J-School Teachers Are Wrong About J-School

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Hamilton Nolan

08/09/13 09:56AM

Filed to: j-school

In a new survey from Poynter, 57% of actual media professionals say that a journalism school degree is very or extremely important for "understanding the values of journalism." But 96% of J-school teachers say that it is. This is all you need to know about J-school.

Oh, hell: "More than 80 percent of educators but only 25 percent of media professionals say a journalism degree is extremely important when it comes to learning news gathering skills."

Now you know even more than you need to know about J-school.

[Poynter NewsU [PDF] via Inside Higher Ed. Image via Poynter]

richkidssuck Hamilton Nolan 08/09/13 10:09AM

Or really any media-centric career. These professors are always going to shout from the rooftops how important the education is for people to "make it" in whatever biz it is because that's how they get paid. I, for one, think we should just go back to the medieval practice of apprenticeships and journeymen. You walk out with a career (because you have connections and that's still what it's all about) and no debt.

Elaborate Voicemail Hoax Hamilton Nolan 08/09/13 10:14AM

Journalism/Poli-Sci double major here, not working in the field. If you really really REALLY wanna be a journalist, major in economics or a science and join the school paper (or radio station or tv station or whatever). Take some journalism classes, sure, but your actual experience will be worth a hell of a lot more than a journalism degree.

LibraryPunk Hamilton Nolan 08/09/13 10:23AM

Librarians argue about this all the time, too. As a librarian I have to say, meh. I definitely learned some stuff in L School, but 95% of my skills were developed on the job over time.

I was a journalism major, and I think it's probably about the same deal. Take the ethics class, take the "how to write an article" class, maybe one history of American Journalism. Voila.

John C. Calhoun Hamilton Nolan 08/09/13 10:24AM

True story: back in 2004 when I was in a broadcast journalism class at NYU, my instructor told everyone in the room that they should not get journalism degrees, visibly shattering the minds of a bunch of Communications/Journalism students majors there (I was an English major and Journalism minor).

This was in the middle of the semester. We were on a slight tangent about journalistic authority, when she explicitly stated this, adding that, eventually, she suspected it would be better to not just get a degree in something else, but to actually go do something else for a first career, and then come back to journalism after developing an expertise in a given field.

Loved that instructor.