Chronicling Higher Education With Depth and Dedication

When the first issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education was published in November 1966 with Corporation support, some questioned whether there was enough news to warrant a paper that focused solely on the activities of colleges and universities. The Chronicle initially was published every other week by a staff of 12, including 7 editors and writers; it had no editorials and no advertising, and its 5,000 subscribers received only 22 issues a year. Today, more than 45 years later, The Chronicle is published online every weekday, produces 43 print issues a year, has a total readership of more than 245,000, and traffic to its web site results in more than 14 million pages a month, seen by over 1.7 million unique visitors.  Based in Washington, D.C., The Chronicle now has more than 70 writers, editors, and international correspondents and is the number one source of news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty members and administrators. The impact of The Chronicle on the world of higher education is documented by a range of factors that are not reflected merely by the number of people who read the paper. In the decades since the first issue appeared, the Chronicle has covered topics ranging from cold fusion, to plagiarism to evolution, providing a depth of information and analysis that most of the daily press does not provide. Even today, many newspapers do not often report on higher education from a national perspective, so The Chronicle’s dedication to this work helps to enrich the national conversation about educational issues that affect the strength of our nation and the vitality of our democracy.