Public Relations education: our future is banking on it!

With the continued growth and popularity of PR degrees and courses, the subject of my blog was aimed at looking into the importance of having degrees and its impact on the PR industry. My focus is to know the perspectives and viewpoints of PR postgraduates and the decision behind their choice to do PR.

My findings illustrated that PR degrees are key to kick off with a career in the field because of market demand. It also shows that more and more people are having PR degrees and the number of practitioners who have not PR backgrounds is diminishing. A new generation of qualified and graduated PR is coming.

On the professional level, I can say that there are emerging markets which need qualified and specialized PR staff along with established markets which continue to look for PR practitioners as the market expands and grows.

On the academic level, I found out that PR degrees help to develop academic research as well as public relations theories.

Therefore, based on my research and current academic experience, I came to this conclusion that education is important and can be further enhanced by PR firms which can play a key role in the practical education process through the extensive internships they offer. I believe interns not only get invaluable experience but are one of the best ways to secure jobs. In such situation, we will have the required degree and the entry-level experience that employers are looking for!

Public Relations education: our future is banking on it!

PR takes over other courses!

With the continued steep growth of the public relations industry, some courses like business management, diplomacy, psychology, sociology and marketing are now teaching public affairs, public relations and communication marketing as part of their syllabus. As I said in the beggining of my blog that PR education is a trend around the world, it is also a trend within unrelated courses.

From my experience in the diplomatic field, PR was key for our work as a whole particulraly in terms of writing and reporting to Washington D.C. PR was not only key for public affairs and public diplomacy, but also for the Commercial, Agricultural, Cultural, Political and Military Affairs. All these sections within the embassy had a communication or PR specialist who help liaising, rebranding and networking in order to make business and deals.

Here I have gone over some courses like Marketing and Diplomacy where I found that Public Relations and Communication represent one of the main modules for the courses. http://www.wmin.ac.uk/wbs/pdf/4mam710_01.pdf, http://publicdiplomacy.syr.edu/courses.htm

This situation shows therefore how courses are overlapping among each others and it is no longer that PR falls under other courses as it was perceived in the past. On the contrary, PR and its related subjects are now key modules for many courses. PR is now taking over rather overwhelming other courses!

I understand now why students are tending to have degrees in Public Relations as they know that being holder of BA or MA in PR could help them get into different fields that do not necessarily require a degree in diplomacy, business or sociology, but with PR we can do all these specialities! For that reason, I did this choice and took this decision to do PR.