Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Winter 2006
“Over the years The Chronicle of Higher Education
has provided a kind of common culture for all of us interested in higher
education,” says David Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education
at the University of Virginia. “Articles in the paper have often
influenced the national conversation about higher education in numerous
indirect ways that would be difficult to trace.”
Derek Bok, who is president emeritus of Harvard University as well as the university’s 300th anniversary university professor, describes the Chronicle as “the preeminent vehicle in this country for news and views about higher education.” He says that “Its readers include most of the important decision-makers in American colleges and universities along with almost all those who write about higher education. It is an indispensable source for anyone who needs to be informed about emerging developments and new initiatives in the entire field.”
For years, the Chronicle has had competition from publications such as University Business, Black Issues in Higher Education, the now-defunct Lingua Franca and HigherEdJobs. The most recent addition to the field, Inside Higher Ed, was founded in 2004 by three former Chronicle employees. The entire Inside Higher Ed site is free to readers, whereas a portion of the Chronicle’s web site1 is available free of charge, but only subscribers have access to the entire site.
It is not competing publications, however, that have the most serious implications for the Chronicle’s financial health—which is rooted in its advertising revenue—but rather the economy and hiring freezes that occur at institutions when state budgets are cut that have the most impact, according to Chronicle publisher, Robinette D. Ross. “That’s when institutions are unable to hire and the recruiting basically drops off,” she says. The Chronicle has had an increase in both recruitment and display commercial advertising pages recently, reporting almost a 5 percent increase in fiscal year-to-date through September 2, 2005, with 2,596 pages in fiscal year ‘04 and 2,724 pages for fiscal year ’05 during that period. Job advertisements not only bring in substantial revenue but also attract new subscribers, yet they are only one indication of how much the Chronicle has changed since it began publication:
Today an editorial group of about 85 people, including editors, reporters,
designers and editorial assistants as well as a business staff of 95 people
(which serve both the Chronicle and its sister publication, The
Chronicle of Philanthropy) are needed to turn out the weekly publication.
The Chronicle, which covers international as well as national
education news, has won many honors over the years. In 2005, Carlin Romano,
a regular contributor to The Chronicle Review (a weekly special
section of the paper), was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for criticism.
The Internet version of the Chronicle posts all the articles
from the print edition. Job listings are posted on the web site daily
and augmented with articles about careers. The Chronicle site,
which reports 10-to-12 million page views a month, also posts news updates
every day and links to Arts & Letters Daily, which the Chronicle
bought in 2002.
Since May 2005, Chronicle site licenses have been available to
all institutions of higher learning at a cost ranging from $500 to $9,775,
depending on FTE (fulltime equivalent) enrollment and other factors.
The Chronicle of Higher Education went from being nonprofit to for-profit in 1978. It launched The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a newspaper that focuses on the nonprofit world, in October 1988, and is considering adding one or more new publications to its roster.