In media studies, bigger is not better

There is no arguing that Indiana University is a big school.

With more than 40,000 students and about 3,000 faculty, the campus experience is a rich and diverse one.

There are plenty of opportunities offered in a range of disciplines, and if you can’t find what you want, you can always just make it up — they’ll give you a degree for that too.

But big doesn’t always mean better.

Sometimes having too much can result in redundancy and wasted expenses. That seems to be the case amongst three areas of study on campus — Telecommunications, Communication and Culture and Journalism.  

Shared amongst these three is the common theme of media studies, and while each might differ slightly in their emphasis, they all seem to be studying the same thing.

The single biggest indication of this lies in the fact that all three of them offer many of the same classes — just with a slightly tweaked name. For instance the Telecommunications department offers Sex in the Media, the Communications Department has Gender, Sexuality and the Media and the School of Journalism rounds it out with Race, Gender and Media.   

All three of these classes provide a different approach to the subject matter as relating to the department it comes from. The telecommunications class focuses on technology, communication on theory and journalism on practice.

But are the distinctions so unique they all deserve their own price tag?

The repetition in classes wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t cost so much. The 2001-2003 academic year figures shows that full professors were earning on average $94,200; associate professors, $64,000; and assistant professors, $55,300.

Think, what kind of an effect could consolidation have on the price of tuition? Take a glance at the course offerings amongst the three departments.

There are duplicates of graphic design, public relations and advertising classes across the board. While maybe there was once a time when these three areas of study were separate schools of thought, that time has a passed.

This is now a world where media is increasingly consolidating. The line between entertainment and news has all but disappeared and because of that people in the media need more skills than ever.  

Last year Provost and Executive Vice President Karen Hanson explored the concept of a merger between the disciplines.

There was no consensus, largely due to the budget issues it brought up.
Such reorganization would slash positions and strangle money away from the College or Arts and Sciences — where the Telecommunication and Communication departments are  currently housed.

But, this is a decision that should be made on the basis of where the greater discipline of communications is going, not on any one person’s
pension plan.

For a college to produce a great communicator, students must have all the resources readily available, not spread out across the campus like it is now.


E-mail: danfleis@indiana.edu