Education: The Candid Chronicle

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"If I can't understand it, no one else will be able to," says Corbin Gwaltney, 52, editor of the weekly Chronicle of Higher Education. Gwaltney's insistence that his paper avoid insiders' jargon, combined with his lively news sense, has helped to make the seven-year-old Chronicle indispensable to an increasing number of college presidents, trustees, teachers and students. "We stand away from higher education to report on it, just as higher education stands away from the world," explains Gwaltney.

Briskly written and with a feel for the issue of the moment, the Chronicle —despite its somewhat stuffy title —prides itself on printing all the educational news that's fit to print. That may mean anything from the Supreme Court decision in the Marco DeFunis case (three pages were devoted to excerpts from the majority and minority opinions) to the bestselling books on campus (No. 1 last week: The Joy of Sex).

Timely Tips. One recent article offered some timely tips for income tax-conscious academics (to deduct professional travel, get a supervisor's approval and keep a diary). Another followed up the responses of eight Boston universities involved in last year's term-paper scandal, in which hundreds of students bought papers from "term-paper factories"; the Chronicle reported that five schools (Boston College, Harvard, M.I.T., the University of Massachusetts and Northeastern University) took no action at all against the students involved. Last week the paper printed a thorough compendium of faculty salaries at more than 1,500 colleges and universities—a boon to potential job seekers in the current rush for fall openings.

Editor Gwaltney and his staff of 16 put out the 24-to 32-page paper each week in a cluttered city room in Washington, B.C. Almost all the reporting is done by the staff. "We're journalists writing in education rather than educators dabbling in journalism," says Gwaltney, who can be a ruthless editor if he feels a story lacks clarity.

Gwaltney got the idea for something like the Chronicle in 1957, when he was editor of the Johns Hopkins alumni magazine. At that time, he helped fashion an insert dealing with various national issues in education. The supplement took off and soon reached a circulation of 2.4 million. In an effort to widen his focus, Gwaltney left the Hopkins magazine and got a grant from the Carnegie Foundation "to find out," as he puts it, "what information educators needed and weren't getting." In 1966 he began publishing the Chronicle. Last July the paper finally moved into the black with a circulation of 32,000 (subscription: $21 a year) and a weekly volume of up to $12,000 in ads, mostly from colleges seeking faculty and staff. Revenues from circulation and advertising totaled $727,000 last year.

Independent of any educational organization, the paper is usually in the center of whatever controversy is brewing on campus. Nonetheless, the Chronicle carries no editorials, and Gwaltney remains adamantly opposed to opinion in his news columns. Says he: "We talk to an enormously sophisticated audience whose trust we want to keep. They need our information, not our opinion. If there is one thing that has never been a problem on campuses, it's getting people's opinions."