Starting next Thursday, April 23, unlimited access to our news, analyses and deep dives will be available only to paying subscribers. As an organization proudly founded as a free source of high-quality professional content (“Online. Daily. Free” was on my predecessors’ business cards), this is a significant change for Inside Higher Ed.
While our business model may be evolving, our commitment to serving the sector with accurate, timely and engaging reporting has not changed. We’re starting a subscription program so that we can continue to serve as the trusted source of independent, human-written news and analysis for the sector. For 20 years Inside Higher Ed has provided robust coverage of every corner of higher ed—from the wealthy selective institutions to the open-access community colleges—and every issue, from the college presidency to faculty life.
Moving to a subscription model also reflects trends across the media landscape and the need for organizations like ours to find revenue sources beyond the digital and job advertising that have historically sustained Inside Higher Ed. What no one could have imagined is how much misinformation, loss of trust in institutions and the encroaching threat of AI would undermine media business models. Those market forces will sound familiar to colleges and universities that are struggling with the same threats to public opinion and their degree offerings.
We realize not everyone will be on board with this shift. Some people might stop reading out of principle. Some may say they can’t justify the cost. While we don’t want to lose any of our readers, this is the right decision for Inside Higher Ed’s long-term sustainability.
We also believe higher ed is stronger when it’s served by robust journalism, and our work will only become more valuable as AI slop takes over our feeds. Our newsroom includes more than 100 years of collective journalism experience, and AI cannot compete with our team’s skills in trend spotting, news gathering, source building, interviewing, reporting and making ethical journalistic judgments. Nor can it care as much as we do about what we cover day in and day out or match our dedication to reporting with honesty and fairness.
At the same time, we want to stay close to our founding mission of making our journalism accessible to everyone in higher ed. Readers will be able to read three free articles every month before we ask them to subscribe. Our daily stories on student success, career advice and expert commentary in our Views pieces and columns will remain open to all readers.
More information on pricing and group rates is here—please share with your librarians or subscription managers. We’re grateful to the institutions that have already signed up for an institutional subscription. We hope you’ll join them and support the independent journalism the higher ed sector deserves and depends on.
To learn more about individual subscriptions, click here. If you have questions, you can email subscription@insidehighered.com.
Sara Custer is editor in chief at Inside Higher Ed.
