Close the J-Schools

Shocking news from the halls of academia: Forbes reported earlier this year that enrollment in graduate journalism schools is booming. These kids are paying upwards of $70,000 (the cost of Columbia's J-School, including living expenses) for a ghost's chance of landing a job, at pitiful pay, in an industry that is rapidly collapsing. What's going to be the next hot field in graduate study? Blacksmithing? Bloodletting? Steamship design?

I don't meant to offend anyone from the noble field of steamship design, where there is actually a lot to learn. Journalism is not a profession like engineering, medicine or even law. You can pick up most media skills on the job, or with a few hours of instruction. If you screw up, nobody dies, and nothing collapses. This is why so many — perhaps most — journalism pros have built successful careers without touching J-school, and why many of them considered a J-degree a dubious credential even in the field's heyday.

Most J-school enrollees know this already: They go for the "contacts" thought to be essential in a competitive field. This made sense a few years ago. These days, it's like boarding the Titanic in hopes of meeting the captain. Many of these "contacts" are old-media refugees who made the desperate leap onto J-school faculties in response to buyouts or layoffs. Who are they gonna call when Johnny wants a job? And with all due respect to these good folks — for I, too, love old-school journalism — if their purpose is really to teach, are these bitter-enders really the folks we want teaching our next generation of media professionals?

If I asked you to pay $70,000 to get ahead in some other glamorous, extremely competitive, fairly non-technical profession — say, modeling — you might call me a charlatan. But journalism has become ensconced as an academic discipline at otherwise respectable institutions. Journalism is connected to a social mission. These are good things for J-school deans. Now that the industry is headed off a cliff — leaving them in charge of vocational schools without a vocation — all they have left is the school's imprimatur, the social mission, and — oh yeah — the glamour that keeps students coming through the door. Here's Columbia J-School dean Nicholas Lemann, explaining to Forbes the bewildering increase in applications: "I've never met a single person in 35 years who went into journalism out of pure economic reason."

Maybe a small-town newspaper editor making an offer to a job applicant would feel justified using that line. At least he's offering a job, if a low-paying one. Lemann, however, is hawking an outdated Rolodex with a $70,000 price tag. What Lemann is really saying is this: "We don't promise a well-paying job — or even a job at all. But they're paying us money to come here. What do you expect us to do?"

Here's what you can do: Close down. At the least, J-school deans, you should slash your enrollments. How much? Simple: Assess the degree to which the profession has shrunk, and then reduce your class size accordingly. How else can you assure the media world that you're not just flooding the market with new blood, eager to do the job of laid-off workers at lower pay?

Think you still have a role to play in the ever-changing media landscape? Great. Go forth and teach workshops in copyediting, camerawork, graphic design, the business of publishing, even journalistic ethics. Teach them at night or on weekends, and charge a grand or so for each. That will make them accessible to the hausfrau bloggers, the go-go entrepreneurs, and the neighborhood activists who will shape our media future. That will professionalize the media, if that's what you care to do.

Do not fill up two years of anyone's time with bush-league "news services" (Oh boy! A clip in The Daily Supplement!) or mandatory classes in media history, communications theory or journalism philosophy. Do not charge so much money to walk through the door that the program is open only to the rich, the idle, or the financially illiterate. That's not a journalism school; that's a gold-plated welfare program for your old newsroom buddies, built on the backs of starry-eyed naïfs.

I resisted J-school for several years as I pursued a career in newspapers. Finally, in 2003, I accepted an offer to study business journalism on fellowship. I took half my classes at the business school. The B-schoolers were passionate, driven, and excited about their future; the J-schoolers seemed timid, desultory, and aimless. At the J-school, the prizewinners whose names had lured students to the program were indulged with classes on topics with no practical career use. Meanwhile, the B-schoolers learned how to boost productivity and adapt to changing markets.

It dawned on me that the new business models that may save journalism were much more likely to come from the business school than the journalism school. At times I felt like closing down the J-school and sending most of those kids straight across campus, to the shiny new B-school.

Richard Sine spent a dozen years at newspapers before turning freelance (by choice, not by layoff). He writes about business and personal finance for magazines such as Men's Health and corporate clients such as Fidelity and UPS.

