Designed to assist students in proposing, testing, and refining communication theories; in practicing skilled research; and in becoming knowledgeable about communication. The Ph.D. degree is a research degree. The doctoral program in the Field of Communication at Cornell is designed to be a small, high quality program which will encourage students' interests in academic work and will prepare them for nonacademic job opportunities. Program graduates will be able to compete successfully for teaching and research positions at colleges and universities, work at consulting firms, or conduct research and contribute to policy in government and private organizations.

The M.S. is intended to assist students in applying social scientific theory, practicing skilled research, and becoming well read and knowledgeable concerning human communication. M.S. students will be able to apply their creativity and skills to a substantive area of knowledge generation in addition to applied communication research. Graduated M.S. students are likely to progress to Ph.D. programs, or to become high-level managers, supervisors or teacher-researchers. They also may consider careers as communication researchers or managers in industry, the mass media, government, consulting, or public opinion/polling/marketing/survey research organizations. The focus of the M.S. will be on proposing, testing and refining communication theory using empirical social science research methods.