But Shaw says, “There are new schools each year that seek initial accreditation.” Some have relatively new programs that have operated for a few years before pursuing specialized accreditation, as Frobish says Fayetteville State plans to do within the next five years.

This fall, for example, the council has scheduled site visits to three colleges, including one HBCU that she declined to identify to spare the school embarrassment in the event it is turned down. The council accredits programs at 113 colleges. Nine are historically Black universities: Howard, Florida A&M, Savannah State, Grambling, Southern, Jackson State, North Carolina A&T State, Hampton and Norfolk State.

The 2008 survey covers 480 colleges, including 30 HBCUs, which together enrolled nearly 7,000 undergraduates in journalism and mass communications. The sample of Black schools was not complete; Howard and Fayetteville State were omitted — apparently because they are not listed in either of the journalism education guides that the researchers used as sources.

The average enrollment in the HBCU programs was about 230. The largest program in the survey was Clark-Atlanta University’s, with 720 undergraduates.

Shaw, a former newspaper editor who is a journalism professor at the University of Kansas, says academic programs have experienced “rapidly changing curriculum” to keep up with changes in the news business. Now they are teaching students how to write a story, shoot video and post it all on the Web.

Frobish says Fayetteville State will start with a traditional journalism program and, once the three new faculty arrive this fall, discuss changes to suit the new job market.

“I think anytime you create a new program, it’s experimental,” he says. “Journalism is in such a transitional state. We’ll have to evolve the program as journalism evolves.”