By Damenica Ellis<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at The City University of New York has launched a campaign to become tuition-free for all students.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The push for tuition-free college follows a $10 million donation from Craig Newmark Philanthropies that brought the school\u2019s endowment to $30 million as of January. The school is working to raise another $30 million to make the goal a reality, according to its website. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a return to CUNY\u2019s roots. When the university formed in 1961, bringing together seven colleges in New York City, it began as a tuition-free university with the goal of helping working-class people and families in New York City go to college. Though they began to charge tuition in 1976, CUNY\u2019s focus is still affordability, according to the admissions office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Already, the Newmark J-School is using the money it has raised to increase the number of students receiving full scholarships. The school awarded 25% of students full scholarships in 2024, and half of the students will attend tuition-free beginning in August 2025, according to the university\u2019s website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Along with its traditional scholarships and fee waivers, the Newmark J-School also began an Ida B. Wells Scholarship and an initiative to recruit from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. It also has an NABJ chapter on campus to assist students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ray DePaul, a graduate student at Newmark studying health and science journalism, says<\/strong> most of the scholarship students he knows are from disadvantaged backgrounds. Because of the cost of grad school, he said, \u201cIt can be even more difficult for minority students to get into, just because of the lack of resources and a general lack of funding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mia Hollie received the Ida B. Wells Scholarship and is set to graduate in December. She said the financial help was important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was pretty lucky in that I did get a full scholarship to go to this school,\u201d she said. \u201cI know, at least for me, if I didn’t have that opportunity, I wouldn’t have been able to go to graduate school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Newmark J-School’s initiative could encourage at least one student to pursue graduate school. Kirk Ogunrinde, a senior at Southern Methodist University, said the cost of grad school had discouraged him, \u201cespecially since journalism is a field where you’re not anticipated to earn a lot of money.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKnowing now that there’s an opportunity for me, possibly, to go to graduate school for free\u2014 that’ll definitely impact my decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lam Thuy Vo, an associate professor of data journalism at the Newmark J-School, said the cost of grad school has a negative effect on diversity. \u201cYou might lose some of the needed voices. And by that I mean a lot of people who are from different, diverse backgrounds, whether it’s economic or ethnic backgrounds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wesley Lowery, a journalist in residence at the school, credited the vision of Dean Graciela Mochkofsky for the move that he said will create more diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think the current dean, Graciela, is among a rising generation of leaders in journalistic higher education who understands that if we want to build a journalism that actually reflects our country, we have to remove barriers of entry,\u201d Lowery said. \u201cAnd one of the biggest barriers to entry in our field is that too many people are priced out of being able to get the most quality education and the most quality experience they need to enter journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Already, the Newmark J-School has succeeded in creating a diverse student body. “At least 50% of our students come from underrepresented backgrounds, which means that oftentimes many journalists of color but also people who are LGBTQI as well as people from socioeconomic backgrounds that aren’t upper-middle class,\u201d Vo said. Half of the student body are New York residents. Maximo Pati\u00f1o, director of admissions at the Newmark J-School, said the goal moving forward will be to maintain a strong representation from New York but also, \u201cWe still want to maintain students that bring sort of that rich demographic and diversity that makes up our student body.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Other graduate journalism schools may find themselves taking a similar path. The University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism is focusing on helping students graduate debt-free, Dean Geeta Anand said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis year, we received a $10 million pledge from alum Angela Filo and her husband, David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo, which enabled us to double the amount of financial aid to students in fall 2024,\u201d Anand said. \u201cThe funding enabled us to offer larger financial aid packages to those with the greatest need.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Damenica Ellis The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at The City University of New York has launched a campaign to become tuition-free for all students.\u00a0 The push for tuition-free college follows a $10 […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-community-interest"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3497"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3503,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497\/revisions\/3503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}