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Dr. Jisu Huh at the AEJMC conference in Kansas City in August 2003. |
Journalism Graduates in 2002 Entered Weak Job Market, Cox Center Researchers Report at Kansas Conference
The percentage of journalism and mass communication bachelor's degree recipients with a full-time job six to eight months after graduation dropped for the second year in a row in 2002.
The percentage of journalism and mass communication bachelor's degree recipients with at least one job offer upon graduation also declined, following a sharp decline a year earlier.
In 2002, the unemployment rate for those journalism and mass communication bachelor's degree recipients who were actually seeking jobs was higher than the national unemployment rate, both for the overall labor force and for those in the age cohort of the journalism and mass communication graduates.
The job market was particularly difficult for graduates who were members of racial and ethnic minorities, and the gap between the level of full-time employment of minority graduates and their counterparts increased to more than 10 percentage points.
These are some of the findings of the 2002 Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates, released August 1 at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in Kansas City by researchers in the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the University of Georgia.
The Cox Center is a unit of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. The Annual Surveys of Journalism & Mass Communication, of which the graduate survey is a part, are housed in the Cox Center.
"The job market was very difficult for journalism and mass communication graduates again in 2002," said Dr. Lee B. Becker, director of the Cox Center, who conducts the survey each year. "Many of the students simply could not find suitable employment despite all their efforts."
Salaries remained static in 2002, according to the survey, with the median salary earned by journalism and mass communication bachelor's degree recipients with a full-time job $26,000. Benefit packages also remained stable, but only because more graduates were paying for the benefits entirely by themselves.
Despite the bad news, seven in 10 of the graduates with full-time jobs reported they were proud of the company for which they work, and six in 10 said the work that they do is meaningful.
The findings of the graduate survey were released in a special session at the Kansas City conference dedicated to the Annual Surveys of Journalism & Mass Communication. In addition to Dr. Becker, other Cox Center staffers involved in the presentation were Dr. Tudor Vlad, assistant director of the Center, Dr. Jisu Huh, a research assistant in the Center who is now on the faculty at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Hugh Martin, a Grady College faculty member involved in the survey project, and Dr. Wilson Lowrey from the University of Alabama. Dr. Lowrey worked in the Cox Center while completing his doctoral studies in the Grady College.
In addition to the report on the graduate survey, the group released preliminary findings of the Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Enrollments, which showed sharp increases in enrollments at U.S. journalism and mass communication programs in academic year 2002-2003. The group also released results of a special study of faculty diversification in the field of journalism and mass communication and a separate study of graduates of communication programs around the country.
The latter two surveys document the difficulty the field of journalism and mass communication is having creating a diverse faculty, in part because so few students belonging to racial and ethnic minority groups are enrolled in doctoral study in the field of communication.
While at the Kansas City conference, Drs. Becker and Huh also participated in several sessions organized by a special Task Force on Doctoral Education, created by AEJMC President Dr. Ted Glasser of Stanford University. Drs. Becker and Huh reported on the research of the Cox Center in recent years dealing with doctoral instruction.
Prof. Seyoum Alemu of Unity University College in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, joined the Cox Center team at the Kansas City conference. Prof. Alemu was in the U.S. as part of a collaboration between the Cox Center and Unity University College. The Cox Center is assisting Unity with development of its journalism curriculum.
