From an August
news release at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism site on the University of Maryland Web site, quoting Thomas Kunkel:
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• Nearly 70 percent say their universities “always†or “almost always†expect them to fill a faculty position with someone holding a Ph.D., even if that job is specifically meant to deliver practical skills. That pressure too, they report, has increased markedly in the past five years.
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He also sees a growing conflict in the need for more media-skills experts at the same time that universities are pushing schools to hire Ph.D. holders almost exclusively. “The digital world is so new that there are people who study it and people who do it, but few who are accomplished at both,†he said.
Finally, it is my understanding that universities that educate Ph.D. students in journalism are not doing so to provide journalists. They are doing so to provide researchers and teachers, who will learn how to research in the course of earning the doctorate ,but may or may not learn the most effective ways of teaching. The student who receives the doctorate has been prepared to enter academia, not journalism. If someone with a Ph.D. can inhabit both worlds, that probably says more about his or her skills than academia in general.
I don't think just any reporter or copy editor will make a capable journalism professor, particularly at a research university.
My objection is that there is too much focus on credentials in the job posting. In general -- not just in respect to journalism -- I think credentialism is economically and possibly intellectually harmful now because the cost of obtaining credentials burdens students and their families with debt but does not guarantee entree into a job that will defray the debt.
In addition, a college degree does not guarantee students will have learned the skills they need when they start work in journalism, so students are also under great pressure to have internships, even though there are fewer and fewer available.
I believe there are major problems facing journalism, the education of journalists, and the business management of journalism. The college-level journalism program that can find someone brilliant who understands those problems and can, with his or her colleagues, provide future journalists with the linguistic, logical, mathematical and technical skills they need will earn my admiration. The person who pushes jargon-laden drivel down the throats of reluctant freshmen will not earn my admiration.