U.S. college journalism growth trends, 2012–19 (Part 1)

Journalism degrees decline, but 2-year schools, ‘hot’ programs see gains

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The journalism profession has seen tremendous upheaval in the United States, evidenced by the growing number of layoffs and news organizations that have ceased operation. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, total U.S. newsroom employment dropped by 26% from 2008 to 2020. During the 2012–19 time frame examined here, the situation was a bit more stable. The total number of U.S. newsroom employees declined from 95,770 in 2012 to 87,510 in 2019, an 8.6% decrease, according to the Pew analysis.

At a time when newsroom jobs are scarce, and citizens’ trust in traditional media is at an all-time low, it is understandable that college students might think twice before pursuing a journalism degree. Yet recent world events, including the contentious 2020 U.S. presidential election, the debate over racial injustice, and the COVID-19 pandemic, underscore the need for high-quality journalism to combat misinformation and disinformation. In many ways, journalism is more important than ever.

I decided to analyze U.S. higher education data to learn more about recent enrollment trends in college and university journalism programs. It began as a project for a Knight Center big online course in data journalism. I used a dataset compiled by researchers from Deloitte/Datawheel listing each U.S. postsecondary institution that offers a journalism program and its number of journalism degree completions each year from 2012 to 2019. The data originate with the annual Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) surveys conducted by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

Several caveats are in order. First, data from 2020 and 2021 were not yet available. Thus, the numbers do not reflect any changes related to COVID-19. The data cover all higher education institutions with programs coded as 09.0401 (Journalism) in the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) system. The CIP system, developed by the NCES, provides “accurate tracking and reporting of fields of study and program completions activity.” Some journalism programs might be omitted, however. Journalism-related programs using other CIP codes (such as Mass Communication/Media Studies or Radio and Television) would not be counted, and any schools whose programs were reclassified during the eight-year period might not be accurately represented. The NCES data count completions, or the number of postsecondary awards (degrees) earned.

I imported the data into a spreadsheet and into a database using Glitch and Datasette, and I used SQL (Structured Query Language) for data analysis. The main dataset is available at this link. I used the Datawrapper visualization platform to create tables, charts, and maps.

In this post, I examine the overall number of U.S. journalism degrees completed from 2012 to 2019, as well as differences between public vs. private and 4-year vs. 2-year institutions. I also spotlight “hot” schools whose journalism programs have defied national trends and seen significant growth. In a separate post, I delve into trends at the state and regional levels.

General trends, top programs (2012-19)

From 2012 to 2019, a total of 113,187 journalism degrees were completed at the 3,700 U.S. higher education institutions with the CIP Journalism code. Looking at the yearly numbers, degrees fell by 12.7% during the eight-year period, from 14,972 in 2012 to 13,075 in 2019. This closely mirrors the 8.6% drop in newsroom employment during the same period from the Pew Research Center analysis. Despite the overall downward trend in degree completions, there were slight upticks in 2014 and 2017.

Here is the SQL code I used to identify the year-by-year changes:

select year, sum(completions) as total_degrees from journalism_degrees
group by year
order by year

Which U.S. university is most popular for aspiring journalists? The University of Missouri at Columbia, home of the nation’s first journalism school, reported the most completed journalism degrees (4,972) during the eight-year period, about twice as many as Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, which ranked second.

All of the top 5 universities and 6 out of the top 10 are in the Midwest region (in Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, Indiana, and Wisconsin). Although these major Midwestern universities remain among the most popular choices for journalists-to-be, some have seen enrollment declines while journalism programs at several schools in the South and West have gained in popularity. I discuss regional trends in a separate post.

Of the top 10 universities, all but Northwestern are public institutions.

