Communication and Media Studies in Australian ...

Communication and Media Studies in Australian Universities

Peter Putnis Beverley Axford Louise Watson Warwick Blood

Division of Communication and Education University of Canberra

Communication and Media Studies


Communication and Media Studies in Australian Universities

An investigation into the growth, status, and future of this field of study Peter Putnis Beverley Axford Louise Watson Warwick Blood


2002


© Commonwealth of Australia 2002. This work is copyright. It may be reproduced in whole or in part for study or training purposes subject to the inclusion of a reference to the source. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, this work may not be reproduced for commercial use or sale. Reproduction for purposes other than study or training purposes requires the written permission of the Commonwealth of Australia acting through the Department of Education, Science and Training. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training.

ISBN

1 74088 006 4

Publication date: 2002

Lifelong Learning Network Division of Communication and Education University of Canberra, ACT 2601 Telephone: 61 2 6201 5357 Fax: 61 2 6201 5911 Email: [email protected]

Preface The Lifelong Learning Network, a Research Centre in the Division of Communication and Education at the University of Canberra undertook the research described in this report. Funding for the study was provided through the Evaluations and Investigations Programme of the Higher Education Division of the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA). The Research Team thanks those DETYA Officers involved in the project for their support. We would also like to thank the Higher Education Division of DETYA for permission to publish this report of the study. Throughout the life of the project the Research Team had the assistance of an Advisory Committee. Their contribution to the study is gratefully acknowledged. This study included a lengthy questionnaire sent, in the first instance, to Heads of Departments in each university identified as offering Communication and Media Studies courses. We particularly wish to thank all those who took the time to provide information and address the various issues raised in that questionnaire. The growth of Communication and Media Studies in Australia, while a significant phenomenon in Australian higher education, has received relatively little documentation. We hope this study will contribute to improving the recognition and status of Communication and Media Studies in Australian higher education.

Professor Peter Putnis Pro Vice-Chancellor Division of Communication and Education University of Canberra and Chief Researcher Communication & Media Studies in Australian Universities Project

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Contents Executive summary ....................................................................................... xi Introduction .................................................................................................... 1 Context............................................................................................................ 1 Objectives ..................................................................................................... 1 Methodology................................................................................................ 2 Survey responses .......................................................................................... 4 Quantitative or qualitative data? ............................................................. 4

Innovation and growth: a brief history of Communication and Media Studies in Australia .................................................................. 5 Early years ..................................................................................................... 5 The Unified National System ....................................................................... 6 First survey of the field: 1989 ....................................................................... 7 Discussion and summary........................................................................... 10

The global revolution in ICT ....................................................................... 11 Living through a period of ‘multiple revolutions’ .................................. 11 Structural change in the university sector.............................................. 12 Structural change in the labour market ................................................. 14 Graduate occupations in a globalised economy ............................... 17 Discussion & summary ............................................................................... 20

The growth in student demand: 1989-1999 ............................................ 22 DETYA student statistics ............................................................................. 22 Growth............................................................................................................. 24 Institutions offering Communication courses......................................... 24 Student enrolments: 1999 ......................................................................... 25 Gender imbalance.................................................................................... 26 Subjects ........................................................................................................... 28 Summary...................................................................................................... 30

Courses on offer in Australian universities................................................ 32 Analysis of survey data.............................................................................. 32 Discussion .................................................................................................... 37 Practical and theoretical elements within degree courses................ 37 Diversity and convergence...................................................................... 39 New knowledges or ‘rebadged’ liberal arts? ....................................... 41 Summary...................................................................................................... 43

Curriculum models and contexts ............................................................. 44 Similarity and diversity among higher education providers................ 44 Unitechs ....................................................................................................... 45 New universities .......................................................................................... 48 v


Gumtrees .....................................................................................................52 Redbricks .....................................................................................................54 Sandstones ..................................................................................................56 Private providers.........................................................................................58 Recent Developments ..............................................................................58 Discussion and summary ...........................................................................60

Curriculum development and delivery....................................................62 Curriculum development..........................................................................62 Modes of delivery.......................................................................................63 Changes in enrolment patterns over the next three years .................65 Delivering course information to students..............................................66 Staffing ............................................................................................................. 67 Technical support.......................................................................................69 Infrastructure ...............................................................................................70 Discussion.....................................................................................................70 Summary......................................................................................................73

Industry links and employment outcomes...............................................74 Student outcomes......................................................................................74 Course accreditation ................................................................................75 Industry placements and professional work experience for students...........................................................................................76 Employment destinations..........................................................................76 Gaining entry level employment in the field .........................................77 Labour market trends ................................................................................77 The Graduate Destination Survey (GDS) ................................................78 Too many graduates in the field? ...........................................................80 Discussion.....................................................................................................81 Summary......................................................................................................83

Future directions ...........................................................................................84 What do you see as the future of Communication and Media Studies in your university?.............................................................84 What do you see as the future of the field as a whole?......................87

Conclusion.....................................................................................................90 Recommendations ......................................................................................94 References ....................................................................................................96 Appendix A: Survey Respondents .......................................................... 100 Institutions that responded to the survey .............................................100 Institutions that submitted partial responses to the survey (that is, confirmed courses on offer) ......................................................101 Institutions identified as not offering Communication and Media Studies Courses in 2001...............................................................101

Appendix B: Communication and Media Studies Courses in Australian Universities, 2001............................................................ 102

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List of tables Table 2.1

Some changes in Australian higher education: 1998 compared to 1987........................................................................ 12

Table 2.2

Changes in employees and employment shares by occupation and skill level Australia 1993 to 1999.................... 16

Table 3.1

Student Load (EFTSU) in Communication and Media courses by level of course, 1989 to 1999 .................................. 25

Table 4.1

Communication and Media Studies specialisations in undergraduate courses............................................................... 33

Table 4.2

Communication degrees offered as part of double degrees .......................................................................................... 35

Table 6.1

Institutions offering distance education and off-shore delivery. .......................................................................................... 64

Table 6.2

Communication and Media facilities available to students .......................................................................................... 71

Table 6.3

Communication and Media students’ production work made available to the wider community ................................ 71

List of figures Figure 3.1

Student load (EFTSU) in Communication courses 1989 to 1999 ................................................................................................. 24

Figure 3.3

Student load (EFTSU) in Communication subjects by Gender, 1999 ................................................................................. 29

Figure 3.4

Disciplines offered within Communication courses 1999....... 29

Figure 3.5

Communication subjects: distribution across course areas, 1999 ..................................................................................... 30

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Acronyms and abbreviations of Australian higher education institutions

Acronym AMC ANU Avondale Bond CQU CSU CUT Deakin ECU GU JCU La Trobe Macleay Macquarie Melb Monash Murdoch NTU QUT RMIT SCU Swinburne UB UC UNE UoN UNSW UND UQ UniSA USQ Sydney Tas UTS USC UWA UWS UW VU

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Institution Australian Maritime College Australian National University Avondale College Bond University Central Queensland University Charles Sturt University Curtin University of Technology Deakin University Edith Cowan University Griffith University James Cook University of Northern Queensland La Trobe University Macleay College Macquarie University University of Melbourne Monash University Murdoch University Northern Territory University Queensland University of Technology Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Southern Cross University Swinburne University of Technology University of Ballarat University of Canberra University of New England University of Newcastle University of New South Wales University of Notre Dame University of Queensland University of South Australia University of Southern Queensland University of Sydney University of Tasmania University of Technology, Sydney University of the Sunshine Coast University of Western Australia University of Western Sydney University of Wollongong Victoria University of Technology


Research Team Project Directors

Professor Peter Putnis is Professor of Communication and Pro Vice-Chancellor, Division of Communication and Education at the University of Canberra. His research has focused on media representations of social and political issues, and the development of Communication and Media Studies in Australia. Before taking up his current position, he was the Head of Communication and Media Studies at Bond University and previous to that, the Head of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Southern Queensland. He is a past President of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association, and past Vice President of the Journalism Education Association. Professor R. Warwick Blood is Professor of Communication and Head of the School of Professional Communication in the Division of Communication and Education at the University of Canberra. Prior to his present position, he was Foundation Head of the School of Communication at Charles Sturt University. He is past Editor of Australian Journalism Review. He is a past President of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association. Dr Louise Watson is Research Fellow in the Lifelong Learning Network, Division of Communication and Education, University of Canberra. Her research field is in Australian education policy.

Project Advisory Committee

Professor Phillip Bell is Head of the School of Media and Communication, University of New South Wales. Mr Peter Nicholson, Evaluation and Investigations Program, DETYA Ms Heather Brimson, Evaluation and Investigations Program, DETYA Mr David McCann, Evaluation and Investigations Program, DETYA

Research Officer

Ms Beverley Axford (formerly Beverley Pope) is Research Scholar in the LifeLong Learning Network, Division of Communication and Education, University of Canberra.

Administrative Assistant

Ms Thea Moyes is Administrative Assistant in the LifeLong Learning Network, Division of Communication and Education, University of Canberra.

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Executive summary This project was undertaken by a Research Team based in the Division of Communication and Education at the University of Canberra for the Evaluations and Investigations Program of the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA).

The objectives set for the study were: •

To map the field of Communication and Media Studies in Australia with respect to providers, range of courses and subjects, organisational settings and professional destinations of graduates;

•

To provide a consolidated statistical description of students and courses in the field drawing on both existing and new data;

•

To chart the history of the growth of Communication and Media Studies in Australia;

•

To identify curriculum models within the field that have specific educational or employment outcomes, for example, by differentiating between theoretical and vocational studies, and identifying courses that are accredited by professional associations, have defined work placements or other links to industry;

•

To identify key issues relevant to the ongoing development of the field in Australia, including quality issues, as perceived by Heads of Departments and Schools of Communication and Media in Australia; and

•

To suggest ways of improving the quality of information available to prospective students about the diversity of course offerings within this field.

Historical review

The study included a review of the history of the development of Communication and Media Studies over the past 30 years. This review highlighted some of the central drivers of change and the issues these changes had brought with them. These issues can be summarised as including: •

Structural change, especially the introduction of the Unified National System, as a major driver of change;

•

The challenge, in a field that has grown rapidly over the past 30 years, of establishing coherent discipline boundaries while at the same time maintaining curriculum diversity and innovation;

•

The challenge of curriculum design: how, for example, universities maintain a balance between vocational preparation and general education in this expanding field; and

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•

The question of ‘relevance’ and the related question of student outcomes and destinations. In the early years much of the institutional support for an expansion of courses in the field rested on a perception that they were ‘vocationally relevant’. However, in a dynamic field that is training graduates for occupations in a changing labour market this issue of relevance is complex and needs to be addressed in terms of the ways in which study in this field translates into ‘value-added’ for both graduates and employers of graduates.

The impact of global change

As part of the historical overview this study also locates the development of Communication and Media Studies in the larger frame of the economic restructuring that is captured by the termed ‘globalisation’. From this perspective the revolution in information and communication technologies (ICT) is identified as the central driver for innovation and expansion of this field of study. New technologies have enabled a massive restructuring of economic activity and, therefore, of the labour market, including graduate occupations. This process is by no means complete in either the sense of being finished or in the sense of being a total transformation. New occupational roles now exist alongside occupational roles developed in earlier periods. Traditional librarians co-exist, for example, with ‘information brokers’ and ‘information analysts’; traditional journalists co-exist with e-journalists and web-site managers. Communication and Media Studies needs to be seen in the context of this fluid and dynamic environment.

Student enrolments

According to DETYA statistics, 12,323 students were studying Communication and Media Studies courses in Australia in 1999. They were studying 258 courses, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, in 27 different institutions. Overseas enrolments accounted for 14 per cent of total student load, the highest of any subdiscipline within the Humanities. Communication and Media Studies also had the highest student load within the humanities discipline group. In 1999 there were 1,162 postgraduate students studying in the Communication and Media Studies field. Eighty per cent of these were in coursework programs. By 2000 the overall number of students studying in the field had risen to 13,710 (a growth of 11.3 per cent over 1999).

