Several states have reduced funding to public universities, causing institutions to either decrease funding to their presses or consider shutting them down altogether, reports Publishers Weekly.

Illinois’s budget stalemate since July 2015 means that nine public universities in Illinois—three housing scholarly presses—can’t receive new funds, and so will have to deal with small budgets; Southern Illinois University Press, for example, has lost, in total, sixty percent of its funding over the last six or seven years—and twelve percent was cut this past year.

The University Press of Kansas is also in limbo, since the state’s announcement that it would be cutting $30.7 million from the state’s higher education system for fiscal year 2017. Asked to comment on the impact the budget cuts might have on the publisher, University Press of Kansas director Charles Myers said, “It’s so uncertain right now. I don’t think this is something I want to address at this time, as it would be pure speculation on my part.”

The University of North Carolina, however, feels “well taken care of,” despite a recent $64.4 million cut from its seventeen-campus university system in the 2016–2017 budget, said press director John Scherer, adding that the cuts have had only “an indirect effect” on the press because it has received a $440,000 subsidy from the state for the past twenty years. “It has never gone up when times are good, and it hasn’t gone down when times are bad.”

“The clarity of our role as a system press helps our existence,” Scherer said. “The university press is where the university meets the public. The press has endeared itself to the region. We’re seen as spreading the word of what’s happening at UNC.”
 

John McNay, chair of the University of Cincinnati’s department of history, philosophy, and political science, and member of the taskforce that recommended that the university launch the press, concurred, somewhat. McNay said that the committee was impressed by the support from faculty at the University of Akron and the University of Missouri given the nationwide concern for these universities when their presses were slated to close due to budget cuts.

“I think the UC looks forward to creating a press that people—both in academia and the public—will care just as much...and that is also a valuable part of our academic mission,” said McNay.

Related news: Northern Illinois University Press may go under, as it was deemed “nonessential” according to a recent committee review.