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Closing J schools.

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Drip, Jul 15, 2009.

  1. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I could work as a therapist for all the unemployed journalists.
     
  2. lmcmillan33

    lmcmillan33 Member

    My sister has a dual degree in sociology and phsychology. She works with drug- and alcohol-addicted women. It seems to be a pretty good job. I don't anticipate the need for helping such people decreasing anytime soon.

    She is far better off than her husband, who has a computer sciences degree, and had his job cut back part-time at fancy event hall. He has had no luck finding anything in his career field, which was supposed to be a booming one.

    Those of us who have entered journalism within the last 10 years, especially sports journalism, should have known it would be extremely competitive for low wages. Of course, we probably could not have predicted what's happened, but we did know to some extent what we were getting ourselves into.
     
  3. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    From what I've heard talking to people, computer science jobs are still booming, but you have to be willing to move. It seems like every few years the locations to be in the field change.
     
  4. PopeDirkBenedict

    PopeDirkBenedict Active Member

    If I was hiring PR professionals, I would prefer that they had a journalism degree or background. I'd want someone who understood what media bastards were thinking and be able to manipulate them. It's like hiring a cop into the Mafia.
     
  5. forever_town

    forever_town Well-Known Member

    I have a bachelor's in English. I felt more connected to journalism than I did to English, especially at graduation, but I'm glad I got my degree in English instead.

    Though I'm still considering graduate school, it'll likely not be in journalism. Even though I still only have enough intellectual curiosity for journalism or military history. And neither of those are exactly roads to the big bucks.
     
  6. partain

    partain Member

    I practically minored in sociology for one simple reason: the classes didn't require busy work. Most required just a mid-term, a final and one major paper. I was already working 50 hours or more a week at a small daily and didn't have time for homework. I also missed class a lot, but still made decent grades in sociology classes. I could write well enough to cover up my lack of knowledge and I could always make time to cram for two tests a semester.

    One class I took was a study of sex. It included viewing a video on how to have better sex. We then discussed whether it was informative or just porn. One class I missed was led by one of our students--a non-traditional student who had been a famous rock groupie in the 70s and early 80s. She wasn't much to look at by the mid-90s, but she did have some great stories.

    So there's the benefits of sociology as I see it: not much work and you get to watch porn.
     
  7. GlenQuagmire

    GlenQuagmire Active Member

    My guess is that you never skipped that class. Today's homework: Analyze these people having sex and tell me what you think.

    He, he ... allllllrrrriiiiigggghhhhtttttt!!! Oh!!!


    Good thing she wasn't teaching that sex class.




    Giggitty.
     
  8. hondo

    hondo Well-Known Member

    Aren't these kids smart enough to seek educational opportunities elsewhere? Seriously, if you're an incoming freshman and you enroll in J-school with the intent of working for a newspaper, you're already too dumb.
     
  9. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    It's not a scientific sample, but the ones I know really believe that they'll be fine as long as they learn to do podcasts in Audacity.
     
  10. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    On a related note, I've maintained for a number of years that the whole higher education system is going to have to reinvent itself.

    Apart from the wealthy aristocracy, it makes little practical sense to spend $100,000 --- or whatever the going rate is these days --- and four or five years to obtain a liberal arts degree. Thinking back to my own university experience, I took far too many courses that had absolutely nothing to do with what I was there for. The justification, of course, was that such classes "taught you how to think" and "were part of a well-rounded education". To that i say: Bullshit.

    It seems like more and more the way to go is some trade school or community college where you actually learn a trade or skill that you will then be able to go out and use. That brillant paper I wrote on John Milton's "Paradise Lost" hasn't counted for much, to say nothing of the hours I invested in geology class. *sigh*

    Now, I understand that if one wishes to become a lawyer, teacher, medical doctor or a short list of other professions, that a university education may be of value. But for the majority of the populace, it seems like a bloated, over-inflated waste of time and money.
     
  11. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    We need to stop encouraging kids to take out tens of thousands of dollars in debt on any degree that catches their eye, regardless of practicality.
     
  12. Drip

    Drip Active Member

    I remember my senior year in high school and the recruiter at the school I'd always wanted to attend suggested that I go into business instead of journalism. It crushed me, especially when she said she had a journalism major working in Burger King.
    I nixed the school I always wanted to attend, went somewhere else and majored in journalism. The rest is history.
    I was determined to show that recruiter that I wasn't destined to work in Burger King. (I would later work at McDonald's).
    The point I'm trying to make is that it is difficult to tell someone to give up on a dream. It's even harder to tell them to give up before they even had a chance to make it come true.
     
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