At the Association for Journalism Education conference last week, Tim Luckhurst spoke about something we have discussed many times at the Centre for Journalism: the number of journalism degrees on offer in this country that offer their students little or no chance of getting a job within the industry. There is, he told the conference, an “element of fraud” in a system that allows such courses to proliferate.
Unsurprisingly, his views – reported here by journalism.co.uk, not necessarily with perfect precision – have sparked vigorous debate around the blogosphere.
Melanie Newman has written a careful follow-up in the Times Higher Education Supplement, including a response from AJE chair Mick Temple: “I would dispute Tim Luckhurst’s assertion that journalism educators are misleading students about the nature of the courses they offer or the difficulties of getting a journalism job. Should we confine journalism training, as Tim argues, to those with three A grades at A level, preferably in Politics, History and English? That would not appear to be the best way to encourage the diversity to which he claims to aspire.”
Which is, of course, a completely inaccurate reflection of what we are doing here – as our students from various diverse academic and social backgrounds will attest.
Mindy McAdams, who teaches online journalism in the US, disagrees with Tim in her Teaching Online Journalism blog: “The same kind of thing certainly goes on in other majors, from physics to fine arts. No one is guaranteed a job or a career in the field they chose for university studies. That is true also at the (post-)graduate level.” There are some interesting comments too.
Nigel Barlow picks up on the debate in his blog, suggesting that shorthand and traditional career paths should be replaced by “cottage industry skills” such as blogging and freelancing.
