@littenova: Thank you for the suggestions. Please don't make the assumption that I don't appreciate contemporary art photography - most of the books I own are by art photographers. But the guys I admire - people like Doug Dubois and Alec Soth, whose books are the latest entries into my library - successfully (in my opinion) navigate the gray zone between conceptual and documentary. That's the kind of work I'd like to do. About Yale, I just don't buy that. There are plenty of people doing exceptional work in contemporary art photography and most of them don't parrot Crewdson, nor do they have anything to do with Yale. Besides, it's all about the work, isn't it? And after looking at the work coming out of there, I suspect most people going gaga over Yale are more obsessed over the brand name of the school than anything else, but that's just my opinion, and probably something for a different discussion.
@nathancotephoto: Yes, as I mentioned I'm already aware of Missouri and Ohio, but those are MA programs.
@michaelwebster: MFA programs that try to pigeonhole everyone into the same mold are precisely the ones I want to avoid. And this is a common misconception so let's nip it in the bud: There is no such thing as objectivity in photojournalism. A photojournalist does try to be fair and accurate (maybe that's what you meant?) but it's not nearly the same thing as objectivity, and takes effort because human beings are inherently biased by nature. The second a photojournalist stops exerting the effort to be fair and accurate, and starts looking at the world as they see it, then their work is no longer photojournalism. Christopher Anderson's Capitolio is a recent case in point, reviewed by Joerg Colberg back in September:
http://www.jmcolberg...r_anderson.html
Guys, I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my question, but given the deluge of MFA programs today, I was simply hoping that someone would know of a U.S. based MFA program similar to the one at Ryerson in Canada. If there aren't, or if nobody knows of one, then that's fine. I wasn't looking for treatises on contemporary art or photojournalism theory.