Courses on offer

A survey of higher education providers was undertaken in early 2001 and a list of courses compiled. This survey indicated that, in addition to the broad range of Bachelor degrees on offer, double degrees and combined degrees (programs run jointly between two discipline areas) were becoming popular. Postgraduate courses, both professional and research, were on offer in at least 30 of the institutions surveyed. It is clear from the course descriptions and information provided on specialisations that the field is a major area of higher education study. However, the contours and boundaries of the field are not at all fixed or stable. In looking at the questions that arise from the data on course offerings we identified three inter-

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related themes. These themes mirror the tensions evident in the review of the history of the field: •

Meeting the demand for practical or ‘professionally relevant’ and theoretical or ‘academically rigorous’ elements within undergraduate degree courses;

•

The tension between diversity and convergence in course offerings amongst and within universities; and

•

The extent to which courses reflect the introduction of new knowledge into the university system or the ‘rebadging’ of old liberal arts subjects.

Curriculum models

To further highlight the institutional diversity of the field we illustrate some of the curriculum models currently in place by reviewing course descriptions as presented to prospective students via the DETYA website. This review highlights the openness of the field and the pro-activeness of institutions in responding to new technologies. It also highlights the range of ways the tensions identified above are played out in the different institutional settings in which courses in this field are offered.

Curriculum development and delivery

This section looks at a range of matters canvassed in the survey of Heads of Departments/Schools. Matters covered range from innovation in the field, changes in modes of course delivery, anticipated changes in enrolment patterns over the next three years, effective delivery of information to prospective students, staffing and other resource issues. The survey indicated that courses are supported by academic staff predominantly drawn from Communication Studies and Cultural Studies and from other Humanities and Social Science backgrounds. In addition, universities take advantage of part-time and sessional staff arrangements but the proportion of courses delivery undertaken by part-time and sessional staff varies across the system. Most providers deliver courses to students on campus and, while there is evidence of widespread moves to on-line delivery, most providers appear to be moving to ‘mixed modes’ of delivery (making more on-line materials available to on-campus students) rather than developing fully on-line delivery modes. Most of the larger providers appear well resourced in terms of technical support staff and facilities but it is unclear what proportion of these resources are used to support and train staff in ICT use and what proportion are devoted to the support of students’ learning experiences. The high cost of communication and media infrastructure is a major concern for those managing Communication and Media Studies areas in the universities surveyed, particularly when courses are funded as Humanities and Social Sciences under the Relative Funding Model and this model takes no account of the cost of maintaining ICT infrastructure.

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Industry and professional links

Only 31 courses on offer were reported to be formally accredited with professional bodies. This appears to reflect the diversity of professional outcomes for graduates in this field of study as well as the stage of development of the professions in the communication and media industries. Twenty-one courses were reported to include a mandatory professional workplace component. Many survey respondents considered professional workplace experience to be highly valuable but did not consider they had the resources to introduce or expand such programs. Employment outcomes for graduates in the field appear to be good for those undertaking specialist courses. The employment outcomes of students undertaking more generalist courses are less clear and there is a need to examine ways to extend opportunities for students to participate in professional experience programs during their undergraduate studies.

Future directions

When asked to reflect on the future of the field survey respondents were generally optimistic about continuing student demand. This demand was seen as linked to continued expansion of employment opportunities for graduates with ICT related skills. At the same time, however, respondents also identified the tensions outlined earlier—particularly the tension between preparing ‘work ready’ productionoriented graduates and more broadly educated liberal arts graduates. The issue of resources was also a strong theme. Although some common themes run through the comments there was no clear ‘majority’ position taken by our respondents and comments generally reflected the broad range of approaches being taken across the university sector.

Conclusion and recommendations

In the light of the diverse range of issues identified the main recommendation arising from this study is that a forum of Heads of Departments/Schools be established to work to bring greater coherence to the field. Specifically, we recommend: •

THAT copies of this report be circulated to all relevant Heads of Departments/Schools along with an invitation to participate in a forum to discuss the matters raised and to consider the constitution of a Council of Headss of Communication and Media Studies.

•

THAT DETYA consider providing a ‘Grant in Aid’ to help establish a Council of Heads of Communication and Media Studies (or similar).

Our study has also revealed that the positioning of Communication and Media Studies in the discipline field ‘Humanities and Social Science’ can make it difficult for prospective students to readily access the information they seek about the range of courses on offer in Australian universities. We therefore recommend: •

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THAT DETYA consider a revision of its ‘Fields of Study’ web-site to better reflect the significance of Communication and Media Studies as a field of study and to better assist prospective students to locate relevant course information.

Introduction The field of Communications and Media Studies has become an increasingly significance part of Australian higher education in recent decades. This research project provides much needed baseline information on the status of this diverse field of study which characteristically combines academic and professionally oriented subjects, and whose graduates enter a wide range of professions. The study provides a platform upon which to stimulate informed consideration of issues relating to the development and management of Communication and Media Studies courses in Australian universities.

Context This study grew out of the recognition that there is need for a systematic review of the current state of course offerings in this area. Such information is not readily available in part because Communication and Media Studies do not sit comfortably in traditional field-of-study typologies or subject categories, straddling as they do the Humanities and Social Sciences, Business Studies, Information Technology, Creative Arts, and Science. Published sources of information, such as the Good Universities Guide, do not convey the diversity of course offerings and the range of professional destinations of Communication and Media graduates. Moreover Departmental handbooks and course guides do not always convey the distinction between courses that are predominantly theoretical in focus and those that have a strong vocational orientation. In the absence of a systematic appraisal of Communication and Media Studies course offerings prospective students are at increased risk of enrolling in inappropriate courses. A review of the field of postgraduate studies is also timely because of the growing need to more clearly differentiate between vocationally oriented degrees and theoretical (research) courses of study. It has been ten years since the first statistical survey of the field, undertaken by Molloy and Lennie (1990), was published. Since then we have seen the emergence of major new providers in the field, both in public and private institutions, and an increased interest in on-line and web-based developments in course delivery.

Objectives The objectives set for the study were:

1


•

To map the field of Communication and Media Studies in Australia with respect to providers, range of courses and subjects, organisational settings and professional destinations of graduates;

•

To provide a consolidated statistical description of students and courses in the field drawing on both existing and new data;

•

To chart the history of the growth of Communication and Media Studies in Australia;

•

To identify curriculum models within the field that have specific educational or employment outcomes, for example, by differentiating between theoretical and vocational studies, and identifying courses that are accredited by professional associations, have defined work placements or other links to industry;

•

To identify key issues relevant to the ongoing development of the field in Australia, including quality issues, as perceived by Heads of Departments and Schools of Communication and Media in Australia; and

•

To suggest ways of improving the quality of information available to prospective students about the diversity of course offerings within this field.

Methodology The project started in the later half of 2000 and developed along four trajectories that reflect the diverse range of objectives set for the project. The first of these was to build a historical picture of the development of Communication and Media Studies in Australia and to place this development in the wider context of global changes in information and communication technologies and industries. The results of this research and scholarship make up the first two sections of this report. The second trajectory was to build a statistical picture of those who undertake courses of study in this field. Drawing on DETYA data a profile of student participation in the field over the past decade was compiled. This statistical overview is presented in the section titled The growth in student demand: 1989-1999. It was decided to rely entirely on the DETYA data base for information about student enrolments and participation because of the difficulties researchers such as Molloy and Lennie had encountered in establishing a consensus among providers as to which courses, and therefore which students, should be included. This is because, as mentioned above, the traditional field-of-study typologies and course categories reflect a pre-information-age set of categories in which courses in Communication and Media Studies are spread across a number of discipline areas. The third research trajectory was to develop a map of current course offerings in the field within Australian universities. Because of the definitional problems encountered in earlier studies we restrict our attention to courses only (not subjects). Consequently, this study does not address the question of the extent to which Communication and Media Studies subjects are offered as ‘service subjects’ in other fields in individual universities. Using university web-sites we identified undergraduate and postgraduate courses offered within the field. This initial map was then used as the basis for a mailed out survey of all Heads of Departments in Australian universities that asked them to confirm/amend the courses on offer. 2


This map of the field is presented as Appendix B and presents the course offerings in 33 public and 4 private higher education institutions in 2001. Appendix B describes the courses available by institution. It reports the level of the courses on offer, the length, and a brief description of the intended outcomes and employment destinations where this information was available, and any formal accreditation with professional bodies. The survey of courses on offer in 2001 provided the opportunity to canvass Heads of Departments on a range of other issues. A detailed survey instrument was developed that sought information on a range of matters, including: •

Curriculum development and delivery;

•

Delivering course information to students;

•

Industry and professional links; and

•

Future directions.

Information gathered via the survey of Heads of Departments/Schools, together with information from other sources, provided the data for a discussion of key issues relevant to the ongoing development of the field. The section titled Courses on offer in Australian universities addresses the range and nature of the specialisations of courses currently on offer. We identify three inter-related challenges that underscore the direction of course development in the field. These challenges can be summarised as: •


•

Addressing the tension between diversity and convergence in course offerings amongst and within universities; and

•

Understanding the extent to which courses reflect the introduction of new knowledges into the university system or the ‘rebadging’ of old liberal arts courses.

The fourth research trajectory set out to build a picture of the ‘similarities within diversity’ that exist within the higher education sector as a whole. To do this we moved outside the information provided by our survey respondents and examined the course descriptions for each institution provided on the 2001 DETYA website. Using this data we have attempted to provide a typology of institutions based on the kinds of curriculum provision implied by their course descriptions and to build a picture of the range of curriculum models currently in place. This analysis is presented in the section titled Curriculum models and contexts. The section titled Curriculum development and delivery looks at various aspects of course/program delivery: curriculum development, modes of delivery, staffing and other resource matters. This section mainly reports information and observations provided by survey respondents. Student outcomes, and the articulation between higher education and professional employment, are the focus of the section titled Industry links and employment outcomes. This section draws on survey responses to look first at the existing formal links with industry and professional bodies. It then looks at the instruments used to monitor student outcomes, especially the Graduate Destinations Survey (GDS). 3


This section concludes that there is a need for more effective monitoring of outcomes for particular groups of students. Finally, in the section titled Future directions we report survey responses to the question of future directions in the field and conclude that the field generally has a bright future given that the demand for well-trained graduates, able to combine analytical skills with technical expertise, will continue to be strong. The report includes a conclusion and recommendations to DETYA.

Survey responses Thirty seven higher education institutions were included in the survey. Of these 32 responded to the full survey and a further 5 returned partial responses (specifically, providing confirmation of their course offerings). A list of participating institutions is provided at Appendix A. A further five higher education institutions were identified as not offering undergraduate courses in the field in 2001 (see Appendix A). The Registrars in these institutions were contacted to confirm that they were not currently offering courses. One of these institutions (ANU) was not offering undergraduate studies in the field but had one relevant post-graduate course on offer. The Head of the Unit offering that course was included in the survey.

Quantitative or qualitative data? As outlined above this study draws on a number of data sources, including: •

Data collected by DETYA in relation to student enrolments in the field;

•

Information on courses on offer collected via a survey of Heads of Departments; and

•

Course descriptions provided to prospective students on the DETYA ‘Ten Fields of Study’ database.

However, the study also draws on qualitative data provided by survey respondents. The survey instrument was designed to be qualitative in orientation and asked respondents to comment on a range of issues related to the development and delivery of Communication and Media Studies courses in their institutions and more broadly. Throughout this report we have included the name of the institution where this is appropriate and where the information provided is on the public record (that is, information is drawn from the first three data sources identified above). When quoting comments from individual survey respondents the names of the respondents and the institutions have been withheld to protect the anonymity of respondents and in keeping with the ethical considerations governing qualitative research methods.

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Innovation and growth: a brief history of Communication and Media Studies in Australia One of the objectives of this study was to chart the history of the development of Communication and Media Studies in Australian universities. In this brief review the introduction of the Unified National System in 1987 is seen as a pivotal moment in the history of the field.

Early years While some teaching of Journalism and Mass Communication in Australian universities dates back to at least the 1950s the major impetus for growth in degree level studies in the fields of Communication and Media Studies was the expansion of higher education after 1964. Acting on recommendations put to it by a Committee of Review into tertiary education (Martin, 1964) the Commonwealth government established a number of new universities and put in place a binary system consisting of the university sector and an advanced education sector. Within this new binary system institutes of technology (ITs), institutes of higher education (IHEs) and colleges of advanced education (CAEs) took over from what had been teachers’ colleges and some technical and agricultural colleges. These new universities, colleges and institutes were ‘where the action was’ as far as Communication and Media Studies/Production was concerned: Their vocational orientation resulted in courses appealing to students, and they had the flexibility to introduce new fields of study … At the same time, the older universities, with long established and deeply entrenched English departments, showed little interest in communication or cultural studies (Irwin, 1998, p.275).

