Professors give back to university: Proceeds from books donated to UK, charities

By Katie Perkowski and Laura Clark

If you bought a book for class that your professor wrote, that money may go back to the university.

Proceeds for textbooks written by UK professors who assign them are required to be donated to the university, a charity or another educational entity, according to an ethics directive issued last February.

T. Lynn Williamson, chair of the UK Ethics Committee, said the committee had inquiries concerning the issue for over a year, but that this time they had a specific question of whether the mandated textbooks were a violation of ethics.

“It just had been a general issue but there had never been someone who said ‘I want an ethics opinion on it’,” Williamson said.

Journalism professor Buck Ryan donates his book’s proceeds to the Bill Billiter Memorial Endowed Scholarship that assists journalism freshmen, as well as their wallets.

“UK Bookstore, Kennedy’s, Wildcat Textbooks tend to have the same price but they’ll buy it and mark it up,” Ryan said.

Ryan said donating the profits of his textbook to the Billiter Scholarship benefits the “best and the brightest journalism students” from high schools.

The ethics directive says the professors are on an honor system, and they should “write a check as a donation to her/his department, to a scholarship fund or to the general university development fund for the estimated amount she/he received from university students who were mandated to use hers/his particular textbook.”

“It’s a self-reporting mechanism and would be a donation made to the development office … I’m sure there’s hundreds of faculty that donate to the university,” Williamson said.

Richard Labunski, an associate journalism professor at UK, wrote “James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights,” a required book for Labunski’s media law students.  The proceeds from that book go to a Journalism and Telecommunications scholarship.

Beth Barnes, director for the Journalism and Telecommunications Department, said all professors across campus are required to donate their textbook proceeds.

“The expectation is that you will donate back an amount equivalent to what you’re making off of it,” Barnes said.