Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

I go to mizzou, and I can honestly say this is atrocious. The school of journalism is doing this only because they are in bed with apple. Incoming freshmen are required to buy an iPod touch or an iPhone for a class called Career Explorations in Journalism (and then not required to have it for any other class EVER), and let me tell you a little about the class:

Career Explorations in Journalism (J1010) is a lecture class that students go to twice a week for half of a semester. Each class, a different professor comes in, reads the words straight off a PowerPoint document that they didn't create, and tells you how that in order to be a certain type of journalist (professors come from Radio Journalism, broadcast, newspaper, advertising, etc.), you have to be creative, good at writing, have good people skills, etc. All the professors give the exact same speech every time. I believe that J1010 was designed in an attempt to "de-saturate" the J-School, to make people hate being a journalism major so much that they switch majors and the J-School doesn't have to worry about as many students as originally want to participate. When I took this class, my roommate and I would take turns going so that neither of us had to sit through that horror twice a week. There were few assignments in the class - most were turned in through an online program that the student has to buy that scans for key words and grades based on whether or not the student typed in those words. I got away with writing essays in only one sentence because of this. As if this class weren't already a joke, Brian Brooks adds the requirement of more Apple products (the J-School basically tells you to buy a Mac: I prefer PC computers but I have an Apple laptop because I felt pressured to buy one since the J-School all but required that, too). The School of Journalism at Missouri is a complete sellout and anybody considering attending should take this matter into account. It is a dark day when universities become little more than puppets for a corporation like Apple