Thinks that UiO is ripping off students

According to Heine Skipenes, leader of the Student Parliament (SP), many of the articles that are printed in the compendiums, and that one therefore has to buy the rights on, are available on the internet in the article databases that the University of Oslo (UiO) is already paying for access to. This is not financially sensible, Skipenes believes.

– The consequence of this is that the students have to pay twice, he says.

In a letter to the University Director in April, Skipenes asked some critical questions about the compendium arrangement. Skipenes illustrates with an example: In the compendium for the course STV4324 in the autumn term of 2007, two thirds of the articles were openly available to students on the Internet.

– This is an arbitrarily chosen compendium, but it illustrates that not enough work is being done to adapt this system to the benefit of students.

Looking for answers

When Universitas got in touch with Skipenes on Monday, he had still not received a reply to his letter to the University Director. Skipenes emphasizes that he understands that this is not an easy problem for the university to solve, but asks for openness and information. He says that it seems like a lot of people pay an unnecessary amount of money, and is not pleased with the fact that UiO has been silent for almost half a year.

– We are looking for answers to our questions, and we want to know why students are not being made aware of the fact that the syllabus is available for free on the internet, he says.

The Leader of the Student Parliament also believes that the compendium pages are not used to their full advantage, and that the printing quality is poor. He also says that the price of 1,43 kroner per page, which was set by the University Director on April 2nd, is too high.

It is not unusual that just half a page is used, and the quality is very variable. Sometimes texts in the compendium have already been underlined, and other times the printing is so bad that it is hard to read for those with bad eyesight. This may be problematic in relation to universal accessibility and design.

– Not representative

Senior Advisor at the Finance and Planning Department at UiO, Sven-Erik Svendsen, is responsible for compendiums at UiO, and does not agree with Skipenes’ criticisms.

– It is not true that this percentage of articles is available online, this is true of maybe one to two per cent. The example that Skipnes shows is from one single compendium, and this is not representative.

Svendsen does not agree that the compendiums are of poor quality, either.

– The quality is completely on par with the standards that the university has approved. With regards to taking advantage of the page space, this is an editorial job carried out by Unipub, and I trust that this is done to the best of their ability.

– Could the compendiums be produced more cheaply?

– Not with the agreements that are currently in place. When we get a new deal with a so-called extended collective license scheme, the prices might go down, because we will be able to organize production and distribution differently. The current laws and regulations are miles behind the technical possibilities, but we have to relate to this.

A new deal?

Svendsen can reveal that the Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions is currently in contact with Kopinor on behalf of all universities and university colleges, and that negotiations will hopefully start in October of this year.

– The results of this cannot be handed out in advance, but we hope that this will give us the opportunity to lower prices. This will benefit the students, he says.

On Monday, Universitas received a copy of the letter in which the Student Parliament’s inquiries were answered.

– Why haven’t SP received a reply before now?

– We have tried to explain this to SP several times before. With regards to this letter in particular, we have simply not had time to reply before, but here it is now, says Svendsen, who thinks that the criticism towards the University Director is largely unfounded.