As reported by Inside Higher Ed, Kentucky’s Governor Matt Bevin has proposed closing the University Press of Kentucky, along with many other small state programs, as part of a sweeping budget-cutting measure. UPK is widely admired for its publications in regional, Civil War, and Military history. A relatively small press, with only about 50 books per year, UPK has won twelve Frederick Jackson Turner awards, which speaks to the extremely high quality of its work. UPK is also unusual in that it is affiliated with multiple in-state universities and colleges, and not exclusively with the University of Kentucky.
UPK is not the first university press to come under fire. In 2012, the new president of the University of Missouri announced plans to close the University of Missouri Press, which is another high-quality regional press – having published important works on Langston Hughes and Mark Twain. A public uproar saved the press and its $400,000 annual subsidy from the university.
The Kentucky University Press receives a somewhat larger state subsidy of $672,000, which pays the salaries of all 16 employees. All other expenses are covered through book sales.
University presses are often attractive targets for budget hawks, as many of their publications are highly specialized, and often quite esoteric. Scholars, of course, recognize the importance of publishing academic work that is often the product of decades of research. While the more prominent university presses – such as Oxford, Harvard, Chicago, Cambridge, California, Yale, and some others – are not in danger, the smaller presses play an equally important role in disseminating new and meaningful scholarship.
Academic presses may cost their home institution a little money, but they embody the very purpose of the university, which is to expand knowledge through research and teaching. And the cost is relatively trivial, compared to other expenditures. In the year before the attempt to eliminate the University of Missouri Press, the school spent $72 million to renovate its football stadium, and continued spending millions on improvements ever since; another $98 million expansion was approved just last year.
The annual salary of the University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari, under a recent extension, reaches $8 million, which is roughly 200 times the average pay of a UPK employee. Yes, an editor appears to be worth about one half of one percent of the basketball coach. Stated otherwise, Calipari could finance the entire UPK budget and still keep 92% of his pay.
Yes, I realize there are more basketball fans than academic book readers, probably by many orders of magnitude. But it is still a sad university that cannot finance an esteemed press with funding that amounts to loose change in its athletic budget.
ADDENDUM: The contracts for all of the University of Kentucky coaches (at all levels in all sports) can be found here. For example, the football team's tight ends coach earns $275,000, and the defensive backs coach earns $3000,000. Salaries are much lower in the "non-revenue" sports -- which, of course, are subsidized as is the university press -- but they are still higher than most editors. The head swimming coach earns $112,500, and an assistant track and field coach earns $87,000. The two rifle coaches earn a combined $150,000. All of the coaches get extra money for university-arranged media appearances, and they are eligible for performance incentives of up to about 20% of base salaries.
ADDENDUM 2: The nine strength and conditioning coaches, who evidently work across all sports, receive a combined $900,000 annually, with additional incentives that can bring the total to over 150% of the budget for the University Press of Kentucky.
This is a great post, Steve. University presses are critical to the expansion of scholarly knowledge. If we lose institutions like UPK, we will be the poorer for it as a country.
Posted by: Anthony Gaughan | January 30, 2018 at 12:43 PM