These new institutions were exciting places to be in the 1970s. Staff were generally younger and more radical, influenced by the intellectual ferment sweeping the industrialised nations—the Civil Rights movement in the USA, second-wave feminism, post-colonialism—and less beholden to established disciplinary structures and traditions. In keeping with this general radicalism, in the field of Communication the major tensions during this period revolved around curriculum issues—most notably around the empiricist/cultural studies divide. While this tension was strong across the Humanities and Social Sciences throughout the 1970s it played itself out in

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particular ways within Communication Studies. Because this was a new and expanding area of study this divide was experienced as a unique set of turf wars played out around, on the one hand, a strong critique of the media and other forms of cultural production that linked Communication Studies with more traditional humanities disciplines, and, on the other hand, a strong emphasis on applied psychology and media technique that tied Communication Studies more closely with commercial and business activity, including advertising, public relations and mass communication. In the newer higher education institutions many of the senior staff, particularly Heads of Departments, had been recently recruited from the UK or USA. This gave strength to this curriculum ‘divide’. Putnis (Putnis, 1986) describes this divide as the competing ‘Anglo-European and American paradigms’ (see also Lewis, 1982). The Anglo-European model emphasised Marxist-influenced critique: cultural studies, structuralism, linguistics and semiotics. The American model was more positivist and empiricist in its approach and more embedded in individualism. In the newer institutions these Heads of Department were also able to put a particular stamp on their Departments in a way that was not possible in the more established universities. Although this central tension was to be played out differently after the re-organisation of the higher education sector that took place after 1987 it appears to remain one of the central unresolved tensions in the field. It helps give the field what has been described as its peculiarly ‘amorphous contours’ (Craig & Carlone, 1998). Some of those interviewed for this study, for example, tended to see this tension as basically irreconcilable at the theoretical level and, therefore, tended to see ‘Business Communications’ as necessarily sitting outside the ‘discipline’ Communication and Media Studies if this ‘discipline’ was to strengthen its position in the university.

The Unified National System In 1987 the Hawke Labour Government introduced the ‘Unified National System’. This saw the abandonment of the binary system established in 1964 and the rationalisation of the system from 85 separate higher education institutions down to 37 universities. In relation to Communication Studies, one commentator notes that: As an outcome of these changes, together with realisation of the interest shown in the new field by students, communication studies’ offerings were expanded, and communication was introduced into many of the older universities which only a few years earlier had vigorously resisted it. These changes, in combination, also set the stage for the development of postgraduate work as the new universities and older ones which had now adopted communication sought to build graduate student profiles and research profiles (Irwin, 1998 p. 275).

The change of government in 1996 did not radically alter policy trends set in place by the previous Labour government. The Coalition government has continued a process of restructuring higher education aimed at both accommodating an expanded student population and reducing reliance on public expenditure. To quote Irwin again: The bottom line is establishing structures and operating mechanisms to do more with much less public funding (Irwin, 1998 p. 276).

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The Unified National System marks a significant ‘moment’ in the history of Australian higher education in general and Communication Studies in particular. This policy change marked a cultural shift away from a view of university education as reserved for an elite—albeit a meritocratic elite—towards a view of it as another level of mass education. Mass education, as universities were to find over the next decade, requires a greater range of curriculum offerings to accommodate the new range of student backgrounds, abilities, and occupational destinations. Older universities came to see their lack of communication and media studies courses as a gap in their overall portfolio of offerings. The policy change also marked a new recognition, on the part of governments, of the importance to the national economy of the information and communication revolution and a belief in the need to prepare more graduates with skills in the new technologies (this particular ‘driver’ of change is examined more closely in Section 2 of this report). Amalgamation also brought a raft of college of advanced education and institute of technology developed courses, usually highly vocational in flavour, into the university sector. For example, Monash University in incorporating the former Gippsland College of Advanced Education, attained a significant position, plus resources, in Communication and Media Studies. Particularly in the newly amalgamated institutions, Communication and Media Studies were well placed to fill the new demand for ‘vocationally relevant’ courses, particularly in re-structured Arts Faculties. This push for greater ‘vocational relevance’ was a major curriculum issue throughout the 1990s. But ‘relevance’ is a highly unstable and contested concept. What was seen as ‘vocationally relevant’ at the start of the 1990s may, in the next decade, no longer match labour market requirements or student interests and concerns. This is particularly so in a period of dynamic economic and technological change. This creates particular issues for higher education institutions in relation to technology infrastructure and the high cost of 'cutting edge' technologies. At the structural level the process of amalgamation, coming as it did after more than a decade of discipline dispute played out around the ‘Anglo-European’ and ‘American’ paradigms, resulted in some painful mergers at the Departmental level. As one Head of Department described the situation in interview: Communication Studies in many Australian universities is a whole set of shot-gun weddings. Like all such relationships some have worked out well, others are less successful.

These ‘shot-gun weddings’ help explain the great diversity and range of course offerings, and their spread across a range of discipline areas, that we see emerging during the 1980s and that have expanded into the extensive range of study options currently on offer.

First survey of the field: 1989 Just at the point when the old binary system had been replaced by the new structures introduced by the Unified National System the first survey of the Communication and Media Studies field in Australia was undertaken by the Queensland University of Technology, one of the leading providers of courses in 7


the field (Molloy & Lennie, 1990). This study provides a valuable snapshot of the area at the end of the 1980s and therefore provides a useful point of comparison and departure for this study. Molloy and Lennie report the results of a survey, conducted in 1989, of full-time staff, numbers of students, and courses on offer. Results were based on 48 responses received from a total of 67 questionnaires sent out to 33 institutions. From this data Molloy and Lennie (p7) were able to sketch the following picture: •

Over 26,000 undergraduate students were studying Communication with most (76%) taking Bachelor of Arts courses;

•

There were some 1400 post graduate students, with 64% undertaking Graduate Diploma courses;

•

A total of 590 full time (or equivalent) staff were identified as teaching Communication Studies, with 54% of these employed at lecturer level, 31% Senior Lecturer and above, and 15% below the lecturer level;

•

Male staff members outnumbered females 2:1 (68% male; 32% female). At the level of professor this ratio grew to 13:2 and, at the levels below lecturer, the ratio reversed to more like 1:4; and,

•

Forty-nine subject areas were identified as being located within Communication Studies.

Molloy and Lennie encountered difficulties categorising Communication Studies subjects and reported that a number of their respondents did not consider that they taught Communication Studies. Even so, for the purposes of their analysis, they identified five ‘main groups of inputs’ and arranged their 49 identified subjects into seven major categories. The ‘main groups of inputs’ (p11) were: •

Communication Theory

•

Communication Application Subjects

•

Business Subjects

•

Arts and Humanities Subjects

•

Social Science Subjects.

The seven categories became: •

Communication Professions (with 11 identified subjects)

•

Communication Management (with 10 subjects)

•

Social and Cultural Communication (with 6 subjects)

•

Language and Literary Studies (with 5 subjects)

•

Communication Applications and Skills (with 9 subjects)

•

Media Studies (with 4 subjects)

•

Other Areas (with 4 subjects).

Not surprisingly, this categorisation met with some dissent from those working in the field and the problem of the definition of the discipline boundaries has 8


remained a heavily contested and problematic one. In this study we have used DETYA course classifications. As we will see later in the report this solves some problems of definition. However, it still leaves some issues of classification unresolved. From their survey Molloy and Lennie (p 8) were able to conclude of Communication Studies at the end of the 1980s that: •

Communication Studies comprised a large and rapidly expanding field of study in terms of student numbers and institutions offering courses;

•

A wide variety of subject areas were offered within the field but no formal consensus existed as to either the categories or the subjects located within those categories;

•

The majority of teaching staff was male;

•

Student enrolments suggested that student demand was high and increasing;

•

A potential oversupply of graduates was likely in certain areas, especially Journalism; and,

•

Postgraduate activity was increasing in terms of numbers of courses, institutions offering courses and student enrolments.

Because Molloy and Lennie based their survey on subjects rather than courses offered in the field they found very high rates of participation—an estimated total of over 26,764 students undertaking Communication Studies (p15). This aggregation proved unhelpful in establishing a clear picture of the areas of concentration and specialisation. The Australian National University, an institution not known for its interest in this field, reported that they had 1251 undergraduate students taking Communication Studies courses in 1990—but this number represented the total number of students taking the BA degree within the English Department at that university! Similarly, Queensland University of Technology reported 1400 Communication Studies students but noted that this was probably the total number of students undertaking the Bachelor of Business degree, of which communication studies was a ‘service’ course component. In this study we have used DETYA student statistics to report student enrolments. We asked survey respondents to report on courses only, not on individual subjects. As a result, student numbers appear lower than those reported by Molloy and Lennie. The extent to which communication is taught as a service subject in other areas of the university is not part of this present study. It could be argued that the lesser importance given to communication as a ‘service area’ in this report reflects the growing maturity of the field and the strength of its standing in the university community. Molloy and Lennie also note concern in relation to possible oversupply in certain specialisations such as Journalism. This concern reflects projections based on assumptions of a stable labour market for graduates. However, as the 1990s were to show, the labour market for graduates, particularly in the ICT industries, was anything but stable and the range of career paths and occupations for graduates with specialist training and credentials did not remain limited to traditional roles or locations.

9


Discussion and summary This brief sketch of the development of Communication and Media Studies over the past 30 years sets the scene for the statistical picture of the field presented later in this report. It points to some of the central drivers of change and the issues these changes have brought with them, including: •

Structural change, especially the introduction of the Unified National System, as a major driver of change.

•

The problem of establishing coherent discipline boundaries in the field while at the same time maintaining curriculum diversity and innovation.

•

The problem of curriculum design: how, for example, is a balance to be struck between vocational preparation and general education?

•

The question of ‘relevance’ and the related question of graduate outcomes and destinations. In the early years much of the institutional support for an expansion of courses in the field rested on a perception that they were ‘vocationally relevant’. However, the issue of ‘relevance’ can only be addressed in the context of relevant to whom, and for what purpose(s). In an emerging and dynamic field, one that is training graduates for occupations in a changing labour market, this issue of relevance is a complex and contested one. Until more is known about the ways in which study in this field translates into ‘valueadded’ for graduates, both in occupational terms and in terms of other ‘life course’ outcomes, questions of ‘relevance’ (and relevant for whom) cannot be adequately addressed.

Note Much of the analysis in this section is drawn from interview material provided by a number of academics in the field who participated in interviews held during the annual conference of the Australian & New Zealand Communication Association held in Ballina, NSW, 3-5 July 2000. Those who participated in the interviews were: Marsha Durham Then President of ANZCA/University of Western Sydney. Greg Hearn

Queensland University of Technology

Denis Cryle

University of Central Queensland

Graeme Turner

University of Queensland

Liz Jacka

University of Technology, Sydney

Neil Richardson University of Waikato, NZ.

10


The global revolution in ICT In this section we attempt to place Communication and Media Studies in the context of global change for it is at the level of the changes in information and communication technology that we need to look to understand much of the dynamic that has driven this area forward over the past two decades. In addition, although ‘globalisation’ implies change at the meta-level of world events, these changes are played out as lived experience at the local and regional level. Global and local are two sides of the same coin.

Living through a period of ‘multiple revolutions’ In their book Living on the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism Hutton and Giddens (2000, p.213) describe globalisation as a set of ‘multiple revolutions’ that touch our lives in multiple ways. With echoes of Charles Dicken’s novel set in very different revolutionary times, they write: We live in a period of multiple revolutions. We witness extraordinary technological change centred on digitalisation, information technology and extending into biotechnology. New global capital markets have a reach, liquidity and speculative capacity that is unparalleled. The changing role of women, no longer confined to old stereotypes, is the source of tension and opportunity in the developed and less developed world alike. The risks confronting the global environment are on a scale and have a degree of uncertainty that is again unprecedented. Inequality of income and wealth, both within countries and between the developed and less developed world, has increased. And uniting all these trends is the vigour of the global market economy seeking more ruthlessly to increase the returns to shareholders. This in turn has generated another revolution: the emergence of glut and low inflation. Productive capacity and the size of the world labour market now far outstrip demand, sustained on a global basis very largely by American consumer spending. All these phenomenon co-exist and reinforce each other. Together they both drive and result from the processes we call globalisation. It is both a glorious and a frightening time 1.

