The University of Texas at Austin
Department of Advertising

Department - Reputation

The first advertising course was taught at The University of Texas (UT) in 1914. In 1948, both the Department of Marketing and the School of Journalism formally recognized an undergraduate major in advertising. From then until 1960, students who wanted a degree in advertising had two choices: a business-oriented curriculum offered by the Department of Marketing in the College of Business - a Bachelor of Business Administration in Advertising or a communication-oriented curriculum offered by the School of Journalism in the College of Arts and Sciences - a Bachelor of Journalism in Advertising.

Graduate courses in advertising were offered in both departments. A Master's of Business Administration with concentration in the Division of Advertising could be sought as early as 1947. The School of Journalism first offered a Master's of Arts in Communication with concentration in Advertising in 1953. From 1960 until 1974, advertising was one of two sequences offered in the School of Journalism.

During the Fall of 1974 the Department of Advertising was established, in the College of Communication, to meet the increasing needs of advertising education. In 1999, Public Relations was added to the department's curriculum. The Department has grown into one of the top programs in the country and continues to strive toward best serving its students and the advertising/pr industry.

How does the advertising program at UT compare to programs at other schools? That is one of the most common questions people ask when considering where to apply. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. It depends how these programs are judged, and who evaluates them.

The following information is provided so you can see that, by any measure, UT offers a top-tier program.

SIZE

In the United States, approximately 111 institutions of higher education offer an organized program of study in advertising. The advertising program at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) is one of the largest in the nation. In fact, it is one of only a few such programs around the country that are housed in their own department. Most programs are a part of a journalism, marketing, or other department.

As shown in the Table above, the graduate program at UT ranks fourth largest in the country, with UT and Michigan State boasting the most Ph.D. students. In fact, UT is the only program that grants a Ph.D. specifically in advertising; other programs offer an emphasis in advertising, with the Ph.D. in "mass communication" or some other more general field of study.

Certainly, large size and high quality are two different things. But size, if combined with quality instruction, means many well-trained graduates and an influential force in the advertising profession.

FACULTY

One indicator of quality is the breadth of knowledge and experience possessed by a school's faculty. UT has the largest advertising faculty in the world. This means the widest possible range of expertise, so that students can work with and learn from faculty who are specialists in many different areas of advertising.

Yet another indicator is the amount of research conducted by a program's faculty. Faculty that produces original research are "on the cutting edge" of knowledge in their area of specialty. They provide students with the most up-to-date information, and they have influence in the national academic community.

Over the past decade two studies have compared the research productivity of faculty publishing articles about advertising. One study looked at just the three major advertising journals in the U.S., including every year they were published, while the other looked at a broader range of journals over a limited number of years. The results of both studies are summarized in the Table above, and their implications are crystal clear -- UT is a national force in advertising research and the academic marketplace, ranking number one in most research articles.

THE CREATIVE SEQUENCE

The advertising program at UT is unique in one especially notable respect. In addition to teaching strategic planning, media planning, research, and other aspects of advertising management, the UT program has built a reputation for molding talented copywriters and art directors.

An article in Adweekmagazine discussed the backgrounds of this fresh new talent and stated, "They've come from the leading advertising programs -- Art Center, Portfolio Center and University of Texas -- tops among them with books filled with highly polished, technically sophisticated ads." The former two programs are art and design schools that specialize in helping artists develop their portfolio, rather than general advertising programs. Even in that company, UT ranks among the best..

Similarly, an Advertising Agearticle on ad education referred to "the schools that are presently highly regarded by agency creatives and industry recruiters such as Atlanta¼s Portfolio Center, the [Pasadena] Art Center, and the University of Texas at Austin." Advertising Agewent on to mention that "[t]hough the University of Texas may seem an unusual place to find a top ad program, creatives from New York to Los Angeles have been counting on kick-ass kids from Austin."

Since 1995, Texas Creative has been invited by The One Club for Art & Copy, Inc. of New York City to display work of graduating students in its exhibit promoting aspiring creatives. UT is one of only a handful of schools invited. Not all advertising students at UT are in the creative sequence; but, this sequence makes the UT advertising department unique among ad programs around the world by developing a richly diverse talent pool that covers all aspects of the profession: creative, account management, interactive, account planning, media, and research.

