Based on a survey of 4,393 journalism students in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, this study provides much-needed comparative evidence about students’ motivations for becoming journalists, their future job plans, and expectations. Findings show not only an almost universal decline in students’ desire to work in journalism by the end of their program but also important national differences in terms of the journalistic fields in which they want to work, as well as their job expectations. The results reinforce the need to take into account national contexts when examining journalism education across the globe.

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The challenges and uncertainties that journalism education has historically faced have led to reconsiderations of its approaches, definitions, and functions in society over time. Yet, little attention has been paid to assess how Journalism and Mass Communications (JMC) educators see their roles, as well as individual and contextual factors that influence their orientations. Based on a survey of educators and data collected from JMC schools in Chile, JMC educators' roles can be grouped into four distinctive categories: the scholarly-oriented, the didactic-oriented, the practiceoriented, and the journalistic-oriented roles. Overall, the orientation that received the greatest support was the practice-oriented, followed by the didactic and the scholarly-oriented. The findings also reveal that education level, job commitment, gender, current professional journalism experience, organization type, school accreditation and the existence of graduate programs are factors that best predict educators' orientations.

This paper provides an assessment of the diversity of the leadership positions of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) from 2007 to 2011. While numerous studies have analyzed AEJMC’s membership demographics, gender, and scholarship production, there have been few investigations regarding people of color in leadership positions. Findings indicate little progress for people of color has been made in the past five years. Ideally, the educational institutions and academic organizations most responsible for preparing the next generation of media scholars as well as the professionals who produce the content and manage the media catering to the changing population patterns would be at the forefront of diversity in their own leadership. This is especially so for academic organizations, which through journal publications, conference presentations, and various awards, can often have a direct influence on the research emphases and curricular direction of programs nationally.

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