***Cross Posted from
No Nussle Blog
Mark C. Falb
770 Mount Carmel
Dubuque, IA 52003
$25,000 Contribution to the Nussle Campaign on Jan. 31, 2006
(Campaign Disclosure 1/19/06)
Falb has an interesting "history" as a textbook publishing "magnate". Mark C. Falb is the owner and Chief Executive Officer of Kendall/Hunt Publishing. Kendall/Hunt is based out of Dubuque, IA and a base of conservative support for Representative Nussle's campaign for the governorship in Iowa. Well, you say "So what?"
Little background. Kendall/Hunt is a publisher of textbooks - in particular, college level textbooks. Personally, I know how expensive textbooks can be for a college student (or a public school district). A typical semester at UNI would find me paying over $400 for textbooks on average (while one semester I paid over $600 for books). Imagine how expensive it is for a school district to pay for new books for entire SCHOOLS at these rates (even if bulk discounted). So, as you can expect - Mark Falb is loaded.
Now, how does a company like Kendall/Hunt bring these textbooks to market? I always assumed that professors would select textbooks based on quality and whether they met criteria for teaching a particular curriculum. A professor teaching "History of the U.S. since 1877" would choose a textbook that would be appropriate for the course and reading level; quality would be the key factor. Well, I guess that's not necessarily how it works, according to the
Chronicle for Higher Education:
In 2001, representatives of several publishers went to Penn State's campus to pitch their introductory economics textbooks. A committee of professors chose Longman's book solely on the basis of its merits, according to Robert Marshall, chairman of the economics department.
The Longman sales representatives were ushered into the office of Ronald Filippelli, associate dean for administration and undergraduate studies in the liberal-arts college. When the closed-door meeting was over, Longman had agreed to write Penn State a large check, reportedly around $30,000.
What that money was for depends on whom you ask. Ms. Spiegel, the Pearson spokeswoman, says it was for "in-kind services," including content that had been added to the book by Penn State professors, and for time spent "evaluating our course-management system." But both Mr. Filippelli and Mr. Marshall say the money had nothing to do with a course-management system. And while Penn State professors did contribute material to the book, Mr. Marshall estimates it at only about 15 percent of the content.
"We believe that, in cases where it's doable, it's not improper for the university that provides the infrastructure for the educational process to get some return on the business, so that money can be put into services," says Mr. Filippelli. When asked whether this might be called a kickback, the dean said he preferred to call it "good will."
Sometimes the payments from customized textbooks go directly to professors rather than departments. Last year, Ms. Staples, the Middle Tennessee State historian who adopted a North West textbook, made an agreement with Kendall/Hunt to publish a "reader" for one of her classes. (A reader is a collection of excerpts from various works, usually selected by the professor.) The agreement, under which she would receive $2 for every copy of the reader that was sold, required her to continue to assign it until 400 copies had been purchased by her students. The deal fell through when it turned out that Ms. Staples would be teaching fewer sections than she had anticipated.
There's more...a policy of not basing sales on MERIT but on kickbacks? Where have I heard of that before? That never happens at the federal level, does it?
Whether professors should receive royalties on books they didn't write is an issue on which Kendall/Hunt executives remain silent. "That's a policy I would prefer not to comment on," says Mark C. Falb, the company's owner and chief executive officer.
Remember, Marck C. Falb is one of those "mega-contributors" who gave $25,000 to Nussle's campaign last year...the quote's long, but don't forget!
But others in the industry are willing to comment. "We're seeing a great deal of custom publishing where the department will include a syllabus or study-guide material, and then the department will receive a royalty for every copy sold," says a textbook executive who asked not to be named.
Patrick Kasenenko, a sales representative for Houghton Mifflin, says such payments are increasingly a part of the business. "When they're putting in something small and they want money, I don't think that's legitimate," he says. "If a professor says, 'McGraw-Hill will give me $4 per copy. Can you give me another $2?,' that's when it gets low-bally," he says. "That's when students get toasted."
Now, this is strange. Think about the parallels between textbook publishing and the pharmaceutical industry. I really don't think this is a stretch. Pharmaceutical representatives spend BILLIONS on advertising and kickbacks to medical professionals to get their products out on the market - not necessarily based on QUALITY of the drugs, but on the QUANTITY of meals from Panera Bread the Big Pharma reps can buy for such "poor" doctors that need the handout. Is this the vision of education reform we want for the state of Iowa? Do we want a Rethuglican governor named Jim Nussle who's in favor of large textbook companies paying kickbacks to teachers to get them to carry textbooks, driving up the price and reducing the quality of educational materials?