U.S. News Starts Charging for Best Colleges Logo for Web, Print and more

Today, the US News & World Report college and university rankings were released to schools around the country. Each year, we all anxiously await the (hopefully) good news and, even though we decry their relevance, we’ll use them to promote ourselves as one the best ranked colleges.

For years, it’s been a very symbiotic relationship. We use the rankings done by U.S. News & World Report to promote ourselves and they use us to sell magazines and college guides. It’s a fair trade, and everybody wins.

But, something’s changed this year.

Want to use the little U.S. News Best Colleges logo? The one we’ve all used with no problems in the past? That’s fine, but now its going to cost you.

I can understand charging for reprints or using the logo in print materials/magazines, but for use on the web? That’s strange.

We’ll be referencing the rankings starting tomorrow once the embargo is lifted. One thing we won’t have is the logo. I don’t know if having that along with our news release is worth $700-800 and way up from there for print rights.

Will some schools pony up for the logo? I think so. But I would guess many won’t – seeing how bad budgets are right now.

I quite like Karine’s idea:

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