Under Pressure to Prove ROI, a University Closes Its Press – Inside Higher Ed
November 12, 2025
Under Pressure to Cut Costs, a University Closes Its Press
Bucknell University says it’s closing its storied academic press to focus more resources on undergraduate students. But faculty and other scholars say the press has long been a part of the value proposition at a student-centered university.
Founded in 1968, Bucknell University Press has published more than 1,200 titles across numerous disciplines. Photo illustration by Justin Morrison / Inside Higher Ed | Jessica Rinaldi / The Boston Globe / Getty Images | Education Images / Universal Images Group/Getty Images.Faculty and academic press advocates are pushing back against Bucknell University’s unilateral decision to close its academic press, which has a decades-old reputation for publishing important work in the fields of 18th-century studies and Latin American literature.
Since the announcement in August, which a pending faculty motion has labeled an “extraordinary breach of shared governance,” the Association of University Presses, the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Goethe Society of North America have joined Bucknell faculty in writing letters to university administrators, decrying the decision and asking them to reconsider.
They argue that despite what the administration has suggested, Bucknell University Press is part of the university’s value proposition—even if it’s not a cash cow.
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“For decades, it has promoted the name and brand of Bucknell University far and wide, amplifying the university’s influence beyond that of similarly sized peers without presses and expanding recognition of the high value of a Bucknell degree,” the AUPresses wrote in a statement in September, noting that it has offered to help the university. “We remain hopeful that a mutually beneficial reimagination of the press will be possible.”
Saving Bucknell’s press wouldn’t be unprecedented for a university publishing house. Over the past 13 years, numerous academic presses, including those housed at Stanford University, the University of Missouri and the University of Akron, have reversed their decisions to close in the face of outcry from within and outside their institutions. Indeed, they can be hard for institutions to let go; although fewer than 3 percent of universities in the United States and Canada have their own presses, they have long served as curators of international scholarly conversations and vehicles for faculty career advancement across the larger professoriate.
ANGHI and tanuha2001 / iStock / Getty Images.Editor’s Note: This post was recommended by Library Link of the Day
http://www.tk421.net/librarylink/ (archive, rss, subscribe options).
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