Scott Jaschik was one of the three founders of Inside Higher Ed. With Doug Lederman, he led editorial operations, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, career advice, blogs and other features. Scott is a leading voice on higher education issues and quoted regularly in publications nationwide. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Salon, and elsewhere. He has served as a judge or screener for the National Magazine Awards, Online Journalism Awards, Folio Editorial Excellence Awards, and the Education Writers Association Awards. A mentor in the community college fellowship program of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University, Scott also served as a member of the board of the Education Writers Association. He graduated from Cornell University and now lives in Washington.
You recently retired as a leading journalist in higher education. What do you consider to be the most significant change in higher education journalism during your career?
Higher education journalism has evolved in many ways. The publication I just retired from, Inside Higher Ed, didn’t exist 20 years ago. It has grown and become the player with the broadest reach (and I think the best insights) in higher education. But higher education journalism involves many other players as well.
I worry very much about the situation facing journalists covering higher ed (and perhaps covering anything) today at daily newspapers. Too many newspapers (outside the New York Times and the Washington Post type newspapers) do not give their reporters the potential to cover their beats well. Far too many must cover higher education and K-12 education at the same time and spend all of their time chasing coverage of the calendar: when students arrive and graduate, how much tuition will be, etc. Most reporters don’t get to really dig into higher ed issues.
At the same time, there has been tremendous growth in coverage of higher education from publications like The Atlantic, Slate, and Vox and from services like Bloomberg. This coverage is a great addition to those publications that focus solely on higher education. But it tends to focus only on a few issues like affirmative action. And the coverage tends to focus on institutions that are competitive in admissions. Higher education is much broader when reporters consider all institutions.
How can higher education governing boards and their institutions help address the declining public perceptions of higher education’s value?
I fear my answer won’t appeal to many of your readers, but … the single thing college boards (public and private) could do is to become truly comfortable with being transparent about what they do and about their thinking on tough issues in higher ed. Most colleges, public and private, claim that they are transparent, but they aren’t. I’m not advocating 100 percent openness, but colleges could be much, much more open than they are. This extends from colleges struggling to stay alive to the most elite institutions.
It’s not that being more open will automatically lead to more trust. But the decisions colleges must face are difficult ones, and the current system isn’t working. Faculty members, students, and the public would welcome a new approach.
What is the role of higher education journalists today and what impact do they have on higher education?
The role of journalists in covering higher education is in some sense the same as it has always been: “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” This is not because of any view that higher education is particularly corrupt or that the leaders or board members are making foolish decisions. It’s because journalists need to question their thinking and their decisions. Too many college leaders seem to expect journalists not to question too much. The exact role of a given journalist depends on the publication, so I won’t offer details there. But it’s essential that journalists have a questioning perspective.
—Carol Schuler, Editor-in-Chief
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