MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
February 15-29, 2004 Edition
AAP President Responds
To CALPIRG Report
WASHINGTON, D.C./2/3/04—Pat Schroeder, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, has sent a letter to the director of the State Public Interest Research Groups’ (PIRG) Higher Education Project responding to last week’s report from the California PIRG that accused U.S. publishers of needlessly driving up the cost of higher education learning materials. Calling the report “totally one-sided and fatally flawed,” Mrs. Schroeder points to a number of issues that were either misrepresented or not addressed at all in the CALPIRG study, noting that publishers made every effort to contact the group and set the record straight, but were completely shut out of the process.
Asserting that the crisis in higher education in this country is very real, Mrs. Schroeder states that the CALPIRG report serves to deflect attention away from the basic problems. “Scapegoating publishers and instructional materials will not help any of us find constructive ways to deal with this crisis,” she said.
The full text of Mrs. Schroeder’s letter can be found linked to this press release on the AAP web site: http://www.publishers.org.
The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry. AAP’s members include most of the major commercial book publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses, and scholarly societies. AAP members publish hardcover and paperback books in every field, educational materials for the elementary, secondary, postsecondary, and professional markets, computer software, and electronic products and services.
