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Bartering brains for bread
By Mark Luce
Can the institutions of higher learning escape the long arms of their corporate sponsors?
(01/06/99)

Confessions of a stair mistress
By Elizabeth B. Krieger
While other students scarf chips, sling back beers and study, a growing tribe of compulsive exercisers pursues the perfect workout
(01/04/98)

Crisis in English
By Christopher Shea
When the Modern Language Association convenes this year, highbrow literary questions will take a back seat to a thorny debate about the ongoing dearth of jobs
(12/24/98)

Zen and the art of employee maintenance
By Chris Colin
What is the sound of one hand filing? Or, can the Buddha help the temp workers of the world?
(12/23/98)

The Marxist Wall Street couldn't ignore
By Annalee Newitz
How did an English doctoral dropout like Doug Henwood become the first anti-capitalist pundit for the CNN crowd?
(12/21/98)

BROWSE THE
IVORY TOWER CAREER
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ADVICE FROM A J-SCHOOL DROP-OUT | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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During the year I spent at journalism school, I tried every approach I could think of to make the program work for me. First semester, I took only six credits of classes and immersed myself in an internship with the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco. I only stepped onto campus when I had to, and even then, I barely ventured beyond the shingled exterior front of the journalism school's North Gate Hall. Second semester, I quit my internship, took 16 credits of classes, including two creative writing ones in the English department. I went to campus protests and lectures even when I was not required to write about them. And to earn money, I spent my free time working in the journalism school's administrative office. This was not the answer either.

I came to the school with (unfortunately this is not a joke) more than a dozen journalism internships under my belt. Although I didn't meet anyone in the program and have yet to encounter anyone in life who is such a glutton for punishment, I did meet a few other students with significant journalism experience. But it was the people with the least experience who seemed the happiest there, the most appreciative of these new skills they were learning. Beneath the résumés of both these groups of aspiring journalists and beyond circular arguments of who will get the most out of these programs is the lingering question of whether journalism school is necessary for anyone.

These programs bring in impressive recruiters, from places such as the New York Times and the Boston Globe. Editors who wouldn't have returned your phone calls before will now look over your clips and talk to you, in your allotted half-hour slot. But what you will realize as you make your way through these interviews is that you are one person out of several dozen in your program out of several dozen other journalism programs across the country being interviewed. Maybe there is an actual opening, in which case you are also competing with professional candidates, but more likely the recruiter has come as a PR move. During my year at Berkeley, I had several professors tell me that, despite annual on-campus interviews, not even the local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, had taken more than one student from Berkeley in the past five years.

So, if the most qualified journalism students aren't getting these jobs, who is? Often it's a professional. Often it's someone whose brother's roommate knew the cousin of the editor's wife, or something equally random. According to the Freedom Forum's 1996 survey of the industry, "Winds of Change: Challenges Confronting Journalism Education," graduate degrees in journalism play little or no role in positively influencing hiring decisions. In a survey of national newsroom recruiters, only 8 percent of those interviewed felt that a journalism degree was a very important preparatory step. Thirty percent said the degree was somewhat important, 61 percent said it was not important at all, and 1 percent could not make up their minds. When searching for job candidates, only 21 percent of those surveyed said they put out calls to journalism schools. The majority of recruiters preferred to place classified or trade publication ads or to contact former employees or current staff for recommendations.

N E X T_ P A G E .|. What is the meaning of journalism school