About Institutions and Vendors

Within the academy, many have expressed outrage at the pricing and sales strategies of the aggregated commercial firms. We dismiss that point of view. The problem lies not with the commercial firms, who rightly endeavor to transfer money from higher education institutions to their shareholders. The problem lies in the behavior of those of us in higher education the buyers who fail to aggregate at scale in the interests of our institutions. Achieving multi-institutional scale in order to level the playing field and become players in the new game in this era of digital distribution and reuse requires that we make behavioral changes. These changes are neither pro-commercial nor anti-commercial, and attempts to frame them as such are without merit. The changes are, rather, pro-institutional.

From The Game Has Changed]