No-one who has lived through the past two decades has been left untouched by these ‘multiple revolutions’. While some of the trends identified—such as the changing role of women—have trajectories much longer than the past couple of decades, others—such as the phenomenal take-up of computerisation and the 1

Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities, set at the time of the French Revolution, opens with the words: ‘It was the worst of times; it was the best of times’. 11


deregulation of financial markets—grew apace during this period. Manuel Castells (2000, p.53) nominates 27 October 1987 as his ‘symbolic event’ that marks the new era of global financial markets. On this date the City of London deregulated its capital and securities markets. He points out that new technology ‘was crucial both in allowing quasi-instantaneous trading world-wide, and in managing the new complexity brought in by deregulation and financial ingenuity’. His nominated date reminds us of how recent, and how fluid and dynamic, the events revolutionising our world are. And these multiple revolutions are not events that happen ‘out there’. Changes in the way capital is mobilised, for example, has effects on the way labour is mobilised and utilised—how jobs are structured, how lives are lived. Nor do institutions remain untouched. As we have all witnessed in the past two decades, in both public and private institutions there has been massive relocation of resources as the infrastructure, hardware and software for the new technologies has been put in place. There has also been massive restructuring, redeployment and displacement of human resources.

Structural change in the university sector As we saw in Section 1, Irwin, in his overview of the development of Communication and Media Studies, pointed to one manifestation of this ‘sea of change’ in the Australian higher education sector when he identified 1987, and the introduction of the Unified National System, as a significant point of departure. Marginson & Considine (2000, p.57) provide a set of figures that emphasise the magnitude of the changes in higher education in the decade following the introduction of the Unified National System. These are reproduced here as Table 2.1. Table 2.1

Some changes in Australian higher education: 1998 compared to 1987 1987

1998

393,734

671,853

Number of government-funded institutions

72

41

Average number of students per institution

5,469

16,796

Number of international students

17,248

72,183

Number of higher degree students (Masters and doctorate)

27,968

87,978

Proportion of all funds from government (%)

85

55

2

15

Number of enrolled students in Australian higher education

Proportion of all funds from fees and charges (%) *Includes 37 comprehensive universities (average size 18 601 t d t ) 12

d4

ll i tit ti

*


601 students) and 4 small institutions. Sources: Various Commonwealth Government education agencies; for 1998 data, the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA)

13


As Marginson & Considine (p.56) point out every aspect of university provision underwent rapid and radical change in the decade from 1987 to 1998. Following amalgamation the number of institutions fell from 60 universities and colleges to 37 large-scale universities. At the same time, not only did the number of students in higher education expand rapidly there was also a change in the composition of the student body. Between 1987 and 1998 the proportion of women students rose from 50.1 to 54.7 per cent, and there was a relative growth in older students and the proportion of students enrolled in distance education mode. Post-graduate numbers expanded in both research higher degrees and vocational programs. Funding structures underwent an even greater change. The proportion of the total funding on higher education derived from governments fell from 85 per cent in 1987 to 54 per cent in 1997. In short, more students moved into the higher education sector. Many were full fee paying international students—educations’ new globalised ‘cash crop’. Many more were domestic students. Ironically, this expansion of student numbers occurred during a period in which Australian higher education moved from being a system free of tuition charges to one where undergraduate students, and some postgraduates, paid part of their tuition through a deferred and income-contingent debt under the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS). From 1996 changes to HECS have made it significantly more cost effective to pay the fees ‘up front’ and, according to Marginson & Considine (p.57), by 1997 the annual HECS obligation constituted more than 100 per cent of the actual costs of provision in some courses—for example, in undergraduate law. Marginson & Considine (p.57) argue that many students in Australian universities now incur higher charges than their counterparts in the American state university sector. How are we to understand the apparently contradictory outcome that, at the time that spending on universities was increasingly shifted from the public domain to the private (especially to individual parents and students), and the number of institutions was cut by almost half, the number of students in higher education almost doubled over one decade? The explanation appears to lie, at least in part, in the actual and perceived changes in the labour market brought about by technologically-driven restructuring.

Structural change in the labour market The introduction of the Unified National System was part of a wider attempt on the part of the then Labour Commonwealth Government to restructure the Australian economy. This policy initiative had many competing drivers, including the falling value of the agricultural and mineral commodities that had traditionally underpinned Australian prosperity. There was a perception that, if Australia was to remain competitive in the new global economy, it needed to restructure its economic base. To do this it needed to join the ICT revolution. It needed, in the words of the then Minister for Education and Training John Dawkins, to become ‘the clever country’. Education and training was to be central to this new national development program. Along with the policy changes that heralded in the Unified National System came rhetorical and ideological changes that addressed education and training in much 14


more instrumentalist terms. There was greater rhetorical emphasis on the need for education and training providers to demonstrate the vocational relevance of their courses, exemplified in the shift away from the notion of students as learners towards that of students as consumers of educational services. There was, as Marginson (1997) points out, a shift away from the perception of education and training as a public good to that of a privatised commodity (or ‘positional good’). Education and training was to be geared to the ‘enterprise economy’ not to civil society. These policy and rhetorical changes reflected the reality of changes in the labour market. There were rising levels of youth unemployment and underemployment as traditional routes into employment pathways began to change. The traditional characteristics of full-time and tenured work began to slip, at first among manual workers but rapidly spreading to other workers as industries and businesses restructured around new work orders made possible by the introduction of new technologies. At the same time the part-time and casualised sectors of the labour market expanded rapidly as employment provisions and trading hours were deregulated and service and hospitality sectors expanded. Cully (1999), using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (which ranks occupations by skill level), mapped employment growth between 1993 and 1999. His findings are reproduced here as Table 2.2. Cully found significant employment growth had occurred both at the top of the employment scale (the managerial and professional) and for the low paid jobs at the bottom. But it should be noted that the so-called low-skilled jobs were not necessarily being taken up by low-skilled workers. As a high proportion of these jobs were part-time and casualised work in the expanding retail and service sectors they were increasingly filled by students and mature-aged workers, particularly women with family responsibilities. Occupations in the ‘middle’ appeared to be undergoing considerable contraction. One of the responses of governments to this changing labour demand that accompanied structural changes in the economy was to adopt policies that encouraged higher retention and participation in all sectors of post-compulsory education. There was increasing evidence that the jobs available for early school leavers and manual workers (the actual low skilled) were disappearing as heavy manual work was replaced by new technologies and the number of jobs in manufacturing, heavy industry, mining and agriculture declined. This put pressure on governments to adopt policies to encourage young people to stay at school beyond the compulsory leaving age. At the same time, there was increasing pressure on young people to continue into tertiary education to gain the skills and credentials that would take them out of the casualised and part-time retail and service sector (the secondary labour market) and into the more permanent and better paid tertiary labour sector. This, along with the amalgamation of CAE’s and TAFE institutes, brought large numbers of ‘first generation’ university students into the system and increased the demand for ‘alternative’ curriculum offerings. Communication Studies, with its vocationallyoriented and ‘relevant’ courses proved popular with this new intake of students, particularly young women as they there more likely to have undertaken similar course profiles in their final years of secondary schooling. Research by Richard Teese demonstrates subject choice in upper secondary schooling is highly 15


Table 2.2

Changes in employees and employment shares by occupation and skill level Australia 1993 to 1999 Employees

Skill

band

Employment share

1993

1999

Change

1993

1999

(000s)

(000s)

%

%

%

1 Managers and administrators

362.9

397.7

9.6

5.7

5.4

Professionals

1069.4

1406.1

31.5

16.9

18.9

Total

1432.3

1803.8

25.9

22.6

24.3

+1.7

2 Associate Professionals

641.2

740.5

15.5

10.1

10.0

-0.1

3 Tradespersons

836.8

887.5

6.1

13.2

12.0

326.5

318.7

-2.4

5.2

4.3

1163.3

1206.2

3.7

18.4

16.2

1190.1

1385.7

16.4

18.8

18.7

Intermediate production and transport workers

600.9

675.1

12.3

9.5

9.1

Total

1791

2060.8

15.1

28.3

27.7

625.7

848

35.5

9.9

11.4

684.5

767.4

12.1

10.8

10.3

Total

1310.2

1615.4

23.3

20.7

21.8

All employees

6337.9

7426.7

17.2

Advanced clerical and service workers Total 4 Intermediate clerical and service workers

5 Elementary clerical, sales and service workers Labourers and related workers

Change

-2.1

-0.5

+1.1

Source:Cully, Mark (1999). A more or less skilled workforce? Changes in the Occupational composition of Employment 1993 to 1999. Australian Bulletin of Labour, 25(2) June.

structured around gender and class lines (Teese et al., 1995). Although there is no research data to support the view that these structures have carried through into higher education once the system was opened up to ‘massification’ it would be

16


surprising if the pattern established in the secondary years was not carried through into undergraduate course choice. For all tertiary education students—both those with ‘traditional’ course trajectories that led into university studies and the ‘new generation’ students—the graduate labour market was seen to be changing rapidly. The traditional ‘mass professional’ areas for graduates—such as public administration, teaching, nursing, and social work were clearly contracting. To give just one small example: in Victoria, in 1992, 240 schools were closed, almost one in five teaching positions removed from the pubic sector, and expenditure reduced by $300 million over a fifteen month period (Marginson, 1997 p.64). The growth areas for graduates appeared to be in the ‘sunrise’ industries closely implicated in the new areas of economic activity: in accounting and other financial management and in all forms of ICT use, from word processing to systems engineering, to ‘multimedia’ production. Needless to say, Communication courses and Media Studies became high-demand courses. One side-effect of the restructuring within institutions that the amalgamations brought with it was the need to absorb and redeploy large numbers of former CAE teacher educators and other liberal arts staff. Many of these former CAE academics had previously been preparing students for professional occupations in the public sector—such as teachers, librarians, social workers, and public administrators. Demand for new recruits in these areas was declining. Faced with the problem of redeploying staff many Department Heads found in Communication Studies a viable and effective solution—a fortuitous coming together of student demand and institutional need.

Graduate occupations in a globalised economy That graduate occupations are changing in Australia is evident at the anecdotal level but there are few research studies that show how this is actually playing out within occupational domains as dynamic as those in communication and media. Data such as that shown in Table 2.2 illustrate changes across generalised occupational categories but there is very little research done on the ways the ICT revolution is fracturing and reshaping work within specific professional locations. One American study that looks at this reshaping in relation to graduate librarian positions is that undertaken by Cronin, Stiffler & Day (Cronin et al., 1993). Although the study was carried out in the early part of the 1900s the trends they identify are not likely to have abated given the continuing expansion of electronic information management and retrieval in the ensuring period. And while it is dangerous to extrapolate from American studies to the Australian context some aspects of their analysis ring true with anecdotal evidence here and suggest some interesting directions for further investigation. The purpose of the Cronin, Stiffler & Day study was to produce a sketch map of the emergent market in both the state of Indiana and nationally for information management graduates. The study looked at advertisements for positions in the field over an 18 month period, conducted interviews with employers and employees, and conducted a mail survey of Indiana University School of Library and Information Science graduates.

17


Cronin and his colleagues argue that the current market for information professionals can be seen as having three layers: the heartland, the hinterland, and the horizon. The heartland can be defined in terms of traditional library or information-management locations, largely staffed and managed by graduates of library and information science programs. The research team found that their 18 month monitoring of advertised positions indicated that very few positions were available to newly qualified graduates wishing to commence careers in the ‘heartland’. Of the 59 Indiana-based positions identified: When background and qualifications are taken into account there were only eleven positions a minimally experienced liberal arts undergraduate MLS [Master of Library Studies] holder could credibly apply for within Indiana. Forty-two of the positions required experience beyond that which a student could obtain (p.7)2.

The hinterland, on the other hand, cannot be defined by institutional location: This is the world of libraries-without-walls and distributed information systems, where disciplinary pedigree and professional affiliation matter less than perceived competence and adaptability. Here, diverse groups, ranging from information systems analysts through information scientists to communication specialists, happily co-exist and inhabit a wide array of occupational niches (p.2).

Unlike the heartland, for which library qualifications provide the entry point into an established career path, the hinterland is more ‘open’ in terms of entry points, with personal characteristics and aptitudes, as well as past experience and specialised knowledge, counting heavily: In the great majority of cases, experience was a prerequisite of employment. Openings in the non-traditional sector do not appear to be targeted at entry-level professionals lacking experience (p.6).

