Assessing the Assessors: J-School Standards

Most academic fields go through some kind accreditation. Journalism is no different. Schools don't have to be accredited, of course. It's optional, but most (but certainly not all) of the top j-school programs are accredited through ACEJMC.

An article in the latest Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, just in my mailbox today, gives those assessed a chance to assess the assessors. And yes, I had great fun writing that sentence. You can read the abstract here to get the gist of the survey of administrators asking them to critique the infamous nine standards for accreditation.

Before we go any further, let's lay out those nine standards. It's hard to argue with many of them. I'll lay them out below and provide simplified results from the article.

	Standard	% Good As Is
1	Mission, Governance, and Admin	86.2
2	Curriculum & Instruction	32.3
3	Diversity and Inclusiveness	47.7
4	Full-time & Part-Time Faculty	73.0
5	Scholarship & Pro Activity	67.7
6	Student Services	95.3
7	Resources, Facilities, & Equipment	82.8
8	Professional and Public Service	78.1
9	Assessment of Learning Outcomes	50.8

As you can see above, folks are not keen about Curriculum. Forty percent say it needs "major changes" (not in table). Also down on the list is assessment of learning outcomes (let's face it, this sucks to make work) and diversity (scary that it's so low). The curriculum complaint is mainly about the liberal arts requirement, but in general people find this standard to work against a more nimble, exploratory curriculum. As the authors note, "attempting to develop a one-size-fits-all academic standard is complex." When that happens, no one is truly happy.