Northwestern journalism school allows accreditation to expire

[Anonymous]

Northwestern journalism school lets accreditation lapse
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-northwestern-university-medill-accreditation-20170501-story.html

"In a nontraditional move, officials at Northwestern University's prestigious journalism and communications school have decided not to renew the program's accreditation, letting the designation lapse.

The dean of the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications said Monday that school officials chose not to pursue renewed accreditation, which provides outside approval of academic programs, because the process is "flawed" and not useful."

[Anonymous]

Interesting - probably a royal pain and expense to go through the process.

[Anonymous]

To be clear, Medill is still regionally accredited along with the rest of the university. They decided to drop a secondary accreditation in journalism that only a small fraction of journalism schools pursue.

Given that Medill is probably the best journalism school in the nation I would say that their reasons are probably valid.

[Anonymous]

I graduated from NU and Medill on the 1980s. Even back then, accreditation was an issue--mostly for those outside NU. We were told at the time that an issue was the Teaching Newspaper program, in which undergraduate students did mandatory internships during the school year at daily newspapers around the country. Word was that the accrediting body at that time didn't like the generous amount of academic credit given for the internships. Yet that program was the key reason many students chose Medill then, so the school wasn't particularly concerned about threats to its accreditation. The internships were invaluable to students like me.

I'm not sure if that internship program is still in use at Medill. I just offer the story as an example of how Medill has always done its own thing and how the loss of accreditation is not a big deal with students.

Read the article in the link. It noted that Medill accreditation has come and gone over the years. I would think any prospective Medill student wouldn't care.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for posting