Our Policy

• Because of erroneous data supplied by Columbia University, an article providing updates on billion-dollar campaigns under way at 33 universities contained several mistakes. The total amount Columbia raised in September was $45-million, not $72-million. As a result, Columbia's overall total for the campaign was $2.924-billion, not $2.951-billion; the total amount collected by all the universities in September was $518.3-million, not $545.3-million; and their total this year was $9.201-billion, not $9.228-billion. In addition, Vanderbilt University, with $61-million, replaces Columbia as the top fund raiser in September. (12/1/2008)
  
  
• An article about the Milton Friedman Institute, a controversial economics center planned for the University of Chicago, misquoted a participant in the dispute. Bruce Lincoln, a professor of the history of religions, said that an October 15 faculty meeting about the matter had been "designed to prevent" -- not "present" -- "a serious opportunity for discussion." (10/16/2008)
  
  
• A Peer Review item about Nick Spitzer, a folklorist recently hired by Tulane University, misidentified the institution he attended as an undergraduate. It was the University of Pennsylvania, not Pennsylvania State University. (8/8/2008)
  
  
• An article about a paper published today in Science inaccurately and incompletely described the researcher's findings about a paradoxical trend in which scholars' access to more journal articles online has appeared to slow a steady increase in the number of citations of discrete articles. The researcher did not find that scholars are citing fewer and fewer discrete articles over all, but rather that the increase in diversity has slowed. (7/18/2008)
  
  
• An article about a new for-profit competitor to Common Application Inc. misidentified one of the universities among its clients. The competitor, ApplicationsOnline LLC, has signed up Duke University, not Princeton University. (6/28/2007)
  
  
• An article about a decision by the Nevada Board of Regents incorrectly reported that the board had endorsed a plan that would allow some faculty and staff members to carry concealed guns on public-college campuses. In fact, the board has asked the system's campus police chiefs to come up with such a plan. The plan is subject to the board's approval at its meeting in August. (6/26/2007)
  
  
• An article about an advocate of intelligent design who was denied tenure at Iowa State University incorrectly stated that the professor, Guillermo Gonzalez, possesses the highest normalized h-index, a gauge of scholarly productivity, among all astronomers in his department. The Chronicle erred in calculating an h-index for a colleague of his, Curtis J. Struck, because it did not include papers he had published under his former name, Curtis Struck-Marcell. Mr. Struck's actual h-index is 17, the highest on the astronomy faculty. As a result of the recalculation, Mr. Gonzalez has the second-highest h-index. (5/22/2007)
  
  
• Because of erroneous information provided by the Education Alliance for Michigan, a lobbying coalition of several of the state's regional public universities, an article about the group's formation incorrectly listed as members of the coalition two campuses that are not. They are Lake Superior State University and Michigan Technological University. (4/11/2007)
  
  
• An article about a report by Moody's Investors Service misspelled the surname of an editor of the report. He is Dennis Gephardt, not Gephart. (3/28/2007)
  
  
• Because of incorrect information provided by Dowling College, an article about the New York State attorney general's investigation into alleged abuses in colleges' student-loan offices incorrectly described several aspects of an agreement between the New York college and Sallie Mae. According to a Sallie Mae spokeswoman, the college sells its graduate students' Stafford loans to Sallie Mae at a premium, and in return the college may not sign a contract to promote a competing loan-consolidation company to those students. The college does not receive 6 percent to 7 percent of all loans its students consolidate with Sallie Mae, and it is not penalized if the students use other loan consolidators. Under the agreement, Dowling has received annually about $700,000, most of which has been used for need-based student aid, not financial aid in general. (3/27/2007)
  
  
• An article about charges filed against a faculty member at Turkey's Gazi University misreported his field. The academic, Atilla Yayla, is a professor of politics and political theory, not a professor of public administration. (3/16/2007)
  
  
• An article about a Faculty Senate vote concerning the proposed George W. Bush Presidential Library complex at Southern Methodist University contained two errors. In the vote, which ended in a 13-to-13 tie, there were three abstentions, not four. Also, only three to five Senate members, not "a dozen or so," left the meeting before the vote was taken, according to the Senate's president. (3/8/2007)
  
  
• An article about new guidelines on how colleges and universities can best license their patents misstated the number of universities that issued a paper listing the guidelines. Eleven, not 10, universities signed on to the document. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was accidentally omitted from a list of those universities. (3/7/2007)
  
  
• An article about criticism of a landmark paper on adult stem cells inaccurately reported how two stem-cell experts were selected to evaluate whether the paper's methodological weaknesses affected its conclusions. The experts were chosen by the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where the research had been conducted, after a review panel of campus scientists suggested that the university seek the views of outside experts. The experts were not picked by those panelists. (3/5/2007)
  
  
• An article about a former postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh who was found to have falsified data misidentified the federal agency that made the finding. It is the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity. The office is no longer part of the National Institutes of Health. (1/10/2007)
  
  
• An article about plans to create a worldwide council of international-education organizations incorrectly described the group's potential members. The Council of International Education Associations, as the group is to be known, will comprise nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations, not student recruiters. (10/16/2006)
  
