Is J-School Worth It?
Opportunities for hands-on learning, but payoff is not guaranteed
After she graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1992 with a degree in English, Shalmali Pal faced a tough decision. The Los Angeles native knew that she wanted to be a journalist, but her credentials were marginal at best--a few movie reviews written for the Daily Bruin, the UCLA campus newspaper. That alone, she knew, was not enough to land her a job in the shrinking and highly competitive world of print journalism. The expensive solution: an investment of one year's time and $20,000 of her parents' money for a master's degree at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
Ambivalence. Today, Pal works as a reporter in a suburban bureau of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, a position she feels she owes in large measure to her graduate degree. "I could not have projected the same confidence if I had not gone to journalism school," says Pal, now 26. But in almost the same breath, she concedes that in journalism school "there's nothing they are going to teach you that you can't learn in the workplace."
While many aspiring reporters, to say nothing of many experienced editors, share Pal's ambivalence about journalism school, growing numbers of young people are hoping that in a tight job market a master's degree in journalism will help them to launch--or advance--their careers. As a result, enrollment in the nation's 171 journalism and mass communications master's programs grew by 25 percent between 1990 and 1994, to more than 10,000. While earning an advanced degree is no guarantee of a job, a survey by Northwestern's Medill School found that more than two thirds of the 170 students who received an M.S. at the school in 1994 were working as print, broadcast or online journalists. "When it comes to filling newsrooms with the best talents, they are coming through journalism school," contends Neil Brown, managing editor of the St. Petersburg Times.
At the best schools, graduate students not only are taught basic journalistic skills but also are thrust into real-life professional situations. For example, when Kara Choquette, 23, attended the journalism school on the Columbia campus of the University of Missouri, she covered Boonville, a small town near the university, for the Columbia Missourian, a full-fledged daily newspaper owned and operated by the school. Choquette reported on the town's efforts to attract a casino riverboat as well as on the closing of a local sports-apparel plant. "What you learn in a small community, you can use anywhere," says Choquette, now a copy editor at the Gannett-owned Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y.
On the air. Those who envision on-air careers in television have comparable opportunities in some graduate programs. At Missouri, for example, students get firsthand exposure to radio and television because the school operates both the local National Public Radio affiliate and the town's NBC station. Students write, report and produce the morning and evening newscasts. After each show, professors critique their work. "The newsrooms are the crucibles in which we hope to mold future journalists," declares George Kennedy, a professor at the University of Missouri.
Many journalism educators say such experience has become even more valuable as economic pressures squeeze news organizations, leaving fewer editors available to work with young reporters. "In the older environment, you could count on the newsroom being your teacher," observes Michael Janeway, the Medill dean. Moreover, some media professionals believe that journalism professors are often more demanding than editors, though educators warn that the standards may not be so high at schools that put graduate students in many of the same courses as undergraduates, thereby offering less of an academic challenge.
Top schools expose students to a variety of media so that they can figure out what interests them the most. At Northwestern, for example, students can work on a magazine startup, producing a publication from scratch. George Harmon, an associate professor at Medill, points out that "you make your mistakes in the classroom, where there is no injury."
High tech. Increasingly, professors are helping to train students in an emerging art--using computers as a reporting tool. Students learn techniques for searching through massive databases for information that can produce stories on subjects ranging from sentencing practices in local courts to demographic trends in a city, state or region.
In addition to valuable practical experience, journalism educators argue, the best programs provide historical and sociological lessons that graduates are unlikely to learn on the job. "Without journalism school, you get no orientation to the role of journalism in a modern democracy," says Joan Konner, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, where students take courses such as "Journalism, Law and Society," along with the more practical offerings. Still, such courses, while important, may matter less to most students than Jobs 101. "I am here to get my foot in the door," says Jeff Amy of Norcross, Ga., a graduate student at Missouri. "But that doesn't mean the things I am learning won't make me a better journalist."
Networking. Some students choose a school because of the strength of its alumni network. In an industry where whom you know can be just as important as what you know, that network can be a decisive factor in getting hired. "Every job I have gotten has been through a Missouri connection," says John Callan, senior editor for world news at MSN News, Microsoft's new online service, one of the growing opportunities for journalism graduates in the expanding market of cyberspace. Callan, who completed the graduate program at Missouri in 1988, has returned the favor by hiring several graduates of Missouri for MSN.
