International University for Professional Studies

Would like some input on this program and Irv S. Katz.

Thanks

 

Katz was at one time involved with some properly accredited schools. Then he was running Summit (and possibly American Coastline). IUPS has had its problems with the authorities in Hawaii; you might want to do a search here. Doug Capogrossi became its president when he departed Greenwich, but now seems to be gone and running his own Akamai University.

 

Katz

Thanks Dr Bear,

I started using the search function yesterday and learned a lot about several programs that have been frequently posted here.

That will eliminate many of my questions.

 

Dr. Bear,

Is this a typo?

John Bear
B.A., M.J., Univ. of California, Berkeley
Ph.D., Michigan State U.

Or do you have one of the few M.J.s ever granted?

Nosborne, JD
(Who THINKS M.J. is Master of Jurisprudence)

 

Journalism

 

Ah! Journalism. So it's the professional degree?

A few years ago, Stanford offered something called the M.J., or maybe it was the J.M. Anyway, it was basically the first two years of law school. I have NO idea why anyone would want to go to all the trouble of getting into law school, especially at Stanford, paying gobs of tuition, then not stick around long enough to get a JD. Apparently no one else did either, because the degree offering disappeared.

Nosborne, JD

 

Hi Nosborne: chag sameach for Pesach (yeah, I know it's off-topic, but liberation always is). Janko

 

The situation, Nosborne, is that at the time, UC Berkeley required one foreign language competency for their MA, and the journalism department was concerned that too many of their stalwarts were either failing said exam, or spending unseemly hours preparing for it. So they established their own degree, the MJ, that did not require a second language competency.

I believe it was pretty much laughed out of existence a year or two later . . . and at our one and only reunion, 9 or 10 years later, all four MJs present -- Doug Hill, Sid Roger, Jim Lemert, and I -- and, we were told, the handful of others not present, had all gone on for a higher degree -- at least in part, I think, so that the MJ would not sit at the top of the heap.

 

Maybe there's something cursed about the degree abbreviation, then. Two programs adopt it, then POOF! They're GONE! I don't do gematria but do the letters "M"and "J" together have any mystical significance? I mean, besides on Sesame Street?

Nosborne (brought to you by the letters "J"and "D")

 

Dear Dr Bear,

We were looking at your résumé (http://circledance.tripod.com), and Rosie was wondering: How was it possible to get a Master's in Journalism in one year? Did it not require an internship?

 

I have heard of Summit University of Lousiana , is it the same one?

 

Yes, but you need a bong.

 

Question:
We were looking at your résumé (http://circledance.tripod.com), and Rosie was wondering: How was it possible to get a Master's in Journalism in one year? Did it not require an internship?

Answer:
Dear Rosie
The Master of Journalism required 30 semester units. My recollection is that the thesis accounted for 6. Thus 8 courses of 3 units each, easy enough in two semesters.

At the time, it was much more of what would now be called a department of communication: less emphasis on writing, editing, and history; more on research design, statistics, human behavior, communication theory.

As it happened, I had a fulltime, mostly evening and night newspaper job on a daily paper at the time (the San Rafael Independent-Journal), but such was not required.

It was generally believed at the time that the Department of Journalism 'seceded' from the M.A. program of the College of Liberal Arts because too many students were either complaining about or perhaps failing the required foreign language exam, so they set up their own degree program without one. Later, the Department of Journalism (in the College of Liberal Arts) evolved into the separate School of Journalism, which is what they have today.

 

See post from last year.