At the same time, the hinterland is characterised by a high degree of diversity and the ‘portmanteau labels of ‘librarian’ and ‘information specialist’ have splintered dramatically to reflect the pluralistic character of the marketplace’ (p.6). The researchers provide what they claim is an abbreviated list that gives a flavour of the kinds of position titles they identified. This list highlights the openness of this one occupational field. Their list includes: Data Specialist; Computer Network Specialist; Market Information Analyst; Information Centre Analyst; Director of Management Information; Information Scientist; Media Systems Supervisor; Information Technology Specialist; Director/Developer of Information Systems; Research Coordinator/Archive Manager; Manager of Information Services…Communication Director; Legal Documents Indexers; Network Support Specialist; Director of Graphic Reproductions; Microfilm Specialist (p.7).

The hinterland is also the most ‘open’ in terms of range of occupational location and status. The researchers cite examples where secretaries or clerical workers had replaced qualified librarians in organisations where data searchers were central as well as high-paid ‘information brokers’. This points to the possibility of deskilling within these occupations as well as the potential for rewards for skills, enterprise, and experience. 2

Page references for Cronin, et al, refer to electronic version of document.

18


Finally, the third layer this research identifies is the horizon: The third layer, the horizon, is the natural habitat of software engineers, business computing specialists, and telecommunications managers, whose focus tends to be the hardware or systems components, rather than information content and packaging’ (p.2).

Those who occupy this layer, even more than the hinterland, are unlikely to have entered the profession through the traditional pathway. If they undertake university studies in the field it is likely to be to consolidate their position and standing in the field rather than as a point of entry. These are the high-flyers, high-earners (the ‘gold-collar’ workers) and the entrepreneurs in the field. Business ‘savvy’ as well as subject expertise is essential here. What can we draw from this study? Assuming Australian communication and media related professions are developing similarly ‘layered’ career structures to those identified by Cronin and his colleagues, we can make the following observations: •

Traditional professional and semi-professional locations are not only changing in terms of their location vis-à-vis other occupational groups but are restructuring internally. This has implications for those designing education programs both at the undergraduate level (entry-level programs) and for postgraduate courses designed to attract existing practitioners.

•

In the area of communication and media-related occupations, including information management, it would be expected that occupational locations within these fields would be highly dynamic given the emergent nature of these fields.

•

Given the wide range of non-traditional occupational locations professionals are now occupying, universities may have to ‘market’ their courses differently to ensure that potential students are better able to assess the value of the course in relation to their particular career goals.

•

The provision of alternative pathways into professional studies, and recognition of prior experience, may become increasingly important for universities wishing to increase the participation of those already in ‘hinterland’ and ‘horizon’ locations in professional studies courses.

•

Assumptions about pathways into careers for graduates may need to be questioned if it is true that there are not as many career pathways into traditional (‘heartland’) locations for young graduates as there have been in the past. Strategies, such as encouraging students to undertake work-placements in non-traditional locations during their studies, may need to be developed or further extended.

•

Curriculum development needs to remain diverse, dynamic and open given that entry points and career trajectories are that way. This makes questions of ‘vocational relevance’ of courses, at both the undergraduate and postgraduate/professional studies levels, highly problematic. How can education programs be ‘vocationally relevant’ when occupations are 'splintering dramatically to reflect the pluralist character of the marketplace'?

19


•

There are also resource implications for universities, especially those who have invested heavily in ICT infrastructure in the past. Rapid change in technology can mean that infrastructure becomes obsolete fairly quickly. As we see later in this report this is a major problem for the large 'production-oriented' providers in Australia. It also puts these providers at a relative disadvantage when new players enter the field.

•

Finally, and most importantly, there is obviously a need to better understand the ways in which professional occupations are being reshaped within this field. Research into this area is needed, along with the development of better monitoring of student outcomes and destinations. This monitoring needs to include longitudinal studies that capture the career trajectories as well as the entry points.

Discussion & summary This section has attempted to locate the development of Communication and Media Studies in the larger frame of the economic restructuring that is captured by the termed ‘globalisation’. The central point is that globalisation is not a disembodied process that takes place in some abstracted domain known as ‘The Economy’. It is sets of processes, driven forward by new technologies but enacted locally by people striving to accommodate the emerging circumstances they find themselves in. In this context the ICT revolution is a central driver of curriculum innovation in universities generally and in this field in particular. New technologies have enabled a massive restructuring of economic activity and, therefore, of the labour market, including graduate occupations. This process is by no means complete in either the sense of being finished or in the sense of being a total transformation. New occupational roles now exist alongside occupational roles developed in earlier periods. Traditional librarians co-exist, for example, with ‘information brokers’ and ‘information analysts’, traditional journalists co-exist alongside e-journalists and web-site managers. In such a fluid and dynamic environment how are universities to navigate a path? To do this they need to ask new sets of questions: about their student populations; about the kinds of employment locations they are preparing these students for; and about the kinds of skills, knowledge, and understandings that will best equip these students to take up opportunities which may not even exist at the time they undertake their studies. To help address these questions curriculum planners need better information about the actual career trajectories of their students and the middle to long term outcomes for students of the courses of study they undertake. In such ‘open’ environments curriculum planners also need to be able to maintain diversity and innovation in the system. How this can be done in a period of increasing student enrolments and decreasing resources remains the central conundrum facing those who work in the emerging ‘post-modern’ university.

20


21


The growth in student demand: 1989-1999 Growth in Communication and Media Studies in Australian universities over the past decade has been impressive: a three-fold increase over the period from 1989 to 1999. In this section we sketch the parameters of this growth.

DETYA student statistics The data used in this section were drawn from DETYA student statistics. To academics in particular institutions the data may not appear to reflect the actual situation ‘on the ground’. This is because Communications and Media studies—as a multi-disciplinary field—can be categorised in a number of ways. These different categories are explained below. It should also be noted that, from 2001, DETYA is introducing a new classification system for its statistical collection, based on a cross-sectoral ‘Field of Education’ framework developed jointly with the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Nevertheless, counting enrolments in Communications and Media studies will always be more complex than counting students in more traditional disciplines, because of the multi-disciplinary context of this field. There are two types of data reported in this section: •

Data on Communication and Media Studies Courses; and

•

Data on Subjects in Communications.

Data on Communication Courses are reported to the DETYA classification as ‘030206 Communications’ within the broad Field of Study 03 Humanities and Social Science. The sub-field, ‘030206 Communication’ is defined as follows: Courses that provide, or further develop the abilities of, individuals with an understanding of the creation, transmission and evaluation of messages; to apply the techniques of selecting, combining, arranging and disseminating through the mass media, information about current events and issues. Principal subject matter usually includes some of the following: Current affairs; International organisation; political science; place of press in modern society; journalism; news reporting; editorial practice and policy; ethics of mass communication; government control of mass media; broadcasting techniques; art and craft of radio and television production; script writing

(DETYA Higher Education Statistics Collection)

We report student load within Communication Courses in Figure 3.1. Data on Subjects refer to subjects in Communications undertaken by students in all courses, such as Bachelor of Business, Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Law 22


degrees—as well as Communication subjects within Communication and Media studies courses. Subjects in Communication and Media studies courses that are not Communication subjects (ie. subjects in Law or Political science) would not be included in this data collection. Data on Subjects are reported to the DETYA classification as ‘0106 Communication Studies’ within the broad Discipline Group ‘01 Humanities’. The sub-discipline ‘0106 Communication Studies’ is defined as follows: Subject matter dealing with the principles and methods of gathering, processing, evaluating and disseminating through mass media, information about events and issues. Examples of units coded to this discipline include: journalism; professional writing; and media studies. (DETYA Higher Education Statistics Collection).

Student load in the Communication subjects is reported in Figure 3.2. The fact that the level of student participation in Communication subjects is about 20 per cent higher than in Communication courses indicates the extent to which subjects in Communication are taught in other courses. This is illustrated in Figure 3.5. At the same time, Communications subjects comprise only 49 per cent of the total subjects offered in Communication courses, as indicated in Figure 3.4. The main limitation of the DETYA data collection for our purposes is that subjects in Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing are not classified under ‘0106 Communication Studies’. Subjects in Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing are reported to the DETYA classification ‘0903 Commerce, Sales, Service’ within the broad Discipline Group ‘09 Administration, Business, Economics Law’. This poses two problems: first is the question of whether subjects in Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing are wrongly classified as studies in Commerce rather than studies in Communication. This classification remains the same in the new ‘Field of Education’ Framework to be implemented in 2001. As this framework was developed during two years of public consultations, it may be difficult to change the classification of Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing in the near future. The second problem is that it is impossible to distinguish between enrolments in Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing and enrolments in subjects such as Real Estate, Finance, Insurance, Trading, Investment and Hospitality and Tourism—all of which are included in the sub-discipline ‘0903 Commerce, Sales and Service’. Thus when we identify that 10 per cent of the units offered within Communication Courses are in Administration, Business, Economics, Law—as shown in Figure 3.4—we do not know how many of these units are in Public Relations and Advertising. The distinction between data relating to courses and data relating to subjects should be kept in mind when interpreting the tables and figures in this section. The limitation of the DETYA data collection in regard to enrolments in Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing should also be recognised.

23


Growth The university sector expanded rapidly in the decade following the introduction of the Unified National System in 1989. In the area of Communication and Media Studies there was steady growth in student enrolments throughout the decade. Growth in equivalent full-time student units (EFTSU) in Communication courses is illustrated in Figure 3.1. Figure 3.1

Student load (EFTSU) in Communication courses

12,000

10,000

8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

0 1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

YEARS

1989 to 1999 Source:DETYA Higher Education Statistics Collection. Notes: based on EFTSU for students in Field of Study 030206 Communications, May Census 1999. Totals will be lower than student load for Discipline Group 0106 Communication Studies, as Field of Study refers to Communications Courses, not subjects.

There has been enrolment growth at all levels, although undergraduate students in Bachelor’s degree programs dominated Communication and Media Studies courses. Enrolments in postgraduate courses increased significantly over the ten years from a low base. By 2000 overall student load had increased to 13,710 EFTSU (an 11.3 per cent increase over 1999). Eighty per cent of postgraduate students in Communications and Media Studies were in coursework programs such as Masters degrees, Graduate Diplomas and Graduate Certificates. The rest were in research programs at the Masters or Doctoral level. The breakdown between undergraduate and postgraduate studies over the decade is illustrated in Table 3.1.

Institutions offering Communication courses The number of institutions offering courses in Communication and Media Studies also increased during the decade. By 1999 twenty-seven universities reported to DETYA that they offered courses in this field. The distribution of student 24


enrolments was not even across the 27 universities. Table 3.2 sets out the universities in order of the number of students recorded by DETYA as enrolled in Communication courses. It also indicates when particular institutions entered the field. As discussed later in this report there has been a further increase since 1999 in the number of universities offering courses in this field. Table 3.1

Student Load (EFTSU) in Communication and Media courses by level of course, 1989 to 1999

1999 Change

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

Postgraduate courses

201

339

396

385

420

518

531

675

869

887

940

368%

Postgraduate research

43

52

68

135

174

174

176

167

174

211

222

416%

Bachelor's degrees

3678

4207

4742

4532

4421

5020

5370

6349

7515

7371

8317

126%

Other undergrad.

25

28

47

150

190

222

192

300

324

329

377

1408%

TOTAL

3947

4626

5253

5202

5205

5934

6269

7491

8882

8798

9856

150%

Source:DETYA Higher Education Statistics Collection. Notes: Based on EFTSU for students in Field of Study 030206 Communications, May Census 1999. Totals will be lower than student load for Discipline Group 0106 Communication Studies, as Field of Study refers to Communications Courses, not subjects. Data include overseas students

Student enrolments: 1999 In 1999, according to DETYA statistics, 12,323 students were studying Communication and Media Studies courses in Australia. They were studying 258 courses, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, in 27 different institutions. The number of students studying at undergraduate level was 10,413 (or 84.5% of total enrolments). As a small proportion of students were studying communication courses part-time, in terms of equivalent full-time student units (EFTSU), student load in Communication and Media Studies courses was just below 10,000 EFTSU. Communication subjects have grown to become the largest area of the Humanities. As illustrated in Figure 3.2, Communication subjects had the highest student load of any discipline within the Humanities group. Overseas students in Communication subjects accounted for 1265 EFTSU at the undergraduate level and 318 at the post graduate level. Overseas enrolments accounted for 14 per cent of total student load, the highest of any discipline within the Humanities group.

