Graduates of U.S. journalism and mass communication programs confronted a weakened job market in 2006 and early 2007, as the recovery that began only two years earlier stalled, researchers from the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication reported in August.

Graduates were no more likely to have a job offer when they finished their studies than graduates a year earlier and no more likely to have landed a full-time job by the end of October–approximately five months after leaving the university, the research team said in a special session at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Washington.

McLean and reporter Tamara Tomlinson

Salaries for graduates with full-time jobs did increase and even managed to outpace inflation just slightly, according to the researchers. Benefits, however, showed a marked decline.

The findings were part of a report on the Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates, conducted each year in the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research. The Cox Center is a unit of the Grady College at the University of Georgia.

The data come from a national sample of 2,425 individuals who earned bachelor’s or master’s degrees in the spring of 2006. They returned questionnaires either via the internet or the mail in the year after their graduation.

“The market stalled at a level considerably below the level of employment and compensation in 1999 and 2000,” researchers Dr. Lee B. Becker, Dr. Tudor Vlad and Joel McLean wrote. The team called those years levels of full employment and the benchmark for comparisons in the years since.

Dr. Becker is director of the Cox Center and Dr. Vlad is assistant director. McLean is a graduate research assistant working in the Center.

At the special session at the Washington conference, the research team also released the preliminary results of the Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Enrollments and a survey of doctoral degrees granted in the field of Communications, including Mass Communication.

The enrollment survey found that the number of students enrolled at U.S. journalism and mass communication programs increased just slightly in the autumn of 2006, compared to a year earlier. Undergraduate enrollments were up 0.3% from a year earlier, while graduate enrollments actually declined.

Enrollments at the freshman and sophomore level actually increased more substantially, however, according to the research team, with the number of first-year students up 2.2% from a year earlier and the number of second-year students up 6.0%. These figure suggest that enrollments will continue to grow in the future, they concluded.

The three researchers also reported that in academic year 2005-2006, communication programs in the United States granted 573 doctoral degrees, an increase of 3.8% from a year earlier.

According to the three researchers, the field of communication has 107 doctoral programs spread widely across the country. These 107 programs represent an increase of three programs over those identified in 2004-2005. Half of these degrees were in Communication Studies/Speech Communication and Rhetoric. Speech & Rhetorical Studies made up another 19.0% of the graduates.

“The percentage of degree recipients who are female has remained nearly constant since 2000-2001, “ according to the report, “although the percentage of domestic female graduates (60.1%) in 2005-2006 is the highest in the history of the survey.”

The three researchers reported the results of their studies at the special session at the AEJMC conference on August 10.
In a session the following day organized by the association’s Commission on the Status of Women and its Radio-Television Journalism Division, Dr. Becker summarized some of the key findings from the surveys related to the field’s appeal to women.

Women have more success in the job market historically than do men, Dr. Becker reported, and two out of three of the students enrolled in journalism and mass communication programs are female.

The percentage of students studying print and broadcast journalism has remained relatively stable over the last 10 plus years, Dr. Becker reported, while the percentage of students specializing in public relations and advertising who are women has increased. The percentage of students with a broadcasting/telecommunications speciality who are female has declined during this time period.

The educators’ conference was held August 8 to August 12 at the Renaissance Washington Hotel. A record number of 2,657 attended the conference.

Click here to go to the Annual Surveys of Journalism & Mass Communication.

Click here to download the presentation Dr. Becker gave on women in journalism education.