  
• Because of an editing error, an article about the country of choice for international students in Australia and Britain incorrectly reported the increase in Australia's export earnings from foreign students over the past year. The total earnings were $7.5-billion (U.S.), and the increase was more than $1.5-billion. (10/13/2006)
  
  
• An article about the awarding of the 2006 Man Booker Prize, the top annual British honor in fiction, incorrectly reported that the winner, Kiran Desai, was a creative-writing student at Columbia University. Ms. Desai is not a current student but a 1999 alumna of Columbia, with an M.F.A. in fiction. The article relied on faulty information from the organization that sponsors the Booker Prize; a check with Columbia corrected the erroneous account. (10/11/2006)
  
  
• An article about the annual meeting of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni incorrectly characterized the remarks of Harry R. Lewis, a professor of computer science at Harvard University and former dean of Harvard College. Mr. Lewis was not among the panelists who commented sympathetically on the struggles of Lawrence H. Summers, who resigned as Harvard's president in February. (10/10/2006)
  
  
• An article about an agreement between the Knowledge Universe Learning Group and Sierra Nevada College reported incompletely on the nature of the deal. Knowledge Universe denies that it is buying Sierra Nevada, in contrast to The Chronicle's report. The company, an investment group that also owns Cardean University, an entirely online institution, will acquire all the debts of Sierra Nevada, and will have the authority to name a different Board of Trustees, once a final agreement is reached. However, it intends to maintain Sierra Nevada as a free-standing non-profit institution. (10/2/2006)
  
  
• An article about the University of Phoenix's purchase of the naming rights to the Arizona Cardinals' new football stadium incorrectly reported that the Enron Corporation had been among the companies to buy such rights to other National Football League arenas. Enron at one point owned the naming rights to Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros baseball team. (9/27/2006)
  
  
• An article about a controversial university in the former Soviet republic of Georgia mischaracterized a Hawaii state court's justifications in 2005 for closing a college network then known as the American University of Hawaii. The article stated that the network was closed as a "diploma mill." The court did not use that phrase, but found that the network had issued degrees illegally because of violations of the state's law regarding unaccredited degree-granting institutions. (8/28/2006)
  
  
• An article about a new law in Virginia incorrectly reported that the statute will require the state's colleges to provide personal data on all applicants to the state police, to be checked against sex-offender registries. The law requires such data to be reported only on applicants who are accepted for admission, not all applicants. (6/21/2006)
  
  
• An article about an amendment to an appropriations bill for the U.S. Education Department incorrectly implied that, under the measure, public colleges that allow illegal immigrants to pay cheaper in-state tuition rates would be denied all federal aid. Such colleges would lose only money from the Education Department. (6/14/2006)
  
  
• An article about a hearing over the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education's authority to accredit education schools contained two errors. The headline incorrectly stated that the council had withdrawn a "social justice" standard that it used to evaluate teacher candidates. In fact, the council dropped language referring to "social justice" from a document explaining its accrediting practices. The article also implied that the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, which held the hearing, recommended that the Education Department renew the council's recognition as a direct result of its withdrawal of that social-justice language. The committee drew no connection between the language and the recommendation. (6/6/2006)
  
  
• An article about a projected rise in the Higher Education Price Index for 2006 incorrectly implied that the increase would affect "inflation for higher education." The projection concerns a predicted rise in the index itself. (6/1/2006)
  
  
• An article about the resignation of the chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, Roderick G.W. Chu, incorrectly stated that he was the first Chinese-American to head a statewide college system when he took office, in 1998. Edward Chin, the son of Chinese immigrants, served as president of the Wisconsin Technical College System from 1996 to 2002. (3/22/2006)
  
  
• An article about proposals to change federal policy on student-loan debt misidentified a previous role of the person who is offering the proposals. Robert M. Shireman was a senior education-policy adviser in the Clinton administration, but he did not work in the Education Department. (3/3/2006)
  
  
• An article about new troubles faced by Harvard University's president, Lawrence H. Summers, misreported the date of a planned vote of no confidence in his leadership by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The vote is scheduled for February 28, not February 22. (2/17/2006)
  
  
• An article about White House budget documents covering the next five years incorrectly reported that the federal direct-lending program would be eliminated under the plan. The documents show a phasing out of mandatory spending on direct lending in the coming years because of a pending change in the accounting of the program, which provides financial aid directly to students through their colleges. As part of budget-reduction legislation, the program's administrative costs will be counted as discretionary rather than mandatory spending in the federal budget. The White House documents cover only mandatory spending on the student-loan programs. (2/10/2006)
  
  
• An article about President Bush's budget request for the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities in the 2007 fiscal year misstated how the proposed budgets for the two agencies would differ from their current allocations. Under the president's plan, both agencies would see no increase in their budgets. The humanities endowment would hold steady at $141-million, and the arts endowment at $125-million. (2/7/2006)
  
  
• An article about a $101-million gift to Princeton University, its biggest ever, misstated the amount by which the donation, by Peter B. Lewis, exceeded the previous record holder. It was $1-million larger, not $1. (1/23/2006)