SQL code:

select university, state, sector, sum(completions) as total_degrees
from journalism_degrees
group by university
order by total_degrees desc

Public vs. private, 4-year vs. 2-year

Most of the journalism degrees (more than three-quarters) during the eight-year period were earned in 4-year programs at public universities. About one-fifth were earned in 4-year programs at private, not-for-profit universities. About 3% were from community colleges and other 2-year programs (which students often complete before finishing their education at a 4-year school). Only 1% of the degrees were from for-profit institutions (specifically, Ashford University and the Academy of Art University in California and Full Sail University in Florida).

select sector, sum(completions) as total_degrees, sum(completions) / 113187.0 * 100 as percentage
from journalism_degrees
group by sector
order by percentage desc

The top 10 journalism programs at public, 4-year universities, based on completed journalism degrees from 2012 to 2019, are identical to the Top 10 list above, except for dropping private Northwestern University and adding Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.

select university, state, sector, sum(completions) as total_degrees
from journalism_degrees
where sector = 'Public, 4-year or above'
group by university
order by total_degrees desc

Northwestern University leads the list of top U.S. journalism programs among 4-year, private, not-for-profit universities, followed by New York, Boston, Columbia, and Baylor universities.

select university, state, sector, sum(completions) as total_degrees
from journalism_degrees
where sector = 'Private not-for-profit, 4-year or above'
group by university
order by total_degrees desc

CUNY Kingsborough Community College, based in Brooklyn, NY, and part of the City University of New York system, tops the list of 2-year, public journalism programs, though its total number of completions (172) is only a fraction of the numbers for the top 4-year programs. Notably, half of the 10 leading 2-year programs are based in California.

select university, state, sector, sum(completions) as total_degrees
from journalism_degrees
where sector = 'Public, 2-year'
group by university
order by total_degrees desc

As mentioned earlier, the total number of completed journalism degrees in the U.S. declined by 12.7% from 2012 to 2019. Among journalism programs at 4-year public institutions, degrees dropped by 11.8%, from 11,202 to 9,885 …

select sector, year, sum(completions) as total_degrees
from journalism_degrees
where sector = 'Public, 4-year or above'
group by year
order by year

… but among 4-year private institutions, the decline was much more pronounced — 26.0% — from 3,426 to 2,535.

select sector, year, sum(completions) as total_degrees
from journalism_degrees
where sector = 'Private not-for-profit, 4-year or above'
group by year
order by year

In sharp contrast, 2-year institutions saw journalism completions more than double during the eight-year period — a 113.6% increase from 257 to 549. The numbers rose every year, except for a slight dip in 2019.

select sector, year, sum(completions) as total_degrees
from journalism_degrees
where sector = 'Public, 2-year'
group by year
order by year

‘Hot’ journalism programs

While most U.S. journalism programs awarded fewer journalism degrees in 2019 than in 2012, some schools did not experience this slump. Instead, they reported significant growth. I identified these hot programs through two separate analyses.

First, I identified journalism programs that were at peak strength at the end of the eight-year period. These schools had more journalism degree completions in 2019 than in any of the seven prior years. I limited the analysis to programs that awarded a minimum of 30 degrees in 2019. Sixteen programs met the criteria. Notably, all but 2 of the 16 are in the South or West regions of the U.S., including 6 in California. Only 1 is in the Midwest (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and 1 in the Northeast (Fordham University).

select university, state, sector, region, year, degrees
from (
  select university, state, sector, region, year, max(CAST (completions as numeric)) as degrees
from journalism_degrees
group by university
order by university)
where degrees > 29 and year=2019
group by university
order by degrees desc

For the second analysis, I compared degree completions in 2012 and 2019 to calculate which schools’ journalism programs saw the largest percentage growth. Because very small programs might see huge percentage increases despite awarding very few degrees (for example, a 100% increase from 1 in 2012 to 2 in 2019), thus skewing the results, I again limited the analysis to only those programs reporting at least 30 completions in both 2012 and 2019.

San Diego State University in California saw the greatest growth during the period, a 237.1% increase from 35 completions in 2012 to 118 in 2019. Two universities in Georgia (University of West Georgia and Savannah State University) ranked second and third.

select university, state, sector, CAST (degrees_2012 as numeric) as degrees2012, CAST (degrees_2019 as numeric) as degrees2019, CAST (difference as numeric) as percent_change
from completions_by_university_2019_vs_2012_NEW
where (degrees2019 > 29 and degrees2012 > 29)
order by percent_change desc

The data analysis above paints a picture of U.S. postsecondary journalism education in which large Midwestern public universities remain powerhouses, but their dominance is being challenged by growing programs at universities in the South and West. In a separate post, I delve deeper into the data to examine regional and state-level trends in more depth.