06-07-16 New committees will audit, limit 60mn euro university textbook cost
Education , Research, and Religious Affairs Minister Nikos Filis told parliament today that the government is determined to cut the exorbitant 60 million euro annual cost to the state for books used in university courses.
Filis tabled a law that establishes grueling reviews and audits of the pricing of university publications by two separate committees. A series of new, strict criteria and specifications are designed to reduce overall expenditures while ensuring the quality of university textbooks.
Filis said that while in the six years of the bailout memorandum the education budget has been cut drastically, the expenditures for university textbooks has risen from 45 million euros annually to 60 million, a 33% increase, with no increase in the number of books or students.
Filis said 745 publishers and another 819 who publish their own books (usually professors or other authors) have contracts with the ministry, and 2.1 million books are distributed free to 230,000 university students.
“Our aim is to use the amount of savings from the university textbook budget to cover other needs of university students,” Filis said.
“We want to support responsible publishing companies, putting order in the publishing field while retaining and promoting a high-level Greek academic bibliography. There will be administrative disciplinary measures and fines for publishers who plainly break the rules,” Filis underlined.
Instead of calculating the cost of each textbook, the Committee of Cost Auditing will review the procedure of price-setting. There will also be specific criteria for including textbooks in the bibliographies in such areas as medicine,mathematics, technical subjects, art and music, as well as reviews of the need for costly four-color printing, in an effort to cut costs.
The Committee of Audit Sampling and Objections will review the pricing from a different starting point, with pricing audits of books distributed by all publishing companies, and another committee will arbitrate disputes between publishers and the Committee of Cost Auditing.
