| Ever since specialized accrediting agencies began to proliferate in the United States during the early decades of the twentieth century, scholars have speculated about the goals and strategies of these agencies and their effect on professional education. Many scholars assert that the professionalizing occupations of journalism and engineering used medicine's professionalization process as a model, and that the goal of all specialized accrediting agencies is to gatekeep and control a profession's body of knowledge to enhance both individual members' and the profession's status. Neither of these hypotheses have been tested with empirical evidence. Furthermore, sociologists have accused the historians who examine the professions, their associations, and their prestige attainment of neglecting to make interprofessional comparisons and selecting random starting and ending points in time. To address this gap, this study involved comparative case studies of the professionalization of both journalism and engineering between 1919 and 1938.;This study, a goals-based evaluation that was historical in nature, answered what the professional associations hoped to gain, what strategies were used to attain the professional associations' goals, how effective the chosen strategies were for meeting the goals, and, what effect each strategy had on journalism's and engineering's professional education. This study focused on these four areas by examining the location of journalism's and engineering's professional knowledge, the access to these bodies of knowledge in educational institutions, how completion of professional education was marked, and the requirements for practice. A comparison of these four areas, a second dimension of analysis was then made between journalism and engineering. Once described and analyzed, the major findings and conclusions were presented.;This study found that national coordination fosters goal attainment, accreditation needs the associations' united support, journalism made more progress toward accreditation between 1919 and 1938 than engineering, and, engineering did not use medicine's professionalization model as many scholars believe. If the successful closure of the body of knowledge indicates the attainment of professional status, as many scholars assert, neither journalism nor engineering professionalized between 1919 and 1938. |