Comments

[zola77]

perspective from a foreign country: The first thing a couple of respected professional journalists told us upon entering university was, "If you want to be a good, respected journalist, DONT get a degree in journalism­/communica­tions."

I thought that was interesting. They put more emphasis on getting a broader education in politics/e­conomics/p­hilosophy/­science etc. Disciplines that provide you with critical thinking skills and some in-depth knowledge about the world. It seems that (some) employers prioritise hiring journalists who have independent, critical thinking skills but may be rough around the edges, over those that have been trained to present well but have little independent, critical thinking skills.

[skantea]

Excellent analysis.

[steppenwolfsayshi]

The point of graduate school shouldn't be and never was to get people jobs. The university's purpose is the ongoing pursuit of the knowledge.

[skantea]

I'm studying Advertising and some of what's written here is true for that industry as well. Most of the talented people in school were talented before they got there, and the ones that lacked talent to start graduate no closer to knowing how to come up with a "New" idea.
In the end most of the technical skills necessary can be learned on the job or through more self directed study (Classes in Photography, Creative Writing, Flash, Photoshop, etc.).
I'm just a little p.o.ed that it took me so long to figure out that going $65k in debt was unnecessary.

[TJCole]

Try, Sharpening Sticks...

[ddrasin]

>

Beg your pardon?

Dan Drasin
Media producer, photojournalist, cinematographer
49 years in the profession and have never stopped learning.

[robadeaux]

Crazy... if they want to spend their parents money (or borrowed money) on whatever... so what? At least they provide employment for the teachers!

[edwcorey]

Not all journalism grads go into newspapers or even electronic news media. Some use their newfound skills for corporate communications, writing books, and other fields where literacy and telling stories logically are prized. Going online and reading untrained opinionators and other semiliterates is a persuasive exercise if you want to see the difference between someone who knows what s/he's doing and a loudmouth. Furthermore, the exuberance this writer sees in the B-school guys is just the irrational kind (of people living in the fantasy world of made-up financial paper) that has brought the world crashing down. Maybe if more people were trained in critical thinking and skepticism--which is what good journalism schools try to teach--we wouldn't now be reeling from the takeover of government by a bunch of faux cowboys.

[Marcojoven]

This is point I thought should have been addressed. When I went to unca Walter's school of Mass Communications (God rest his soul), many people were going to get degrees in Mass Communication ( a lot of PR people). Some people were there just to get a degree before going on to get a law degree. Many seemed to want to get on the local news scene, and marry the person who got the law degree.

I knew before entering into the school landing a job in news print would be very, very difficult. Before I entered I knew I would become a technical writer or something, which I did, even before I walked in the graduation ceremony. Because I had writing skills, photo skills, software skills, and so on. Sine's overselling his argument.

[mikemikaels]

Great, while we're at it lets close all the arts schools, fine art programs, philosophy majors, any foreign language considered "useless", most liberal arts majors, anything involving poetry. As a matter of fact we should only have four majors: law, engineering, medicine and business.
This article is proof that there is a dumbing-down of our culture and society that is rapidly gaining momentum.

[Lendall]

I have more sympathy with Mike Mikaels' position than I do with Richard Sines'. This is actually a very negative article to have floating around when some states are contemplating drastic cuts in higher education.

That having been said, there is an issue of ethics here. I attended one of the top three "film schools" in the country as a graduate student, had some sort of career in the business, and in the midst of this taught part-time at a less well-known institution. My students were in a masters degree program for prospective motion picture and television producers. That's what their degrees said they were qualified to do. Well I can tell you from my 23 years as an executive in Hollywood that a "film producer" masters degree and a $5.50 will get you a Frapacino at Starbucks. In The Business it's all about who you know, and if you control talent and/or money. That's it. My point: I can sort of see offering undergraduate degrees in areas where there are no jobs -- I am actually all for liberal arts degrees --, but the same does not hold so much for graduate programs. Many M.A.s and PhDs are holding jobs that a high school graduate could do -- while paying off their student loans.

