Columbia’s journalism school paused its midcareer degree three months after Washington capped what America will lend a journalist. The timing is the story. The email went out on a Thursday afternoon. On October 1, 2026, Dean Jelani Cobb told alumni of the Columbia Journalism School’s Master of Arts program that admissions were paused for the coming cycle. The message landed in the inboxes of people who had paid six figures for the degree it described. The school, Cobb wrote, had begun “a critical evaluation” of the M.A. curriculum, and the pause would give the review “the focus it deserves.” The school’s admissions page now carries the same message and dangles a future “relaunch” for anyone willing to wait.

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