What is it about?
Administrators and faculty in journalism and mass communications programs who were surveyed approved of the controversial idea of ranking such programs. They also shared their views of the best criteria for such rankings.
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Why is it important?
Students and their parents who shop around for leading educational programs often use popular rankings of universities and colleges. There are few such rankings for journalism and communications programs, however, and those available are thinly sourced. Developing a ranking system that relies on thorough evaluations, using objective measures, would be useful for such students and parents. It would also be helpful for faculties and administrators who could use it as a tool for improving their programs.
Perspectives
Competition and market forces dictate the health of media outlets and so consumers are able to pick and choose their products, armed with helpful information. But educational institutions are often opaque. Their strengths and weaknesses are difficult to gauge. And making comparisons among them is challenging. While popular ranking systems have evolved to help consumers, journalism programs have largely been omitted, even as business, medical and other professionally oriented programs have been ranked. This article finds that there is support for ranking journalism programs among academics who run them and teach in them and, furthermore, it lays out criteria could be used in such a ranking regime. It provides a useful guide for developing such a regime.
Professor Joseph Weber
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Ranking Journalism and Mass Communications Programs, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, July 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1077695815623663.
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