What I Cover
I write about the hunt for prestige in academe — how reputations are built, how they’re lost, and how they affect the bottom line. I cover the ways in which colleges seek to climb rankings, the activities of ranking bodies such as U.S. News & World Report, and how those moves affect students’ enrollment decisions. My stories have also explored image and prestige by diving into a Harvard lab famous for studying elite institutions, spotlighting the colleges that pay for positive coverage, unpacking the debate over standardized-test scores in admissions, and investigating conflicts that arise when colleges take money from the multilevel marketing industry and Big Pharma.
I’m interested in hearing from prospective students who are deciding what college to attend; experts who study college reputations and rankings; and administrators and faculty and staff members at colleges that are trying to gain a higher profile — about how those efforts affect their work.
Finally, I chair the hiring committee for The Chronicle’s internship program. Get in touch if you have questions about applying.
My Background
I began my reporting career as a health and science journalist for publications including Scientific American and Popular Science. In 2018, while working as a staff writer at Pacific Standard magazine, I was a data fellow with the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. The story I wrote for the fellowship led the California Department of Health Care Services to refer one addiction-rehab facility for investigation.
I joined The Chronicle in 2019. Since then, I’ve spoken about rankings at several conferences and to the media. (“I’m a reformed Tiger Mom,” an audience member at one of my panels told me, “after we got my daughter into Columbia this year.”)
I earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California at Los Angeles and a master’s degree in journalism from New York University.
Connect
Phone: 202-466-1219
Email: francie.diep@chronicle.com
For secure messaging: I’m franciediep.40 on Signal.
Social media: I’m most active on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
