Suffolk County Community College (SCCC) has decided to end its journalism program for new students.
The decision to discontinue the program was made official as of November 21st when the college sent a letter to the SUNY Provost informing them of its decision.
According to Dr. Irene Rios, the Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs, student engagement in the program has increasingly faltered over the last ten years. Last fall, a sustainability evaluation of the program took place which showed that even before the pandemic, students were not joining the program despite attempts to keep it alive via recruiting, high school visits, and joint admission programs with other schools that had a journalism program like Stony Brook University.
The decision was made by both senior administrators and faculty. Faculty governance organizations that speak on behalf of the faculty, i.e. The Senate at Ammerman, voted to end the program a few weeks ago. Students currently in the program will be allowed to continue until graduation as mandated by SUNY. The program was already quite limited, as it was only offered on the Ammerman Campus in Selden. The journalism program was recently transferred from the English Department to the Communications Department in another attempt to keep the program alive.
However, Professor Anita Leibowitz, Western Student Press (WSP) Faculty Advisor since 2013 and an award-winning career newspaper journalist before beginning her career in the Department of Communications at SCCC, says she was never consulted nor asked about ways of strengthening the journalism major at the college. She was able to recruit student journalists over the pandemic and publish the WSP throughout the pandemic. She recruited the current editor-in training over the past summer who attended Central Islip High School. Professor Leibowitz has led both the WSP and the Compass to many awards in professional journalism competitions including the WSP being named a Best College Newspaper on Long Island by the Press Club of Long Island, a chapter of the national Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).
The East Hampton Star, a local newspaper in Suffolk County, expressed disappointment and discontent at the decision. An editorial entitled “A Major Mistake” was published by the paper on December 5th (see full editorial below), which argued that the decision was a mistake “both for society as well as for young people seeking a highly portable skill that would serve them well in the increasingly complex workplace.” The editorial emphasized the vital role of journalism in sustaining democracy, warning that discontinuing the program could lead to serious consequences, especially in today’s challenging times.
The editorial also spoke about the financial burden for students who want to study journalism on Long Island. Those who do will now have to attend a nearby four-year college which can be much more expensive. The cost of a year’s tuition at Suffolk County Community College (SCCC) is about $6000, which is much more economical than private schools like Adelphi and Hofstra Universities, which both cost upwards of $50- $60,000 a year. Even those who choose to study journalism at Stony Brook — a fellow SUNY school — will have to pay $10,000 more per year than the much more affordable tuition at Suffolk.
For new students who have an interest in journalism, the college will direct them toward majors in Communications and Radio/TV offered in the Communications Department. Professor Leibowitz hopes some of that direction includes advisement to join their campus newspapers. According to Dr. Rios, no faculty will be removed or fired because of the decision. Dr. Rios was unhappy to lose the journalism program, but the scarce resources available to the College and the lack of participation forced the College’s hand.