J-School Enrollment Is Up

Despite the dire voices claiming the industry is in its death throes, college students are enrolling in J-school en masse. Enrollment is up at many journalism programs at colleges across the country, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. Columbia’s M.S. in journalism received 44 percent more applications this year.

Applications were up 30 percent at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 25 percent at the University of Maryland at College Park, and 24 percent at Stanford University.

What are you people thinking? With 40 percent of 2008′s journalism grads unable to find any employment after six months?

Some of the enrollees don’t really want jobs in journalism.

“There are still plenty of people who love to write and think that their journalism degree will serve as an entree to just about any field they could go into,” Barbara B. Hines, president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, told the Chronicle.

Some will create their own jobs by launching a startup.

But the rest are going to try to get jobs in a profession that is changing very very rapidly.

To read how J-schools are adapting to the changes in the industry, read the Chronicle piece.

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