<p>allure,
i have been a journalism professor at several of the elite programs around the nation and have conducted accreditation visits. if you are undecided about which way to go then i would recommend you look into comprehensive communications programs, and there are plenty of those. it sounds like you are leaning more to the application (mass comm) side rather than the theory (speech comm/org comm), and please confirm this.</p>
<p>wrt the acceditation issue it may be true that this is unimportant in some fields. but in the fields i know personally which are business and communications/journalism, i absolutely would go to an accredited program. the university of iowa years ago decided against do this and it nearly destroyed the entire program. more importantly, many major firms will not interview nor award internships to nonaccredited programs.</p>