Content area
Full Text
Those of us who teach public relations within higher education are always under pressure to provide the most relevant knowledge and skills to our students. We want students to be "well rounded" in their education, so we require courses in art, cultural studies, English, and history. We want students to be good critical thinkers, so we ask students to take courses in ethics and philosophy. At the same time, we want students to have strong professional skills - so we build major programs of study with courses in writing, media relations, and legal issues.
We aim to provide students with an appropriate balance of theoretical/ conceptual skills and 'hands on' training. We want new college graduates going out into the public relations workplace not only to know what to do, but why they're doing it.
Yet it always seems that the college curriculum is 'behind the curve' in terms of what the industry is looking for. The academic environment is bureaucracy-heavy. Change takes place slowly (See Coombs & Rybacki, 1999). Many industry professionals often don't understand the difficulty educators face in delivering a broad spectrum of curriculum that calls for students to become proficient in wide variety of competencies. Professionals also wonder why we can't quickly update curriculum when the need for a new skill set surfaces.
For years now, the journalism field in general has been pulled in different directions by "editors who don't like the quality of graduates, colleagues in other fields who consider journalism schools as trade schools, [and] journalists who state that journalism education is not relevant to the practice of journalism" (Dickson & Sellmeyer, 1992, p. 11). What was true in the 90s remains true today. There continue to be calls within PR to "strengthen the professional bond between education and the practice" (Report of the Commission... 2006, p.8).
In fact, the pressure today is much greater than it was in the 90s, because as we all know, the journalism and public relations workplace is being forced to adapt to immense technological and bottom-line demands. More than ever, higher education programs struggle with what students most need to know, how to implement the curriculum quick enough to have it be relevant, and most importantly - how to cover the costs...