Assumption 1: the primary customers of increasingly expensive subscriptions from academic publishers are universities.
Assumption 2: the cost of the subscriptions is passed on to the primary customers of the universities -- students.
Assumption 3: assumptions 1 and 2 are correct.
Question: Is there any correlation to be made between the profitability of such academic publishers with the astounding rise in university tuition in the US over the past three decades?
WHo cares about the US? The collective knowledge of humanity is at stake. The keepers are restless, believe me. And most of them do not even speak English.
As much as it is a broken system, in this case likely no. The actual subscriptions are cost prohibitive pretty much just to individuals and to organizations outside western Academia. The distinction of "western" is only relevant in that from what I recall working with Librarians at my last University job, the publishers do business differently with the US and parts of EU than they do elsewhere in the world.
Rising tuition costs are an issue, but in relation to an academic budget, journal subscriptions will still account for a very small percent of the overall budget, even for relatively small University.
The Publisher/University subscription loop, however, is indeed real and has been covered here before I believe. The short of it is that quite a few publishers are basically held together by taxpayer money in the form of continued library subscriptions. The need for a middleman in these cases is pretty questionable, as the publishers basically just host the content at this point and do no curation or peer review themselves.
Assumption two seems dubious, because universities in the rest of the world pay for the same subscriptions, but don't pass these costs on to their students. It may be true for the US though.
> Assumption 2: the cost of the subscriptions is passed on to the primary customers of the universities -- students.
This is not likely to be true. Most universities in the US take overheads on grants. So if you get a $20,000 grant, the university will often take up to $12,000 of that (usually it's in the $6000–8000 range), and the researcher uses the rest. That money in overheads is used for a variety of things, including supporting the research (i.e., paying for journal subscriptions).
> Question: Is there any correlation to be made between the profitability of such academic publishers with the astounding rise in university tuition in the US over the past three decades?
Journals are expensive, but they're not _that_ expensive. It's much more plausible that the rise in tuition can be linked to non-academic expenditures at universities, including athletic facilities (e.g., gyms for students), fancy dining halls and dorms, and non-academic staff. Maybe one could argue those aren't the drivers of high tuition, but I'd be surprised if a rise in journal costs were remotely comparable.
Would $25,888/yr for a single journal not count as '_that_ expensive'?
But I agree they're not likely a tuition driver. After all, institutions can simply drop subscriptions: they don't do much for attracting students compared to facilities.
> Would $25,888/yr for a single journal not count as '_that_ expensive'?
For a journal cost, $25,888/yr is expensive, but no, it wouldn't count as "_that_ expensive". I meant "_that_ expensive" as "expensive enough to be a tuition driver".
Assumption 2: the cost of the subscriptions is passed on to the primary customers of the universities -- students.
Assumption 3: assumptions 1 and 2 are correct.
Question: Is there any correlation to be made between the profitability of such academic publishers with the astounding rise in university tuition in the US over the past three decades?