Still, some editors argue that a graduate degree has limited value. Many say that summer internships that produce published clips or broadcast scripts are much more important to them. "I wouldn't recommend journalism school for aspiring young journalists," says Robert Merry, executive editor of Congressional Quarterly. Merry, a former political reporter for the Wall Street Journal, argues that it is more profitable to pursue academic studies that have longer-lasting value.
Many editors who agree with Merry lean toward hiring liberal arts majors with summer or campus journalism experience plus solid grounding in a discipline like economics. Kathleen Hall-Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that reporters with special expertise often produce better work. She cites a recent Annenberg study of health care coverage that found the best reporting was by journalists who had covered the area for more than five years or who were health care specialists--and not products of J-school.
Historically, there has always been a tension between journalism schools and the industry. In the early part of the century, many editors viewed education, in journalism school or elsewhere, as something of a handicap. Today, that attitude has changed dramatically, but there remains a certain admiration of those who have trained in the school of hard knocks rather than at journalism school. Says Greg Jarrett, an anchor on the Court TV cable network: "You can learn more in six months on the job than in four years of school. It's not brain surgery."
Big bills. Perhaps the most important issue students pondering enrolling in journalism school need to consider is the cost. Tuition and fees at schools like Medill and Columbia total around $20,000 a year, plus room and board. Even at a public institution like the University of Missouri, the total cost exceeds $16,000, without room and board, for the school's two-year program. In an industry in which salaries usually start in the low to middle $20,000 range, that means graduates may find paying off student loans very difficult.
In the end, new statistical evidence about the value of a journalism degree is not very supportive of J-school proponents. A study for the Freedom Forum, to be released this spring, found that only 9 percent of recent hires in print and broadcast news had a master's degree in journalism, while 48 percent held undergraduate journalism degrees, much lower numbers than expected. Says Betty Medsger, onetime chair of San Francisco State University's journalism department, who did the study: "There are still an awful lot of people without journalism degrees walking in and getting jobs."
Perhaps Howard Kurtz, the media critic for the Washington Post and a graduate of Columbia Journalism School, best sums up the industry's attitude. Comparing getting a graduate degree in journalism to eating chicken soup, he says: "It can't hurt." But given the cost, it is a much more expensive remedy than the kind Grandma used to make. LIBRARY SCIENCE For the first time, U.S. News this year rated not only graduate journalism schools but also the 50 accredited graduate programs in library science. Surveys were sent to deans and senior faculty; response rate: 73 percent.
1. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 4.4 2. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 4.3 2. Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 4.3 4. Syracuse University (N.Y.) 4.2 5. University of Pittsburgh at Main Campus 4.1 6. Indiana University at Bloomington 3.9 6. Rutgers Univ. at New Brunswick (N.J.) 3.9 6. University of Wisconsin at Madison 3.9 9. University of Texas at Austin 3.8 10. Drexel University (Pa.) 3.7
J-SCHOOL OVERVIEW Varied roles There are, to be sure, vast differences among America's graduate schools of journalism and mass communications. Some, like the Columbia School of Journalism and Northwestern University's Medill School, stress practical training. Others, like the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, emphasize research methods and theory. And still others, like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Oregon, combine the practical and the theoretical.
Practical. U.S. News recognizes the differences among institutions. In this, our first study of graduate schools of journalism and mass communications, the magazine, after consultation with academic experts, decided to focus on specialty rankings in the professions to maximize the usefulness of the survey for prospective applicants. We did not include the few specialty institutions like Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy, which, as its name suggests, focuses largely on the study of ways that the media affect the evolution of governmental policies.
How can prospective applicants tell into which category a school falls? The answer: Examine the credentials of the faculty. If the teaching staff is composed primarily of Ph.D.'s, chances are that the school offers more theory than tradecraft. But if a school--the University of California at Berkeley, for instance--requires most of the faculty to have only significant professional experience, then its priorities are clearly the reverse.