[Richard Sine - Huffpost Blogger]

Look, I know many J-schools are working hard to reform-including Columbia. I sympathize with Nicholas Lemann when he admitted recently (to New York Magazine) that it’s hard to afford adjuncts to teach new-media skills when he's got all these expensive, tenured, old-media professors on the payroll. It reminded me of GM or Ford, struggling with all their expensive workers as they try to compete with Toyota or Honda.

Like the American automakers, most J-schools grew up in a different age. I wish them luck in their efforts to adapt. But you shouldn't buy GM or Ford cars out of sympathy - and a J-school education costs about four times more than a car.

I've also gotten some feedback from people who went to top schools and then landed good jobs. Some of those folks loved their education, while others readily admit that it was not nearly as useful as the contacts. Recruiters were suddenly willing to look at them now that they had the Columbia (Stanford, Berkeley, NYU...) name on their résumé.

So are these schools truly educational, or are they just résumé screens for the top publications? If it’s the latter, then which talented and hardworking - but not as footloose or well-funded - aspirants are NOT getting those valuable jobs because the Times pays more attention to “top schools?” If these schools are merely creating an elite, insider class (just as technology makes the field more egalitarian), then that is even MORE reason to scale them down.

[macloo]

Some of Sine's points are valid (e.g., Columbia's j-school is very expensive; some journalism professors are tired old hacks), but overall he's using a very wide brush to paint all journalism classes and courses and programs with a thick coat of a single color. That's never good journalism -- should I say all politicians are crooked? All athletes are stupid? Of course not.

If Sine had done some actual reporting for his column, he might have discovered what every journalism professor knows: Lots of students who major in journalism have no intention of ever working as traditional journalists. The allegation that the j-schools are ripping off the naive students is specious. If a student in a j-school thinks she has a guarantee of a job or a career in journalism, I'd have to say that student has strenuously avoided being informed. Her professors certainly are not promising, or even implying, that there are any jobs out there.

For a counterpoint to SIne's view, here's a blog post from June:

http://mindymcadams.com/tojou/2009/why-does-anyone-major-in-journalism/

As it explains, many students have other reasons for majoring in journalism.

[CanadianBeef]

Here in Ontario, Western University closed its very respected journalism school for the very reasons the writer enumerates. I myself left the newspaper biz after my second layoff. As editor of a business magazine I was making $23,000 a year. I started my own business, figuring, if I'm going to starve, at least I will starve a free man. It was the right choice.

[doyle005]

First, perhaps if you would have gone to graduate school, you might have learned to proofread. "I don't meant to offend anyone from the noble field of steamship design, where..." I believe that you meant to write 'mean'.

Second, Edward R. Murrow graduated with a degree in speech in the 1930. He was one of the best in the business.

Third, people quit comparing reporters from fifty years ago to now. Fifty years ago you could do on the job training in a news room. But now there is too much you are expected to know before you set foot in the newsroom.

Finally, this is not a problem solely of j-schools. All degrees are producing more graduates than the market can provide jobs for. I'll have a PhD in political science in the fall and look at the number of professorships in this field compared to the number of newly minted PhDs. Market sticks all over.

[sweela]

I love the defensive bio: "BY CHOICE, NOT BY LAYOFF."

For the record, I took copy-editing and ethics courses in J-School.

Yes, it's tough out there. But the fact of the matter is that I'm in a better position than someone with no experience, who is unlikely to get even an interview. I found a job, and my education was worth every penny.

[poster1122]

The underlying argument, that journalism is not a profitable field of study and therefore should be discontinued as a major, is an odd one.

Go through a typical liberal arts college and see the majors there: Philosophy, Art History, Drama/Theater, Peace and Conflict Studies, African American Studies, Asian American studies, etc, etc. If you run the numbers, my guess is that you'd probably find that most (if not all) of these majors probably have limited job prospects. Yet, I wouldn't argue that they're unworthy of study or that they should be abolished.

[Tyler Hurst]

What do J schools have to do with getting a job in the mainstream media? Surely such a smart person wouldn't argue that JOURNALISM is dying, but rather newspapers and possibly mainstream media.

How did this guy get to where he is?