The Chronicle of Higher Education engagement report
@chronicle - 249K followers on X
Measured over 37 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 9, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 6 interactions against 249K followers, an engagement rate of 0.002%. Measured over 37 original posts, its engagement rate beats 11% of 6,874 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 2.4K times each, and 0.245% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.982% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 1.4 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 20% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 20:00 UTC, and Tuesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 37 posts sampled, 97% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 65 interactions, about 11x its own typical post.
Measured over 37 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on September 9, 2026. Recurring tag: #highered.
Compared with accounts its own size
The Chronicle of Higher Education's engagement rate beats 11% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (6,874 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 7 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.
On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 16% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.
Where this sits in the catalog
At 0.002%, The Chronicle of Higher Education sits above the 10th percentile of the 66,258 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.016%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.002% |
| 25th percentile | 0.016% |
| 50th percentile | 0.1% |
| 75th percentile | 0.499% |
| 90th percentile | 2.09% |
| 99th percentile | 119.6% |
This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built
Posting timing
This account posts most often around 20:00 UTC, and Tuesday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
| Hour (UTC) | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC | -1% | 89K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 90K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 88K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 94K |
| 04:00 UTC | -5% | 76K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 75K |
| 06:00 UTC | -5% | 86K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 93K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 108K |
| 09:00 UTC | -4% | 124K |
| 10:00 UTC | -3% | 129K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 141K |
| 12:00 UTC | -3% | 154K |
| 13:00 UTC | -3% | 167K |
| 14:00 UTC | -4% | 173K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 176K |
| 16:00 UTC | -3% | 171K |
| 17:00 UTC | -3% | 159K |
| 18:00 UTC | -2% | 149K |
| 19:00 UTC | -2% | 141K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 131K |
| 21:00 UTC | 0% | 116K |
| 22:00 UTC | -2% | 100K |
| 23:00 UTC | -1% | 90K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +5% | 393K |
| Monday | +1% | 483K |
| Tuesday | -2% | 520K |
| Wednesday | -3% | 472K |
| Thursday | -2% | 430K |
| Friday | -3% | 447K |
| Saturday | +2% | 393K |
Formats this account uses
Its own posting mix on the left, and what each of those formats does across every account we track on the right. Only formats where the effect clears our publish test appear here, so an empty row is a format we could not measure rather than one that does nothing.
| Format | This account | Catalog effect | 95% interval | Accounts behind it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image or video | 3% of posts | +111% | +108% to +115% | 34K |
| Outbound link | 97% of posts | -41% | -42% to -40% | 32K |
| Typical length | - | no effect | -2% to -1% | 42K |
- 3% of this account's sampled posts carry an image or video. Across the catalog, posts with an image or video run 111% above the same accounts' other posts.
- 97% of its posts carry a link off X. Across the catalog, posts with an outbound link run 41% below the same accounts' other posts, so a large share of this account's output sits in the weakest bucket we measure.
- Its average post runs 260 characters, which falls in the 180 - 280 characters band. Across the catalog, posts of 180 to 280 characters match the same accounts' other posts almost exactly.
These are catalog-wide differences applied to this account's own posting mix, not a measurement of how each format performs for this account specifically. We keep one median per account, not one per format per account, so the second thing is not something this data can tell you.
Best tweets
- Sep 1, 202611x their median
Roosevelt Montás is working to build a movement around general education classes centered on deep reading, discussion, and big questions. Students, he says, are often hungry for this kind of learning. The harder work may be persuading colleges to redesign how they teach it. https://t.co/Vu2t30Szdk
- Sep 4, 20269.5x their median
From the Archives: When universities measure value chiefly in revenue, research output, and employability, what happens to their role as places of independent critique? Terry Eagleton argues that British higher education has ceded too much ground to market logic. https://t.co/IF4Tj3nV7Y
- Sep 8, 20266.0x their median
Professors who have used oral assessments say it’s important to prepare students for them and to be clear about the benefits of the approach, beyond preventing cheating. Structuring the exams in a way that is fair and productive are also critical to making them effective. https://t.co/oUa7FcSFIl
- Sep 1, 20265.5x their median
As colleges navigate political pressure and demands for ideological pluralism, Danielle Allen argues that they should not retreat from public life. Her model is the university that protects scholarly standards while preparing citizens for disagreement. https://t.co/9ouline4nf
- Sep 8, 20264.7x their median
AI can summarize sources and spot patterns, but it can also miss irony and draw false conclusions. In this opinion essay, a humanities leader argues that faculty should help students learn both the tools’ uses and their limits — rather than pretend they do not exist. https://t.co/eSwX4O3EzF
- Sep 4, 20263.3x their median
A journal has retracted a 2002 paper coauthored by Dan Ariely after Data Colada reported evidence of fabricated data. The study had been cited more than 2,000 times. https://t.co/dB87cuz8c6
- Sep 2, 20263.3x their median
When AI can draft prose, summarize scholarship, and imitate styles in seconds, plagiarism debates may turn less on copied sentences than on original thought. A Princeton historian considers what that means for academic writing. https://t.co/0H6tWlrTcx
- Aug 31, 20263.0x their median
Silent discussions. Unprepared students. Lectures that lose the room. Seasoned instructors offer practical ways to address common classroom challenges. We also examine the University of Chicago’s new, divisionwide approach to limiting classroom technology and AI use. https://t.co/j73pd3r8nK
- Aug 31, 20263.0x their median
UT-Austin’s provost, William Inboden, one of our "People to Watch," proposes a core curriculum centered on the liberal arts and civic life. It is a test of whether conservative ideas about higher ed can translate into the daily work of leading a large public university. https://t.co/cmku1MDUsD
- Sep 3, 20262.2x their median
A new on-campus mandate at Texas A&M-Victoria has led several faculty members to resign. The conflict reflects a wider debate over flexibility, faculty work, and what students need from their universities. https://t.co/NcIgJYYtsd
Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.
Recurring topics
The most frequent hashtags in the sampled posts. They describe what this account writes about; they are not a performance signal, and the catalog-wide breakdown on the hub shows how little hashtag count moves.
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Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 6 interactions against 249K followers, an engagement rate of 0.002%. Measured over 37 original posts, its engagement rate beats 11% of 6,874 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 2.4K times each, and 0.245% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.982% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 1.4 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 20% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 20:00 UTC, and Tuesday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 37 posts sampled, 97% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 65 interactions, about 11x its own typical post.
- What is The Chronicle of Higher Education's engagement rate on X?
- The Chronicle of Higher Education (@chronicle) has an engagement rate of 0.002%, based on the median interactions across 37 original posts from the last 30 days against 249,335 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.002%, The Chronicle of Higher Education sits above the 10th percentile of the 66,258 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
- Does @chronicle have real engagement?
- Its engagement rate beats 11% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (6,874 accounts), which puts it in the bottom quarter for its size group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
- When does @chronicle post?
- Most posts go out around 20:00 UTC, and Tuesday is its busiest day, at roughly 1.37 posts per day across the measured window.