Compendium chaos
The compendiums are delayed, overpriced or misprinted. Whether this will improve is doubtful.
På norsk;)
FOTO: Stéphane Lelarge
- The day we received our essay questions, it was still uncertain when the compendiums were going to turn up, says Vibeke Tannvik, student of International Studies. She is taking Comparative Politics this autumn, and luckily she was able to buy the compendium the day after her first assignment was handed out.
Tannvik and many other students at the University of Oslo (UiO) have experienced not getting the syllabus in its entirety when they need it. Apparently, the flaw lies in the many elements of the chain between the lecturer responsible for a subject, the institute and Unipub, which is an academic publishing house and a subsidiary of Akademika.
- We print almost 2000 different compendiums each year, and therefore we have a queue system, explains Feride Emel Bærø, manager of Unipub.
- The later a compendium is delivered to us, the further back in the queue it goes. The deadline is in May, which means that if the institute hands in the compendium list in May, then we can guarantee that the compendium will be ready when term starts. There are some lecturers who cannot decide what the syllabus should be by this deadline, and of course this leads to delays, he explains.
A lack of communication
The students are also unhappy with the communication between the institutes and the publishers.
Wenche Danielsen Åsheim, leader of the Faculty of Humanities’ Student Council (HFSU), relates her experience:
- Sometimes Unipub has printed the wrong things, and I don’t think that lecturers and the institutes have a great understanding of how the compendiums are produced.
She says that she once experienced that a compendium contained twice as many articles as it was supposed to, and that the old compendiums are still on sale even though corrections have been sent through:
- This led to an overpricing of 600 kroner. We were not told that we could get a refund on this. Now they are still selling the old compendiums, but at a reduced price, Åsheim says.
In addition to this, it is problematic for students when more people than expected register for courses:
- They assumed that there would be 70 students taking the course, but we turned out to be 120 students, says Helle Mari Berg, LAP student at the Faculty of Education.
- I did not get hold of a compendium until the beginning of September, so I have not been able to study. We were not able to read the compendium until after the fourth lecture.
Extra printing takes time
Feride Emel Bærø says that Unipub goes through a long procedure each time they have to print extra compendiums. Unipub must pay for and gain the right to use every article from every publishing house.
- We have to clear the rights every time we print a compendium. Therefore they have to go be passed by several authorities. Some of them use more time than others to reply to our applications.
- Is it not possible to copy compendiums in advance?
- It would be too expensive for the university to print up extra copies of the compendiums in advance, so we have to clear the rights each time we print extra copies. This is why it sometimes takes a long while.
Who are these authorities that you are referring to?
- Norwegian publishers are part of the «Kopinor-agreement», but many foreign publishers are not, so how long we must wait is up to them.
Leader of the Student Parliament Heine Skipenes is dissatisfied with the university’s efforts, and also believes that it is the copyright regime that is creating problems.
- The university is not even close to doing what it is supposed to. There is a problem at the local level; not everyone is as good as they should be at sending things in on time. But they are also dealing with copyright procedures that are out of this world.
