Column: University of Hawaii students, educators still need books

Typically, a professor is an academic and scholar who has committed his or her life to research and/or instruction in a particular field. To do so they have made drastic sacrifices, reconfigured decades of their lives, incurred tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and postponed stable income and job security until their mid-30s.

While this picture is not a bright one for many University of Hawaii system faculty, some solace is found in the fact that we are consummate professionals with the opportunity to further expand knowledge, refine our craft, and improve the education of the community at large.

Unfortunately, even these aspects of academia are being called into question because of UH System neglect and misguided legislative micromanagement.

During the 2018 legislative session, Senate Bill 2328 sought to mandate Open Educational Resources (OERs) across the UH System, in effect requiring all courses to rely on free internet content. Legislators touted the personal savings to students and the increasing educational platforms available via the internet. However, these government leaders failed to remember that Hawaii community colleges remain the cheapest in the nation, hard-copy books are commonly key elements to learning, and internet resources have inherent quality vagarity.

In the simplest sense it is irrational, demoralizing and insulting to presume that government officials would better know which learning resources are appropriate in the classroom setting.

If this situation were reversed, faculty members would never seek to control which resources elected officials needed to perform their duties. And while the faculty union (University of Hawaii Professional Assembly) and UH may be at odds on certain topics, they are in full accord that professors are best equipped to determine the most effective tools for student learning.

Legislators appear to ignore this expertise, however, because early rumblings suggest that they will once again present modified versions of this OER mandate in the upcoming 2019 session. And unfortunately, once again, UH faculty and administration alike will have to divert our daily efforts to fight for the obvious: the right to control the quality of our course resources.

If legislators truly examined educational deficiencies within the UH system, and sincerely wanted improvement in both instruction and research, they would instead address inequitable internet resources for students and instructors outside of the Manoa campus. Shockingly, after decades, it remains that an undergraduate student at UH-Manoa has far better journal access than any professor or Ph.D. found at other campuses. Former UH President M.R.C. Greenwood promised to resolve this but did not; the same is true for the current vice president for community colleges, John Morton. Given that UH cites funding as the sole impediment to providing teaching and research journals to teachers and researchers, the most efficient means to accomplish equal journal access would be to simply make non-Manoa faculty non-voting department members at that campus. Besides providing journal access parity (to external faculty, which is a start) at no cost, these “super departments” would encourage intercampus collaboration and the sharing of best teaching practices.

Taken as a whole, numerous recent efforts seek to democratize education — such as providing support to financially vulnerable students via the Hawaii Promise program for the local community. However, taking actual books out of students’ hands while continuing to deny equal journal access across the UH System is not the way forward.

I urge our elected officials to think more deeply about the intent of education and the tools necessary to provide the greatest quality in the generation of tomorrow. Such thinking will require consideration of what the true metrics of an education are (something trained and qualified faculty think about daily), and understanding they should not be merely based on money.

Matthew C. Tuthill, Ph.D., is an associate professor of molecular biology and microbiology at Kapiolani Community College; the views expressed here are his own.