Trends in University Support of Scholastic Journalism

Abstract

For the past several years, educators involved in scholastic have been saying that high school is endangered. of the blame for the situation been put on high schools themselves because administrators have not often viewed the program as essential to the curriculum. On the other hand, share of the blame been put on college and university for not adequately supporting scholastic education. The Education Association, for example, concluded in report titled High School Confronts Critical Deadlines (JEA, 1987) that high school were at risk. It put part of the blame on higher education, which it stated has not assumed sufficiently aggressive role in nurturing scholastic journalism (p. 107). One of the report's authors, John M. Butler, suggested that many schools appear not to attract sufficient teachers to continue training programs and offer that fail to meet teacher needs (JEA, 1987, p. 103). A few years later, Death by Cheeseburger: High School in the 1990s and Beyond (Freedom Forum, 1994) charged that college were still not adequately addressing scholastic education. It stated: Some experts attribute the shortage of college-trained high school teachers to the small number of colleges offering majors in education (p. 13). It noted that some had dropped their majors in in the previous 10 years. Scholastic isn't priority for many both because of their professional orientation and because of the limited number of students who likely would be attracted to scholastic education. As stated by Mary Sparks, past president of the Association of Schools of and Mass Communication, many college and university 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 survey for the American History Association conducted by its Education Committee, which stated that scholastic was the most vulnerable college 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, for scholastic was a step child, albeit 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 was at the end of the 20th century in an attempt to determine whether it was putting less emphasis on scholastic than it did in earlier years. Review of the literature The benefits of scholastic 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 national survey reported that they first decided to choose newspaper career while in high school, 38 percent had taken high school class, and 55 percent had worked on junior or senior high newspaper (ASNE, 1989). Moreover, Olson (2000) found that just over 60 percent of college and university and mass communication educators had high school experience, and just over 40 percent decided to pursue as career before or during high school. Studies about teacher/adviser certification. Studies as early as the 1970s recommended minimum requirements for advisers and for certification. …