As a journalism teacher in Nigeria with over seven years’ experience aside professional experience, I am quite disturbed about the quality of courses being offered by our various department of Mass Communication in Nigeria with Nigerian University Commission, (NUC) accreditation.
This has made me question the accreditation issued out by NUC. I expect this apex academic body to insist on world standards due to information technology and the increasing need for digital journalists.
In Nigeria today, we have over 66 Universities and 41 Polytechnics offering Mass Communication, media Studies and journalism training in Nigeria with special focus on three sequence namely: Print Journalism, Broadcast, Public relation and Advertising despite the unbundling of Mass Communication into Journalism and Media Studies, Public Relations, Advertising, Broadcasting, Film and media Studies, Development Communication Studies and information & media Studies.
A visit to nine selected Mass Communication department in Nigeria comprising of both public and private reveals that resources to migrate into the new seven departments of Mass Communication remains a problem considering the inadequate funding rocking the federal and State Universities while Private Universities also could not successfully migrate due to low students’ population.
As we struggle to adapt to the current reality, journalism education abroad has taken a different dimension as they now offer courses in- Internet Journalism, Data Journalism, Novel writing, Freelance and feature writing, Sub-editing, News Journalism, Thriller Writing, Digital Advertising, freelance and sport writing and a whole of others while in Nigeria, we still offer courses like desktop publishing, introduction to newswriting, Photojournalism, announcing and performance and so on.
It should be known that world ranking journalism schools are producing graduates that will be relevant in new areas and not the old ways that is gradually phasing out. I also learnt that Bloomberg is considering purchasing robots so as to be able to turn out more stories unlike humans who complain of no stories. It says “Robots have arrived on Wall Street and humans need to learn how to work with them”.
As journalists continues to face hard times due to increasing need to be ingenious, it is advisable that departments of mass Communication in Nigeria in collaboration with NUC should design their curriculum towards media entrepreneurship which is the only way out of poverty, unemployment and brown envelope syndrome.
Written by Tosin Adesile.
Well said