The Center for Understanding Media was founded by John Culkin in 1969 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to research and projects in education, communication, and the arts. The MA in Media Studies offered by the center, which joined The New School in 1975, represented to Culkin "consumer education for the minds and emotions of the audience for all media." The Center for Understanding Media was "indebted to Marshall McLuhan for both his insights into media and for the title of his book" (Understanding Media from which the center took its name). Thus, for nearly a quarter-century, The New School has been home to the first established Media Studies program, and certainly the first that took seriously the concept of "understanding media" and knew early on, following Culkin, that "Media studies represents the arts and humanities in a new key."

Today, more than 450 students are actively enrolled in the Media Studies MA program, making it the largest program of its kind. Media Studies fall enrollment has grown from 129 in 1991, to 217 in 1995, to 356 in 1999, to 450 in 2006, the latter figure including the new Media Management Program. Students come from more than 30 countries and 25 states to study in a program that offers an extensive curriculum in theory (including Media Theory, History, and Philosophy; Media Criticism and Analysis; Cultural Studies; Cinema Studies) and media management, as well as a production curriculum in video, audio, film, and multimedia, much of it in state-of-the-art facilities at the university. Students can complete the degree completely online.

The Media Studies program has more than 2,000 alumni, who have gone on to careers in commercial and independent media as well as academia. Our graduates occupy positions in numerous small start-up media companies and in almost every major New York City media corporation, including NBC, HBO, Showtime, Bravo, Simon & Schuster, McGraw-Hill, AT&T, Univision, MTV, Sony Music, and WNET. Media Studies graduates also hold a variety of faculty positions in the New York City area and elsewhere, and approximately 10-percent of our graduates go on to earn PhD degrees at schools like New York University, University of Texas, Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Massachusetts.