25


Gender imbalance In 1999 female students dominated enrolments in Communication and Media Studies subjects. There were a total of 8726 female students enrolled, compared with 3597 males. As indicated in Figure 3.3 this is evident at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In 1999, of a total of 195 doctoral students, 108 were female, 87 male.

26


Table 3.2

Undergraduate enrolments in Communications courses by university, 1999

Year of

University

entry

Undergraduate Students

1995

Monash University

Pre-1991 Pre-1991

Edith Cowan University Queensland University of Technology

923 887

Pre-1991

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

729

Pre-1991

University of Western Sydney

693

Pre-1991 Pre-1991

University of Canberra Charles Sturt University

631 575

Pre-1991


542

Pre-1991

Macquarie University

432

1993

Griffith University

496

1992 Pre-1991

Deakin University Murdoch University

448 433

Pre-1991

University of Newcastle

400

1992

University of Southern Queensland

396

1997

University of New South Wales

356

1993

James Cook University of North Queensland

289

Pre-1991

Curtin University of Technology

283

1997

Central Queensland University

277

Pre-1991 Pre-1991

University of Queensland University of South Australia

259 243

1999

University of the Sunshine Coast

Pre-1991

University of New England

4

Pre-1991

Avondale College

4

1996 Pre-1991

Swinburne University of Technology Victoria University of Technology

0 0

1991

La Trobe University

0

1998

University of Adelaide

0

1994 Pre-1991

Southern Cross University University of Wollongong

0 0

TOTAL

1,060

53

10,413

Source:DETYA Higher Education Statistics Collection. Notes: Based on student enrolments in Field of Study 030206 Communications, May Census 1999. Data include overseas students. Year of entry is obtained from the year that enrolments were first reported in this category in the DETYA Higher education Statistics Collection.

27


Figure 3.2

Student load (EFTSU) in the Humanities discipline group 1999

14,000

12,000

O/seas

Students

10,000

Non-o/seas

8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

0 English

History

Philosophy

Ethnic/Area Studies

Languages other than English

Communication Religious Studies Other Humanities Studies

Sub-disciplines

Source:DETYA Higher Education statistics collection Notes: Based on Student Load (EFTSU) in the 01 Humanities Discipline Group May census 1999. Totals are higher than for students in Field of Study 030206 Communications, because EFTSU is reported for all subject enrolments in the Discipline Groups across all courses in all Fields of Study.

Subjects In 1999, subjects or units of study defined as ‘Communication studies’ comprised just under half (49 per cent) of all subject enrolments in Communication courses. Communication Studies is a sub-discipline of the Humanities that encompasses subjects associated with the traditional Communication and Media courses such as Journalism, Media Production and Creative Writing. The remaining (noncommunication) subjects that were taken by students in Communication courses were spread over five main discipline areas as illustrated in Figure 3.4. Humanities subjects were the largest discipline group, comprising 15 per cent of subject enrolments. English comprised 5 per cent of total subject enrolments, History 2 per cent, Philosophy 1 per cent, Ethnic/Area Studies 1 per cent and Languages Other than English 2 per cent. Five per cent of subjects were classified as ‘Other Humanities’. Visual and Performing Arts was the next largest group of subjects, comprising 12 per cent of total EFTSU in Communication courses. Eight per cent of total enrolments were in Arts subjects and 1 per cent were performing arts. Three per cent were in ‘Other Visual/Performing Arts’. Ten per cent of subjects were from the discipline group of Administration, Business, Economics and Law. Within this Discipline group, Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing subjects are classified under the sub-discipline ‘Commerce, sales and service’. This sub-discipline accounted for 5 per cent of all subject enrolments in Communication courses. Two per cent of subjects were in the sub-discipline of ‘Management, Administration’ and 2 per cent were in Law and legal studies subjects. 28


Figure 3.3

Student load (EFTSU) in Communication subjects by Gender, 1999

8000

U n d e rg ra d u a te P o s tg ra d u a te

7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0

M a le s

F e m a le s

Source:DETYA Higher Education statistics collection Notes: Based on Student Load (EFTSU) in the 01 Humanities Discipline Group May census 1999. Totals are higher than for students in Field of Study 030206 Communications, because EFTSU is reported for all subject enrolments in the Discipline Groups across all courses in all Fields of Study. Data include overseas students.

Figure 3.4

Disciplines offered within Communication courses 1999 Administration, Business, Economics, Law 10%

Other 1%

Visual/performing arts 12% Mathematics, computing 4%

Communication Studies 49%

Social Studies 9%

Humanities 15%

Sources:

DETYA Higher education statistics collection

29


Notes: Data refer to total EFTSU in subjects offered within Communication courses, broken down by broad Discipline group and sub-discipline. Data include overseas students.

Within the Social Studies Discipline group, 3 per cent of enrolments were in Sociology, 2 per cent were in Political Science/Government, 1 per cent were in Behavioural Sciences and 2 per cent were in ‘Other Social studies’. In Mathematics and Computing—subjects which accounted for only 4 per cent of enrolments in Communications courses—2 per cent of total studies were in the sub-discipline of ‘Computer-based information science’ and 1 per cent in ‘Mathematics, Statistics’. Figure 3.5 illustrates the distribution of Communication studies subjects across all courses. Communication studies is most often taught within courses in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Field of Study, which accounts for 75 per cent of all EFTSU in Communication subjects. The sub-field of Communications courses accounts for 39 per cent of total subject enrolments. Thirteen per cent of Communication subjects are taught in Business, Administration or Economics courses, and the remaining 13 per cent are spread thinly across all other fields of study as shown in Figure 3.5. Figure 3.5

Communication subjects: distribution across course

Business, Administration, Economics 13%

Other 13% Communications 39%

Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences 35%

areas, 1999 Sources:

DETYA Higher education statistics collection

Notes: Data refer to total EFTSU in the Communications Discipline group 0106 broken down by Field of Study and sub-field of study.

Summary According to DETYA statistics, 12,323 students were studying Communication and Media Studies courses in Australia in 1999. They were studying 258 courses, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, in 27 different institutions. Overseas enrolments accounted for 14 per cent of total student load, the highest of any sub-

30


discipline within the Humanities. Communication and Media Studies also had the highest student load within the humanities discipline groups. In 1999 there were 1,162 postgraduate students studying in the Communication and Media Studies field. Eighty per cent of these were in coursework programs. By 2000 the overall number of students studying in the field had risen to 13,710 (a growth of 11.3 per cent over 1999).

31


Courses on offer in Australian universities The expanding demand for Communication and Media Studies courses in Australian universities is demonstrated by the diverse range of courses and specialisations on offer. However, the field also displays many of the characteristics of the ‘paradox of diversity in conformity’ (Marginson & Considine, 2000) as well as a tension between the demand for ‘professionally relevant’ and ‘academically rigorous’ elements within, as well as between, courses, especially at the undergraduate level. In considering the survey data we also look at the complex and under-theorised issue of how much the field of Communication and Media Studies reflects the introduction of new forms of knowledge into the higher education system and how much it represents a ‘rebadging’ of older liberal arts knowledge frames.

Analysis of survey data A full list of the courses on offer in 2001 is set out as Appendix B.

Undergraduate courses

Our survey of institutions offering undergraduate Communication and Media Studies courses in 2001 identified 142 Bachelor degree courses on offer, in 28 public and 3 private institutions. Another 4 public and 1 private institution offered major Communication and/or Media Studies strands in their Bachelor of Arts courses. A number of respondents to our survey indicated that their institution had new courses under development or were undergoing a complete revamping of their course offerings in the field. No respondent indicated that course development in this field was being scaled back. Our initial research identified only five Australian universities that were not currently offering undergraduate-level courses in this field. These were: ANU, ACU, Adelaide, Flinders, and Western Australia. Contact with these five revealed that Adelaide and Western Australia intended introducing degree courses in the Communication and/or Media Studies fields in 2002/3.

32


Undergraduate specialisations

The specialisations identified are set out in Table 4.1. These specialisations are offered in courses with a variety of nomenclatures. For example, nine institutions reported offering Bachelor of Communication (Specialisation) degrees and 29 reported offering Bachelor of Arts (Specialisation) degrees. In addition: •

Bachelor of Business (Communication) degrees are offered in 6 institutions;

•

Two institutions reported offering Bachelor of Journalism degrees;

•

Bachelor of Media/Media Production/Media Studies were on offer in three institutions, and Bachelor of Multimedia was offered in three institutions;

•

A Bachelor of Applied Science, specialising in sports media, is offered at UC, while CSU offers a Bachelor of Sport & Recreation;

•

A Bachelor of Social Science (Communication) is currently offered at UQ and a Bachelor of International Communication at JCU;

•

Bachelor of Creative Arts and Bachelor of Design, with specialisations in Multimedia Design, are on offer in two institutions; and

•

Bond offers a Bachelor of Film and Television, while Griffith offers a Bachelor of Screen Production.

This array of course titles highlights the responsiveness of course developers to new demands in this expanding field but may also indicate that the field as a whole lacks coherent boundaries. Table 4.1

Communication and Media Studies specialisations in undergraduate courses

Journalism/eJournalism

Advertising

Creative Writing

Marketing

Professional Writing

Public Relations

Publishing

Organisational Communication

Broadcasting/Radio

Eco-communication

Sports Media

International Communication Mass communication/Public communication

Cultural Studies Social Inquiry

Librarianship

Media Studies

Information Studies/ Informatics

Cinema Studies

Corporate Information Management

Multimedia Studies Media Production

Communication Design

Multimedia (Production)

Graphic Design & New Media

33


Multimedia (Network and Computing)

Photomedia

Internet studies

On-line Media Production

Digital media (Production) Film, TV, and Video Production Source:Survey of Heads of Departments/Schools. Grouping determined by the authors

Double and combined degrees

Survey respondents reported a growing interest in Communication and Media Studies degrees as part of double degrees. Twenty-six double degrees were identified. Double degrees on offer in 2001 are set out in Table 4.2. It can be seen that Journalism is the specialisation most often combined with other disciplines— with Arts, Law, Business, Sport & Recreation, Tourism, Social Science, Science, Social Welfare, and Education. Communication (Multimedia/Media) is coupled with Computing, Science, Law, Business Administration, Tourism. Communication (Public Relations) and (Advertising/Marketing) are coupled with Law. Two institutions offer combined Arts and Science degrees. Sydney University offers a Bachelor of Arts (Informatics)—a joint program offered by the faculties of Arts and Science. Griffith University offers a 4 year Bachelor of Arts in Science Communication degree that combines a degree in Science with a degree in Arts majoring in either Screen Production or Print and Broadcast Journalism. The Griffith course is accredited by the Royal Australian Chemistry Institute and the Australian Institute of Physics.

Graduate certificates and diplomas

Thirty-seven courses were reported to be on offer at Graduate Certificate and 53 at Graduate Diploma level3. As one would expect these courses appear more specialised than undergraduate degrees. These courses are included in the list of courses on offer in 2001 set out in Appendix B.

Masters and professional doctorates

Sixty courses were reported to be on offer at Masters and Professional Doctorate level and many survey respondents saw this as the main area of future expansion.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Ten institutions reported offering Communication and/or Media Studies specialisations at this level. Specialisations includes: 3

A number of institutions reported offering Certificate or Diploma courses. One reported offering an ‘Associate Degree’. It is assumed that these are all undergraduate courses.

34


• • • • • • • •

Communication; Creative Writing; Cultural Studies; Media Studies/Media Arts; Visual Communication; Cinema Studies; Interactive Multimedia Technologies; and International Communication.

