Annual Census of Enrollment Records Fewer Undergrads
The number of students enrolled in university programs in journalism and mass communication dropped sharply in 1992 compared with a year earlier. Graduate enrollment offset slightly the decline in undergraduate enrollments. Journalism and mass communication programs enrolled approximately 8,400 fewer students in the autumn of 1992 compared to the autumn of 1991, offsetting growth in recent years and resulting in almost 3,700 fewer students enrolled than in 1988. The total number of degrees granted in 1991-92 was nearly the same as a year earlier, however, and this number has held steady at 36,000 for the last three years. The decline in the percentage of journalism and mass communication students specializing in news-editorial journalism has been halted. From 1988 to 1992, the percentage of students enrolled in print and broadcast journalism increased from 27.7 to 32.8. The percentage of women studying in and earning degrees from programs in journalism and mass communication remained steady in 1992. The percentage of minority students also remained relatively constant.
Designing a Model Program for Minority Students
In light of ongoing attempts to dismantle affirmative action programs nationwide, the results of recent research into designing a model journalism program for minority students could prove to be both enlightening and helpful. The panel of experts who designed the model strongly favored components that foster integration and growth for all students, and were least supportive of set-asides and minority-only programming. Even so, as the data show, few of the experts were comfortable with eliminating minority-only programming. The experts gave their strongest approval to those elements and activities that: * help to create a less hostile university climate and promote a multicultural environment * better integrate minority students into university life * increase involvement of minority and white faculty with minority students inside and outside of the classroom * concentrate on practical experience for all students on campus media, while improving the climate and content of those media * facilitate the financial and personal participation of professional media. Perhaps as important, the panelists agreed that: * minority-only components should not be emphasized because they tend to segregate students * racial/ethnic criteria for participation in special activities should be eliminated * there can be negative results for minority students from minority-only programming. As a result, the finished model fails to show strong support for set-asides except in the critical area of financial support. Background In 1965, when Watts erupted in rioting, the Los Angeles Times briefly "promoted" a classified ad messenger to reporter because there wasn't a single black journalist in the newsroom (Letofsky, 1990). In 1968, when a murder suspect escaped into Mexico, a Los Angeles Times switchboard operator translated a telephone conversation with Mexican police because there were no bilingual journalists (Rawitch, 1985).(1) These were not isolated instances. In that same year (1968), the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission) castigated the American news media for their contributions to the violence in Newark, NJ and Detroit, noting that "the media report and write from a standpoint of a white man's world" (p. 366). Among the conclusions in the Commission's chapter on the media: "The journalistic profession has been shockingly backward in seeking out, hiring, training, and promoting Negroes" (p. 384). A decade after the Kerner report, in 1978, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) announced a goal: By the year 2000, the employment of minorities in newsrooms should "be equivalent to the percentage of minority persons within the national population"--at that time, about 17 percent. What ASNE called for--and described as fair and attainable--was a 13 percent increase over 22 years (ASNE, 1984). That goal remains remote. While minority employment on daily newspapers has increased 6.9 percent, from 4 percent in 1978 to 10.9 percent in 1994 (Jennings, 1995; Garneau, 1990; Rosenfeld, 1988), minorities now constitute approximately 25 percent of the U.S. population. In addition, 45.8 percent of the 1,492 daily newspapers have no minorities in their newsrooms (Jennings, 1995). Data from broadcast journalism and public relations reflect similar findings. The media look to find minority staff members among journalism school graduates, but the picture in journalism education is not encouraging. An annual survey, taken primarily to count the number and distribution of all journalism students, shows that minorities represented 22 percent of the total number of journalism majors reported in 1993 (15,415 minority undergraduates in a total enrollment of 71,250), at the 241 programs that responded with racial/ethnic data. Of those, 13.5 percent were African American, 5.5 percent Hispanic-American, 2. …
Enrollments Increase in 1989, but Graduation Rates Drop
Overall enrollment at journalism and mass communication programs in the United States increased by 5.6 percent in the autumn of 1989, compared with a year earlier. Enrollments increased at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, but at the baccalaureate level the level of increase was the greatest since the 1984-85 period. At the same time, the number of degrees granted by journalism and mass communication programs in the academic year 198889 was 1.4 percent lower than a year earlier. The number of undergraduate degrees declined by 2.5 percent, but this figure was offset somewhat by the 12.6 percent increase in the number of graduate degrees earned. The increase in the number of graduate degrees granted followed an increase of 7.4 percent from a year earlier, while the decline in undergraduate degrees followed a decline of 0.5 percent a year earlier. Women continue to make up about 60 percent of the enrollment in journalism and mass communication programs, except at the doctoral level, where males are more numerous. There is no evidence of significant change in these figures from 1988 to 1989. At the same time, the number of minority students enrolled in undergraduate journalism and mass communication programs increased from autumn 1988 to autumn 1989. There is no evidence, however, of increased minority representation in the graduate programs surveyed.