Trends in University Support of Scholastic Journalism

For the past several years, educators involved in scholastic journalism have been saying that high school journalism is endangered. Some of the blame for the situation has been put on high schools themselves because administrators have not often viewed the journalism program as essential to the curriculum. On the other hand, a share of the blame has been put on college and university journalism programs for not adequately supporting scholastic journalism education. The Journalism Education Association, for example, concluded in a report titled High School Journalism Confronts Critical Deadlines (JEA, 1987) that high school journalism programs were at risk. It put part of the blame on higher education, which it stated "has not assumed a sufficiently aggressive role in nurturing scholastic journalism" (p. 107). One of the report's authors, John M. Butler, suggested that many journalism schools "appear not to attract sufficient teachers to continue education training programs" and "offer programs that fail to meet teacher needs" (JEA, 1987, p. 103). A few years later, Death by Cheeseburger: High School Journalism in the 1990s and Beyond (Freedom Forum, 1994) charged that college journalism programs were still not adequately addressing scholastic journalism education. It stated: "Some experts attribute the shortage of college-trained high school journalism teachers to the small number of colleges offering majors in journalism education" (p. 13). It noted that some journalism programs had dropped their majors in journalism education in the previous 10 years. Scholastic journalism isn't a priority for many journalism programs both because of their professional orientation and because of the limited number of students who likely would be attracted to scholastic journalism education. As stated by Mary Sparks, a past president of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication, many college and university journalism educators "feel their main job is to train people to be professional journalists, and they are also driven by the numbers" (Freedom Forum, 1994, p. 14). Sparks' point was supported by a survey for the American journalism History Association conducted by its Education Committee, which stated that scholastic journalism was the most vulnerable college journalism program, ranked far below the next lowest program, cultural studies (D. Birkhead, personal communication, January 18, 1995). The study suggested little had changed since Shenton and Smith (1982) wrote that, despite its importance, education for scholastic journalism was "a step child, albeit a necessary one perhaps, in the Association for Education in Journalism" (p. 6). Such comments and findings suggest the need to examine what higher education's role in scholastic journalism education was at the end of the 20th century in an attempt to determine whether it was putting less emphasis on scholastic journalism than it did in earlier years. Review of the literature The benefits of scholastic journalism for high school students have been well-documented (Dvorak,1988; Dvorak, 1989; Dvorak, 1990; Dvorak, Lain, & Dickson, 1994; Morgan & Dvorak, 1994; and Dvorak, 1998). The American Society of Newspaper Editors found that 30 percent of newspaper professional employees (editors, copy editors, reporters, photographers, and artists) responding to a national survey reported that they first decided to choose a newspaper career while in high school, 38 percent had taken a high school journalism class, and 55 percent had worked on a junior or senior high newspaper (ASNE, 1989). Moreover, Olson (2000) found that just over 60 percent of college and university journalism and mass communication educators had high school journalism experience, and just over 40 percent decided to pursue journalism as a career before or during high school. Studies about teacher/adviser certification. Studies as early as the 1970s recommended minimum requirements for journalism advisers and for journalism certification. …