Faculty's Degrees, Experience and Research Vary with Specialty

Abstract

as long as colleges have offered courses in journalism - more than 100 years -- professionals have insisted that faculty members need some professional experience. 1 Increasingly, however, debate seems to oversimplify issue. Increasingly, some demands seem to be based on considerations and situations from past - considerations that may no longer be relevant. example: only 10.2 percent of students in journalism and mass communication (JMC) programs are now enrolled in traditional news/editorial sequences, and some may spend their lives working online rather than in older newsroom roles. Critics often suggest that faculty members need a minimum of 10 years of professional experience, but rarely present any evidence to justify that figure-or acknowledge possibility that different faculty members with different specialties may benefit from different types of experience. Yet faculty members who teach communication law may benefit more from three years in a law school than from 10 in a newsroom.2 Similarly, faculty members in some of journalism and mass communication's other specialties may also benefit more from other types of training and experience. Critics seem to be primarily concerned with faculty members who teach journalism's courses, such as reporting, editing, and photography. Yet few studies have isolated those faculty members, examining their characteristics or comparing them to other faculty members. Similarly, critics condemn universities' emphasis on Ph.D.s and research but never define In view of field's increasing diversity, this study separates and compares faculty members in journalism and mass communication's largest specialties. This study also examines charge that universities require every faculty member to have a and to conduct scholarly research. Most previous studies have found that faculty members have, on average, many years of professional experience. The studies and their findings include: 1. A 1982 survey by American Society of Journalism School Administrators (ASJSA) found that faculty members had a mean of 7.4 years of newspaper experience, with a range of 5.9 for those with a doctorate to 8.5 for those without a doctorate. 1 2. Also in 1982, Fedler and Counts surveyed 200 assistant professors, 200 associate professors, and 200 professors, and found that average respondent had 12.5 years of professional experience.' 3. In 1988. Weaver and Wilhoit found that only 13 of 893 faculty members they surveyed (1.5%) had no media experience. The range in years of experience was from 1 to 50, with a median of 7 and mean of 9.3. For those holding Weaver and Wilhoit said, the mean numher of years of media experience was 6.5, compared to 12 for those without Ph.D., offering no support for often-heard charge that Ph.D.s in our field have little or no media experience.3 Only ASJSA study separated and compared faculty members in journalism and mass communication's different specialties. The ASJSA study found that fewer than 40 percent of faculty members with doctorates listed skills courses as their primary teaching areas. More than 60 percent listed non-skills or concept areas such as law, history, and theory. 6 Critics, however, continue to insist that every faculty member needs significant professional experience,often 10 years or more - and that many of today's faculty members have little or no experience: 1. In 1982, MacDougall complained that in some places it is easier for a Ph.D. communicologist with no experience to get a job than it is for an experienced journalism professional.7 2. In 1990, Bagdikian said: Another endemic journalism education problem is irrationality in faculty appointments. The demand that a senior appointment for teaching journalism be a is silly, but common. …