OPINIONS OF THE COMPETITION

The "ranking" of any program depends largely on who is doing the ranking. One of the groups best equipped to judge is advertising educators, since they tend to know which schools represent their most serious competition. Although relatively little research has been done to determine the opinions of advertising professors, one study asked professors across the country to rank undergraduate advertising programs. The University of Texas is ranked number two in that study, as shown below.

Another study asked the heads of advertising programs at universities around the country to rank the top three undergraduate and graduate advertising programs. The University of Texas was mentioned more frequently as a "top three" program than any other school in the country, as you can see below.

And in its first effort to rank graduate advertising programs, U.S. News & World Report asked Deans and faculty at schools of journalism and mass communication to rank advertising (as well as some other disciplines frequently taught in those schools) programs. The results gave the Advertising Department at The University of Texas its lowest ranking of any national ranking published to date. As you can see here, it ranked only 4th!

OPINIONS OF EMPLOYERS

Of course, another group whose opinion is important is the people who hire advertising graduates. And of those doing this hiring, a group that is especially relevant is advertising agency personnel. One recent study asked ad agency employees who do hiring to rank advertising graduate programs.The University of Texas is ranked number two.

OTHER PROGRAMS AT THE UNIVERSITY

The Department of Advertising fares well among the more than 100 advertising programs around the U.S., but a student's education does not depend only on the quality of the department in which he or she is enrolled, but upon the quality of all the classes taken at the university. Whether undergraduate or graduate, students take classes in other departments. The University of Texas at Austin benefits from having a wide variety of highly-ranked programs. Within the College of Communication, five different areas of doctoral study within the Department of Speech recently were ranked in the Top 5 programs in the country, and in 1996 U.S. News & World Report ranked the graduate programs in Public Relations, Print Journalism, and Radio/Television all among the top 11 in the nation.

COMPARE THE COSTS

As you can see, The University of Texas at Austin is highly regarded as a major research university, with many of its colleges and departments rank among the best in the nation. In spite of this, it is one of the least expensive universities in the country. Even among state-supported schools, which typically cost far less than private schools, it compares quite favorably. Costs for the 2004-2005 school year, below, illustrate this point.

Figures provided by The University of Texas at Austin, Office of Institutional Studies.

CONCLUSIONS

It is impossible to objectively rank ad programs, because such rankings are reliant on the perspectives of different groups of people. However, if you look at the pattern - how UT compares to other schools when ranked in a variety of different ways - the advertising program at The University of Texas at Austin is consistently at or near the top of each list. And if you factor in the breadth of other quality programs at the University, along with the low cost, an education in the UT Department of Advertising is clearly a terrific value.

Sources:

Barry, Thomas E. (1990). Publication Productivity in the Three Leading U.S. Advertising Journals: Inaugural Issues through 1988. Journal of Advertising, 19(1), 52-60.

Goldman, Debra (1993). The Future: get used to it. What the world looks like to the post-everything kids who've gone into advertising. Adweek, (Sept. 20), 30.

Keenan, Kevin (1991). Unpublished study ranking undergraduate advertising programs. University of Maryland.

Richards, J. I., and Taylor, E. G. (1996, in press). Rankings of Advertising Programs by Advertising Educators. Journal of Advertising Education, 1(1).

Ross, Billy I., and Johnson, Keith F. (1993). Where Shall I go to Study Advertising and Public Relations? Baton Rouge, LA: Advertising Education Publications.

Ross, Billy I. (1991). The Status of Advertising Education. Baton Rouge, LA: Advertising Education Publications.

Simko, Alison (1992). School's In. Advertising Age's Creativity: a monthly review of the creative process, (June 1), 17C.

Soley, Lawrence C., and Reid, Leonard N. (1988). Advertising Article Productivity Updated. Journalism Quarterly, 65, 157-64.

Speech Communication Association (1996). A Study of the Reputations of Doctoral Programs in Communication.

Staff (1996). America's Best Graduate Schools. U.S. News & World Report, 60.

Stout, Patricia, and Richards, Jef I. (1993). Advertising Agency Views on Graduate Education in Advertising. An unpublished study, University of Texas at Austin.

Center for Interactive Advertising 
Updated April 2008