Save the University Press of Kansas

University presses are important scholarly resources, but they have regularly been jeopardized by university administrations looking for budget cuts. This is a bizarre situation, given how little money presses require for support, and how much benefit they collectively confer on the academic community. The most recently endangered press is the University Press of Kansas, which serves all six public universities in the state: Kansas University, Kansas State, Wichita State, Emporia State, Fort Hays State, and Pittsburg State. As reported by Gerard Magliocca at Balkinization, the university Board of Regents have ordered an audit to “decide how or if the press will continue to operate.”

Defunding the University Press of Kansas would be an academic disaster. For a relatively small press, UPK consistently publishes important and high quality books. Its several series – on the Civil War, military history, and constitutional studies – are very highly regarded. Its series on “great cases” is unparalleled. Given the quality of the books and authors, it is likely that at least some titles would be picked up by other presses if UPK were to be eviscerated or eliminated. But that would not be the case for the press’s specialty of books on Kansas, the Great Plains, and the Midwest. Those important titles might well go unpublished, much to the detriment of the history, ecology, art, and archeology of Kansas itself.

According to the owner of the largest independent bookstore in Lawrence, UPK books are often the shop’s best sellers. One such example was Petroglyphs of the Kansas Smoky Hills. Another is the Kansas Trail Guide: The Best Hiking, Biking, and Riding in the Sunflower State. Another is No Place Like Home: Lessons in Activism from LGBT Kansas. It is safe to say that these and other Kansas-centric books would simply go unpublished if UPK were forced to fold.

University presses operate on tight budgets and provide enormous services to the scholarly community and general readers. As repositories of knowledge, universities are dependent on books and the research that goes into them. A university press is not a frill and should not be expendable. And of course, athletic department budgets dwarf the money that is spent on presses and publishing.

At KU alone – and remember, UPK serves six campuses, three of which have Division One sports – the athletic department budget is around $107 million, having been increased by $8 million in 2019. The football team's outside linebackers' coach is paid $120,000, which about double the median pay of a KU employee. The linebackers’ coach, which I guess also includes the middle position, was paid $245,000 in 2017 (the most recent year I could find). And all of the assistant football coaches have multi-year guaranteed contracts, without buyout provisions. The basketball coach at Wichita State is paid over $3.5 million.

I understand that the economics of sports are different from publishing, but even the coaches in non-revenue sports are well paid. The KU volleyball coach gets $185,000. The Wichita State baseball coach is paid $350,000.  

A university system that can afford a $2.76 football coach, and over $10 million for basketball coaches, can also afford to support its first-rate university press.

UPK has only 14 employees including editors and support staff. The KSU football team has 26 coaches and administrators (accounting, of course, for many multiples of UPK's salaries, by at least an order of magnitude). You can have a perfectly good university without two linebackers' coaches, but you cannot have one without books.

Comments

[Jeff]

I am appalled that the Regents of the University of Kansas might consider anything other than increased funding for a press which 'does what it is supposed to do'. Smaller University Presses can focus on regional books as well as carve out some national niches in which they excel. UPK is one such press. Of course, you would have to know and care about military history, constitutional history, and the idiosyncratic history of a particular state, such as Kansas. If you peruse their latest catalogue https://kansaspress.ku.edu/media/wysiwyg/catalog/catSpr2021.pdf you will discover a less known book by Clausewitz, on Napoleon's campaigns. As a former academic bookseller and as one who teaches security and military policies, the advent of this book looms large. And while the Press may well break even, money is not the motivation nor should it be for this new book. Otherwise, a commercial press would have grabbed it.
University presses have an obligation to partner with all other actors in the academic pursuit of knowledge. That may, at times, require a longer term view, And I am sure if KU wins the NCAA March Madness it will be the UPK who will publish the year end celebratory book which will make money. And that is fine since it fills their 'regional' obligation. I want a world of University Presses and excellent linebacker coaches, they are not incompatible.

[Steve L.]

University presses and linebacker coaches should not be incompatible, but too many universities have prioritized sports over scholarship. (The continued participation in football, and the brain trauma it inevitably causes, is a separate question.)

In any case, not much would be permanently diminished if KU had only one linebackers coach, but significant scholarship will be forever lost if UPK is forced to fold.

[There's no place like home]

You think that's bad, you should see (I know you probably have) what the Kansas Board of Regents is trying to do to faculty:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/01/22/firing-professors-kansas-just-got-lot-easier

[Jeff]

@SteveL. Agree and I think college and high school football is on the way out. (God help us if scholarship is as well). On the technical matter of the # of linebacker coaches -- if you eliminate money or at least the zero sum aspect and the health aspects and was a pure formalist, I would have to disagree as the "Mike" or middle linebacker has a very different role than the outside linebackers and having more than one coach is useful and provides employment for someone who needs it.

[Dave Garrow]

No one could be more hostile to big-money intercollegiate athletics than I am (and it's SO wonderful in the UK & Europe where no such institutional cancers exist), but that said, Steve's considerably more enthusiastic about UPK's track record than I could be. My familiarity is of course only with their legal history & especially SCt.-cases titles; very likely their military history ones are FAR stronger....