PRACTITIONERS' CHOICES Earlier this year, U.S. News sent reputational surveys to a random sample of 190 print journalists, 180 broadcast journalists, 150 public-relations executives and 150 advertising executives. The same survey was mailed to 340 deans and leading faculty at all graduate programs in journalism and mass communications. The aim: to rank graduate schools of journalism and mass communications by combining the results of the two surveys, using the same statistical methods employed in some of the other U.S. News rankings. However, the response rate among the media professionals--13 percent--was too low to permit statistically representative rankings. Instead, we simply list below--in alphabetical order--those schools cited most often for their high quality by the professionals who responded to our surveys. To the left, we present numerical rankings based on the responses of the academics; their response rate was 40 percent.
ADVERTISING Northwestern Univ. (Medill) (Ill.) Syracuse U. (Newhouse) (N.Y.) Univ. of Ill. at Urbana-Champ. Univ. of Missouri at Columbia Univ. of N.C. at Chapel Hill
PRINT Columbia University (N.Y.) Northwestern Univ. (Medill) (Ill.) University of Kansas (White) Univ. of Missouri at Columbia Univ. of N.C. at Chapel Hill
PUBLIC RELATIONS Boston University Northwestern Univ. (Medill) (Ill.) Syracuse U. (Newhouse) (N.Y.) Univ. of Md. at College Park Univ. of Missouri at Columbia
RADIO/TELEVISION Columbia University (N.Y.) Northwestern Univ. (Medill) (Ill.) Stanford University Syracuse U. (Newhouse) (N.Y.) Univ. of Missouri at Columbia
THE BEST AS SEEN BY ACADEMICS Programs in print and broadcast journalism, public relations and advertising ranked as the best by deans and faculty members at schools of journalism and mass communications:
ADVERTISING 1. Univ. of Ill. at Urbana-Champaign 2. University of Florida 3. Northwestern Univ. (Medill) (Ill.) 4. Univ. of Texas at Austin 5. University of Georgia 6. Michigan State University 7. Univ. of N.C. at Chapel Hill 8. Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville 9. Univ. of Missouri at Columbia 10. Syracuse U. (Newhouse) (N.Y.) 11. Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison 12. Univ. of Ala. at Tuscaloosa 13. Univ. of Colorado at Boulder 13. Univ. of S.C. at Columbia 15. Univ. of Nebraska at Lincoln
PRINT 1. Univ. of Missouri at Columbia 2. Columbia University (N.Y.) 3. Northwestern Univ. (Medill) (Ill.) 4. Univ. of N.C. at Chapel Hill 5. Indiana Univ. at Bloomington 6. University of Florida 7. Ohio University (Scripps) 7. Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison 9. Univ. of California at Berkeley 9. University of Kansas (White) 11. Univ. of Md. at College Park 11. University of Texas at Austin 13. Syracuse U. (Newhouse) (N.Y.) 14. Arizona State Univ. (Cronkite) 15. Univ. of Minn. at Twin Cities
PUBLIC RELATIONS 1. Univ. of Md. at College Park 2. University of Florida 3. Syracuse U. (Newhouse) (N.Y.) 4. University of Georgia 5. Univ. of N.C. at Chapel Hill 6. San Diego State University 7. Ohio University (Scripps) 7. University of Texas at Austin 9. Northwestern Univ. (Medill) (Ill.) 10. Michigan State University 11. Calif. State Univ. at Fullerton 12. Univ. of Missouri at Columbia 12. University of S.C. at Columbia 12. Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison 15. Boston University
RADIO/TELEVISION 1. Syracuse U. (Newhouse) (N.Y.) 2. University of Florida 3. Univ. of Missouri at Columbia 4. University of Texas at Austin 5. Northwestern Univ. (Medill) (Ill.) 6. Indiana Univ. at Bloomington 7. Arizona State Univ. (Cronkite) 7. Columbia University (N.Y.) 9. Ohio University (Scripps) 10. Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison 11. Univ. of Southern California 12. University of Georgia 13. Southern Ill. U. at Carbondale 14. Temple University (Pa.) 14. Univ. of Ala. at Tuscaloosa
This story appears in the March 18, 1996 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.