooks.6 This trend has angered students and those who provide financial support for them—and it has also caught the attention of legislators around the country.

For example, publishers are now required by state law in Connecticut to provide faculty with the price of their books before they place their book orders.7 it will probably not be too long before states begin to regulate the cost of books assigned by faculty to students—and faculty will of course not be too thrilled by this type of state regulation, which they will rightfully view as an infringement of their academic freedom to assign whatever books they feel best achieve the learning outcomes set for their courses. Perhaps because of the potential for state regulation of student

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