WASHINGTON -- Colleges and universities offering bachelor
degree
programs in journalism slipped in the rankings in 1998, according
to a
survey and selection of the top wired campuses by Yahoo! Life
Magazine.
Dartmouth overtook MIT as the nation's most wired campus, according
to
the survey published in the Web-indexing firm's hard copy magazine
last
week.
Dartmouth's gain may not surprise anyone, but for those of us
involved
in electronic journalism the relatively poor showing by colleges
and
universities that house schools or departments of journalism raises
another distressing red flag for the media.
Among the problems currently facing journalism may be that its
training
grounds are not keeping pace with the growth of the Internet and
electronic journalism - at least as far as hardware is concerned.
The top four schools in this year's listing do not formally train
journalists. Dartmouth, the top school, has majors in English
and
creative writing but not in journalism.
New Jersey Institute of Technology, moving up from a seventh-place
ranking last year to become number two, has a program in professional
and technical communications, but it's geared more to training
engineering specialists than daily journalists.
MIT, like Dartmouth, offers students a major in writing and humanities
studies but nothing aimed at producing daily journalists.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute offers a program in
graphics and
electronic media. A good program, one would guess, for future
online
journalists and web-heads, but not a program of traditional journalism.
The University of Illinois, which comes in as the nation's fifth
most
wired campus, is the top-rated school with a journalism program.
Last
year, Illinois was not among the top 20 schools.
In contrast to the new listing, Yahoo!'s 1997 listing showed three
of
the top six campuses and four of the top eight campuses belonged
to
schools with journalism programs.
In last year's listing, Northwestern University, which has one
of the
nation's most prestigious journalism schools, ranked second. This
year,
the home of Medill slipped to 17th place.
Emerson College, which last year surprised many of the megacampuses
by
ranking third, this year dropped to 13th place.
The number six ranking in 1997 went to the University of Oregon,
another university with a fine journalism program. This year Oregon
slipped to 9th place.
And the University of Indiana, showing some consistency, ranked
8th
this year as it did last year.
In all, of the top 25 wired campuses in the 1998 listing, only
eight
could be considered to offer traditional journalism programs.
In
addition to those mentioned above, New York University (20th),
Baylor
University (22nd), and East Carolina University ( 25th) offer
students
a chance to earn a bachelor's degree in journalism.
Of course, there are many factors that go into a college's
or
university's commitment to wiring its campus, and the Yahoo! listing
makes clear that technical schools, perhaps because of their history
and tradition, are investing in hardware and hot-wirin g resources
for
the future.
Journalism education has fought an uphill battle for the past
two or
three decades and has certainly gained a position of respect in
the
1990s.
Now, however, with the Internet revolution upon us, and with media
companies having made a heavy - albeit somewhat half-hearted -
commitment to the new medium, journalism education appears to
be losing
ground on campus.
I'd be among the last to argue that the quality of journalism
education
is only as good as its electronic resources, but there's something
to
be said for those schools that furnish the tools their students
will
need to compete in the fast-paced informati on society of the
21st
Century.
Allan Andrews is a News
Editor at Stars and Stripes and a prize-winning
columnist. He can be contacted at allan.andrews@reporters.net