Table 4.2

Communication degrees offered as part of double degrees

Course Title

Duration

Institution

Bachelor of Administration (Tourism)/Bachelor of 4 years Journalism

James Cook University

Bachelor of Arts (Communication)/Bachelor of Computing

4 years

Monash

Bachelor of Arts (Communication)/ Bachelor of Science

4 years

Monash

Bachelor of Arts (Journalism)/Bachelor of Education

4 years

Monash

Bachelor of Arts (Journalism)/Bachelor of Science

4 years

Monash

Bachelor of Arts (Journalism)/Bachelor of Social Welfare

4 years

Monash

Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Journalism)/Bachelor of Law

5 years


Bachelor of Arts in Communication/Bachelor of Journalism

4 years


Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Journalism

4 years


Bachelor of Arts/Diploma of Advertising

2 years (88 weeks)

Macleay College

Bachelor of Arts/Diploma of Arts (Professional Writing & Editing)

3-1/2 years

University of Ballarat

Bachelor of Arts/Diploma of Journalism

2 years (88 weeks)

Macleay College

Bachelor of Business Administration/Bachelor of Professional Communication

4 years


Bachelor of Business/Bachelor of Journalism

4 years


Bachelor of Communication (Advertising/Marketing Communication)/Bachelor of Law

5 years

University of Canberra

Bachelor of Communication (Journalism)/Bachelor of Law

5 years

University of Canberra 35


Bachelor of Communication (Media/Multimedia 5 years Production)/Bachelor of Law


Bachelor of Communication (Media/Multimedia 5 years Production)/Bachelor of Law


Bachelor of Communication (Public Relations)/Bachelor of Law

5 years


Bachelor of Communication/ Bachelor of Tourism

4 years

Monash

Bachelor of Journalism/Bachelor of Arts

4 years


Bachelor of Journalism/Bachelor of Law

5 years


Bachelor of Journalism/Bachelor of Social Science

4 years


Bachelor of Media/Bachelor of Law

5 years


Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Arts in Science Communication

4 years

Griffith University

Bachelor of Sport & Recreation/Batchelor of Arts 4 years (Communication—Journalism)

Charles Sturt University

Source:Survey of Heads of Departments/Faculties

Spread of courses across institutions

Although 31 higher education institutions reported offering courses in 2001 these offerings ranged from two or three courses offered as part of Humanities Faculties in some institutions to major Departments in the institutions specialising in the provision of courses in this field. To add to the complexity, Communication and Media Studies in some institutions appear to be more weighted towards the study of media (the development of critical and analytical skills) while in others the weighting is more in favour of media production (the development of professional creative and technical expertise). This distinction (and more particularly the relative importance given to each area) can be hard for those outside the fieldincluding prospective studentsto fathom. In addition, there are clear distinctions in the orientation of courses in different institutions. In some there is a strong emphasis on the links between Communication and Media Studies and Liberal Arts—Creative Writing, Journalism, Critical Studies, Cinema Studies, Library Studies and all the production units connected to the production and management of media messages as art forms. In other institutions the main focus is on links with Business—Advertising, Public Relations, Administration. A number of institutions offer both, but in different discipline areas (in, for example, a Faculty of Arts and a Faculty of Business and Commerce). Some institutions are now also linking Communication and Media Studies with Science and new tertiary fields such as Tourism and Sport and Recreation. In the section of this report titled Curriculum models and contexts we explore this diversity further by providing some brief case studies of different curriculum models in place in Australian universities.

36


Discussion The data on the courses currently on offer indicates a healthy and dynamic field of study. Undergraduate courses are (or soon will be) on offer in all but three generalist higher education institutions in Australia and the number of specialisations within the field is broad. The expanding number of courses at Graduate Certificate and Graduate Diploma, Masters and Professional Doctorate levels indicates a strong demand for specialised post-graduate courses in vocationally-related areas. The growth in the number of double and combined degrees also suggests a strong demand for specialised vocation-related degrees. At the same time, there appears to be strong demand for the more traditional researchoriented specialisations in those institutions offering PhD studies in the field. However, although most higher education institutions offer courses this does not mean that this is a coherent and unified field with clearly delineated discipline boundaries. As can be seen from the areas of specialisation the field straddles Humanities, Social Science, Business, Science, and Art and Design discipline areas. The double degree offerings also suggest there is a growing demand for communication and media educated graduates with training in Law. In the past decade the field has grown far beyond providing ‘service’ units in these disciplines and has clearly become a significant field in its own right. However, the contours of this field are not at all clear and there are quite distinct curriculum models on offer (see next section). The questions that arise from the data on course provision can be grouped around the following three themes. These three themes are inter-related and are expressed here as: •


•

The tension between diversity and convergence in course offerings; and

•

The extent to which courses reflect the introduction of new knowledges into the university system or the ‘rebadging’ of old knowledges.

Practical and theoretical elements within degree courses

The debate over the most appropriate balance between so-called ‘practical’ and ‘theoretical’ elements of higher education has a long history. This debate has often been articulated in terms of the difference between ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing why’ and speaks to a long-established divide between ‘mind’ and ‘manual’. This tension also speaks to the different functions higher education serves—between, for example, preparing graduates for professional employment and preparing the next generation of researchers and academics; between teaching and developing new knowledge through research and scholarship. In recent years the changing demands placed on universities, particularly the increased ‘marketisation’ of the public education sector, have added new dimensions to this old debate.

37


The marketing of individual universities, and individual courses within universities, has become a more significant and prominent feature of Australian higher education. This has introduced a range of new tensions into the system. One of these is the homogenising effect: the extent to which all institutions come to offer courses that appear more like similar courses on offer in competing institutions in order to ensure wide market appeal and to remain competitive. As a result, identifying real differences in course offerings requires some close textual reading of the course nomenclatures and course descriptions. Here, for example, is a selection of course descriptors for general Bachelor of Arts (Communication) and Bachelor of Communication courses. These descriptors were taken from the various university web-sites (the emphasis is added): Combines theoretical studies in communication and media with practical studies in professional disciplines including film and television, journalism, public relations, advertising, and corporate communication (Bond). Develops communication skills in the context of a critical understanding of contemporary culture, communication practices and the media (CQU). Understanding of theories and a wide range of genres in print, nonprint and multimedia texts, and mastery of the new and emerging modes of communication. Students may choose to focus on multimedia, media and public relations, fiction and writing, and language and culture (UND). Liberal, humanistic and vocational education in human communication (SA).

These brief descriptors indicate that, nowadays, most institutions consider it prudent to promise both vocational ‘media-use’ training and a broad liberal education when marketing undergraduate courses. In these extracts ‘theoretical’ and ‘critical’ are counterpoised with ‘practical’ and ‘skills’. Words such as ‘professional disciplines’ and ‘corporate communication’ in the first extract clearly places this course as preparing graduates for the business world, and at a managerial (not technical) level. On the other hand, the word ‘genres’ in the third extract signals a critical studies approach. Many higher education institutions signal their distance from the technically trained through the use of the key words ‘professional’ and ‘management’: Prepares students to work professionally in the media and communication industries and for further study and research in the field (Newcastle).

As can be seen from the list of specialisations set out in Table 4.1 there is a growing trend for institutions to signal the specific focus of a course through the course nomenclature itself. This is extremely helpful to a generation of prospective students raised on web-searches and the use of key-words and terms. At the same time, however, it is interesting to note that while some specialisations—such as ‘Cultural Studies’ or ‘Media (Production)’ can be fairly easily identified as predominantly ‘critical’ or predominantly ‘production’ oriented, this distinction is not at all apparent in many of the courses listed (neither is it always clear from the course descriptions). In addition, as can be seen by our attempt to group course specialisations (Table 4.1), the boundaries of these groupings is not at all clear. Visual communications and aspects of multimedia 38


studies, for example, blur into each other and can be expected to be in flux for some time as new media technologies are introduced. Similarly, we have grouped ‘Sports Media’ with Journalism, and ‘Eco-communication’ with the Business Studies group—but this grouping could easily be reversed. We have placed the new ‘eJournalism’ with Journalism but it may well sit better with ‘Multimedia’ and ‘Internet Studies’. How much these groupings matter to prospective students is a matter that needs further investigation. Are students enrolling in courses with appropriate understanding of what the course incudes and what employment opportunities it can realistically open-up for them? Is there a gap between student expectations and aspirations and the actual offerings provided by some courses? Are undergraduate courses able to provide the level of actual ‘hands on’ ICT experience the course descriptors suggest in the course advertising or do resource constraints make these undergraduate courses more about the new communication and media technologies than experience with them, irrespective of course descriptions?

Diversity and convergence The diversity in the range of courses and specialisations on offer reflects the historical development of this field within each particular institution. In particular, the strength of Communication and Media Studies in some of the ‘new’ universitiescolleges of advanced education and institutes of technology prior to the introduction of the Unified National System in 1987has allowed those institutions to build on a strong base. Against this, however, we see that when the more traditional universities enter the field they are able to do so from a position of strength in that they can market themselves as providing degree courses that have both vocational relevance and status (by virtue of the prestige of the university and strengths in traditional disciplines). This comment from a respondent from one recent entrant to the field—Sydney University—captures this advantage well: Sydney University has a terrific track record in providing an excellent Humanities education and the BA (Media) allows students to take advantage of the full resources of the Faculty of Arts while gaining a vocationally specific degree.

The differences also reflect the geographic location and student demographic of particular institutions—there are significant differences between, for example, the offerings of public and private providers, or of large metropolitan universities and small regional ones. A number of the ‘new’ universities have strong geographical ties to their local communities and a tradition of vocationally-oriented courses. RMIT and the University of Technology, Sydney clearly have this orientation, as do several of the regional universities such as Canberra, and Charles Sturt (see next section for brief case studies that illustrate these differences). Senior management decisions made in each university in relation to responses to the introduction of the Unified National System and other change processes that have confronted universities in the past decade are also a strong factor in accounting for the different development pathways. Leadership at the Department/School level is another strong factor in accounting for differences. At Monash University, for example, a confluence of factors, including new strategic 39


policy directions set by senior management in combination with strong leadership at faculty level and the presence of an existing successful course developed in one of the regional campuses, and therefore able to be quickly adopted across a number of campuses, saw rapid growth in the field from the mid-1990s. At the same time, there are a number of factors that pull development towards convergence. Marginson & Considine (2000 p.175 ff), talking about the wider institutional problem for universities of the tendency for both diversification and homogenisation to take place at the same time, refer to the ‘paradox of diversity in conformity—and conformity in diversity’. They argue that ‘isomorphism’—that is, imitating behaviour or mimicking—has become a standard characteristic of Australian universities. We have already referred to one aspect of this—the marketing of courses—but, as Marginson & Considine demonstrate, it affects many of the institutional and management arrangements within universities. In the case of Communication and Media Studies the wide adoption of certain kinds of courses, the use of certain undergraduate forms of instruction to cross subsidise more expensive production units, and adoption of particular modes of delivery, are just a few examples of this ‘isomorphism’. Peter Karmel (Karmel, 2000, p.163) also notes tendencies towards both convergence and differentiation in the Australian university system. He argues that this arises because newer universities have tended to imitate older ones: There is little doubt that institutions themselves have become more diverse in the courses they offer, the functions they undertake and their styles of teaching. On the other hand, the newer universities have tended to mimic many of the activities of the older ones in an attempt to lay claim to the prestige that they enjoy. The rapid spread of MBA programs and the remarkable increase in the number of law schools are examples, as is the importance attached to involvement in research.

The case of Communication and Media studies demonstrates a reverse process in which older universities have developed courses in a field which has been a traditional strength of the newer universities and in so doing have attempted to heighten their claims to ‘professional relevance’ and ‘innovation’. The outcome with respect to convergence within the system is, of course, the same. The Communication and Media Studies field exemplifies the paradox of diversity in conformity. On the one hand, as can be seen by the range of courses on offer and the range of specialisations within courses, there is evidence of considerable curriculum innovation and direct response to the education and training needs of specific groups of students in specific locations. It could be said that this field demonstrates, by its very existence, a willingness on the part of institutions to respond to ‘new times’ and to develop courses that match students’ educational and occupations needs within a dynamic and changing graduate labour market. On the other hand, the fact that by 2003 all but three general higher education institutions in Australia will have introduced courses in the area suggests that there is a simultaneous pull towards isomorphism. Marketing demands ensure that all courses need to ‘look relevant’—and what could appear more ‘relevant’ than the new communication and media technologies? We see in the brief course descriptions quoted above that certain key couplings become almost mandatory: ‘theory’ and ‘skills’; ‘analytical and critical’ and ‘practical’.

40


It will be an ongoing challenge for individual universities, and the system as a whole, to maintain the current diversity of offerings and specialisations. Whether individual institutions can continue to carve out ‘market niches’ that reflect their particular strengths in the face of market forces that encourage homogenisation and isomorphism remains to be seen. In the meantime, the principle of ‘buyer beware’ seems to apply for potential students. Whether the course they enrol in fulfils their expectations will largely depend on how well they can interpret the course handbooks and outlines—how well they can read between the lines—and how good their other sources of information—such as contact with students already in the course—are. This raises particular problems for those marketing courses to overseas and ‘first generation’ students (those whose parents did not attend university). It is these students who are the most vulnerable in terms of misunderstanding the nature of the courses on offer.

New knowledges or ‘rebadged’ liberal arts? The question of how much Communication and Media Studies courses represent new forms of knowledge and how much they represent a rebadging of older liberal arts fields is a complex and little theorised issue. One American research project that explores this question is that undertaken by Craig & Carlone (1998). They examined the extent to which the growth in Communication Studies in the USA can in part be explained by shifts in the classifications of knowledge frames. They argue that, to understand the recent emergence of a communication discipline, we need to look as much to changes in the theoretical and interpretive categories captured by the term communication as we do to empirical data that captures quantitative growth. In their study Craig & Carlone used two types of data to chart the development of Communication Studies over a 20 year period: numbers of degrees granted and trends in the classification of books and serials. They conclude that both indicate an explosive growth of the field in the last third of the 20th century but that this quantitative growth has not occurred within a fixed structure of categories that constitutes ‘the field’ as an unchanging entity. They show that the categories themselves have evolved, and the field has grown perhaps as much by redefinition and expansion of its subject matter as by quantitative accumulation. As part of their study Craig & Carlone use graduation data to show that while rapid growth across the communication disciplines as a whole is apparent, the growth has varied considerably over time and among sub-areas. They also show that the categories in which degrees are counted have shifted. They argue that the exponential growth in the category ‘Communications (General)’, rather than signalling a proliferation of ‘vocational’ elements in US higher education, seems to reflect a reclassification of more traditional liberal education programs. At the same time, they show that the growth of Communication Studies between the late sixties and the early nineties was greater at the undergraduate level than at the graduate level. These trends, they argue, indicate that, at the undergraduate level, much of the growth in the field can be explained in terms of academic reorganisation and reclassification of degree programs, particularly in the liberal arts fields. At the same time disproportionately more of the growth in graduate degrees can be seen as related to the proliferation of communication-related professional fields and, to a 41


lesser extent, to a growth in communication as a research discipline. For Craig & Carlone, the overall result of those shifts appears to be: •

The emergence of ‘Communication(s)’ as a central organising category for a variety of new fields and formerly unrelated old fields at all levels;

•

The emergence, under this central organising category, of general communication as an area of liberal studies at the undergraduate level; and

•

The proliferation of communication-related professional areas along with the slower development of communication as a research discipline at the graduate level.

The Australian situation

The higher education system in the USA has different characteristics to that in Australia. Size is one obvious difference, as is the longer tradition in the USA of mass undergraduate education and the role of graduate studies as mediating entry into professional-level labour markets. It is therefore dangerous to extrapolate from studies of one system to the circumstances existing in another. Even-so, the Craig & Carlone study appears to have some resonances with Australian experiences. For example, Craig & Carlone comment on the variation between institutions in terms of what gets counted as Communication. This situation appears to have parallels in Australian universities. Appendix B, which sets out the Communication and Media Studies degree courses currently offered by Australian universities, illustrates this point. Bachelor of Communication degrees are far more likely to be offered in the universities that, prior to the introduction of the Unified National System, were colleges of advanced education or institutes of technology. Communications is more likely to be part of Bachelor of Arts degrees in the traditional universities. In the Australian experience it seems that many of the amalgamated universities have used an expansion of Communication at the undergraduate level as a way of re-deploying staff from the older liberal arts (and teacher education) areas. In addition, cash-strapped Departments have been able to use undergraduate Communication general courses (taught in lecture formats that allow large numbers to be catered for at low cost) to cross-subsidise more expensive ‘hands-on’ production courses taught at post graduate (often fee-paying) levels. Several respondents to this study referred to this practice and expressed concern that if this avenue of cross subsidisation was cut off they would not be able to maintain their production-oriented courses because of the high cost of maintaining the cuttingedge technology needed to keep the training up to industry standards and practice. One dimension not addressed by Craig & Carlone but very marked in the Australian data is the extent to which enrolment in general undergraduate courses in Communication is heavily gender biased (see Figure 3.3, p.27). This reflects the pattern in the more traditional Humanities and Social Science disciplines and strengthens Craig & Carlone’s suggestion that much of the shift to Communication and Media Studies may reflect a re-badging of parts of the out-of-favour liberal arts curriculum rather than the emergence of a radical shift in knowledge frames.

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Summary The survey of courses on offer identified 142 Bachelor degrees on offer, in 28 public and 3 private institutions. Double degrees and combined degrees (programs run jointly between two discipline areas) appear to be increasing. At the postgraduate level some 90 Graduate Certificate and Diploma courses were identified by survey respondents and some sixty Masters and Professional Doctorate courses. Ten institutions reported offering Doctor of Philosophy specialisations in the field. It is clear from the course descriptions and information provided on specialisations that the field has grown far beyond providing ‘service’ units to other fields of study and has become a significant field in its own right. However, the contours and boundaries of this field are not at all fixed or stable. In looking at the questions that arise from the data on course offerings we identified three inter-related themes: •

The challenge of meeting the demand for practical or ‘professionally relevant’ and theoretical or ‘academically rigorous’ elements within undergraduate degree courses;

•

The tension between diversity and convergence in course offerings amongst and within universities; and

•

The extent to which courses reflect the introduction of new knowledges into the university system or the ‘rebadging’ of old liberal arts knowledges.

In the following section we provide some case studies of curriculum models on offer in different types of universities. These case studies further illustrate the range of pathways that have emerged as institutions strive to meet the demands of our changing times.

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Curriculum models and contexts In earlier sections of this report we have highlighted the way historical trajectories, geographical location, and leadership decisions within individual institutions have shaped developments and led to a diversity of courses and institutional arrangements. In this section we attempt to show some of the 'similarities within diversity' identified earlier by briefly describing the institutional arrangements within each institution. We developed these brief pictures of the different curriculum models on offer largely by reviewing course descriptions published on the DETYA website as information to prospective students in 2001.

Similarity and diversity among higher education providers We have argued elsewhere in this report that the Communication and Media Studies field is diverse and that this diversity can only be understood by placing each institution within both its historical and geographical context and, at the same time, in the wider context of social and technological change. From the latter we can see that some institutions share similarities of institutional context. These similarities can be used to develop a number of ‘institutional archetypes’ (DETYA, 1998, p.21). Institutions can be grouped along any number of dimensionsfor example, size of student population, or metropolitan/rural. In grouping the institutions offering Communication and Media Studies courses we have borrowed a set of descriptors used by Marginson & Considine (2000). We have used these categories because they help place each institution within the wider historical development of a higher education system that has seen much structural change over the past decade. Following Marginson & Considine we have developed a set of categories that group institutions in terms of their structural location in the system as a whole. Our categories are:

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•

Unitechs (institutions in the tradition of universities of technology);

•

New universities (institutions other than Unitechs that became universities with the introduction of the Unified National System in 1987);

•

Gumtrees (universities established in the 1960s and 1970s);

•

Redbricks (established in the post-war boom of the 1950s);

•

Sandstones (long-established universities, with establishment dates pre-dating Federation); and


•

Private providers (universities and colleges that entered the field as private institutions.

The following descriptions of the different institutional offerings are largely drawn from course descriptions published on the DETYA '10 Fields of Study' website as information to prospective students. Quotations are taken from that source. The entries for each university do not form a comprehensive account of all relevant courses on offer in each institution. Rather, the focus is on undergraduate courses. Examples have been chosen that illustrate a particular approach or issue relevant to curriculum design or to the way courses are described to prospective students. The entries include an element of commentary by the authors of this report as well as description of curriculum approaches.

Unitechs These institutions have a long established tradition of technical education. They have tended to be at the forefront in the development of high quality productionoriented courses in the Communication and Media Studies field.

University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)

UTS has all the hallmarks of a major comprehensive provider within the tradition of a former institute of technology. UTS characteristics include a ‘strong emphasis on academic studies as well as their practical application in the workplace' and 'courses are professionally oriented and most involve industry based experience’. Key phrases used in course descriptors include maintenance of ‘a strong balance between theory and practical application’. Most major specialisations, including Journalism, Media Arts and Production, and Public Communication, are provided, and while the courses have strong links to industry, they maintain an overall critical context of understanding society. Courses are structured around a ‘disciplinary strand in Communication/Cultural Studies/Humanities and a professional strand’. Professional accreditation is prominent.

RMIT University

A major comprehensive provider in the ‘institute of technology’ tradition with courses in Advertising, Journalism, Media Arts, Media Studies, Multimedia and Professional Communication. The range of options offered reflects quite fine distinctions amongst somewhat similar sounding degrees. It could be difficult for the student to appreciate these differences without specialist advice. Variations in approach relate to the specific institutional location of the degree. For instance the Bachelor of Arts (Advertising) is taught, not from the Department of Communication Studies, but from the Department of Visual Communication. This accounts for its particular approach—it is a quite specialised degree emphasising the creative side of advertising. Most subjects reflect specialist work areas within the industry.

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Students need to also distinguish amongst the Bachelor of Arts (Media Arts), the Bachelor of Arts (Media Studies) and the Bachelor of Arts (Multimedia). This last degree appears only available as a continuation of TAFE studies. Media Arts is offered by the Department of Visual Communication, while Media Studies is offered by the Department of Communication Studies. The latter is the more generalist degree offering ‘career opportunities in the areas of radio and television production and journalism, publishing, advertising and public relations, media research, film making, audio visual production and teaching’. The student also needs to distinguish this degree from the Bachelor of Arts (Professional Communication) which also offers ‘extensive practical work in production, public relations and journalism’. The above examples illustrate the fact that courses emanate from different disciplinary traditions and organisational units (in this case from Visual Arts or Communication Studies) yet converge with respect to course titles and content. The differentiations appear justified but may be difficult to discern for anyone who is not an expert.

Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

QUT has for many years been one of the strongest providers of professional education in the field of Communication. It is relevant to observe the way in which, as QUT structures have changed (both with respect to amalgamations and restructuring of faculties) so too have the structure and disposition of its Communication programs. Until the early 1990s QUT focussed its Communication and Media studies within the Faculty of Business at the Gardens Point Campus. The Faculty of Business had a School of Communication that included professional studies in Journalism, Film and Television Production, Public Relations and Advertising. In the early 1990s the Communication area was split, with some areas remaining in Business and others moving to the Faculty of Arts. Public Relations and Advertising remained as part of the Business degree, while Journalism and Media Studies and Production became part of the Arts degree. Amongst its offerings QUT has a generalist Bachelor of Arts degree. It is interesting to note that this generalist degree, while not listing the areas of Journalism and Media as disciplinary strengths, nevertheless is promoted via the claim that it provides ‘a valuable base for careers in Journalism, Media Relations or Publishing’. QUT offers a range of more specialised ‘named’ courses in areas such as Journalism, Film and Television Production and Media Studies. The Bachelor of Arts (Journalism) is referred to as a ‘hands on program producing technically proficient and socially responsible professionals who can perform in broadcast and print journalism positions’. It has a high level of practical work. The Journalism course ‘is recognised by the Australian Journalism Association section of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’. Noteworthy is the distinction that is made between the Bachelor of Arts (Media Studies) which, while leading ‘to employment in a wide range of media industries’, appears primarily to be a critical and analytical course and the Bachelor of Arts (Film and Television Production). Students in the latter course are ‘fully prepared for entry into the film and television industry’ and ‘students become proficient in all aspects in film and video production’. 46


Communication also figures prominently in the Bachelor of Business where students can do a major in Communication, or an extended major (covering 12 units in all) in Advertising or Public Relations. Professional recognition by the Advertising Institute of Australia and the Public Relations Institute of Australia is indicated. [See also 'Recent Developments' later in this section]

Swinburne University of Technology

Media Studies is available as both a major in the Bachelor of Arts and via the more specialist Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications). The latter degree includes theoretical subjects in textual analysis and the study of the political economy of telecommunications together with ‘hands on subjects in which the emphasis is on publishing, radio production and workplace experience’. Students have a wide choice of a second major from Humanities, Social Science and Business. The course offers a ‘uniquely broad-based education in the media and associated industries’. This suggests that the course does not involve specialisations as in other models, but adopts a more holistic approach to the study of media and practical media skills. The course is described as ‘primarily taught by people who have had extensive workplace experience (in publishing, the print media and radio) and who share the belief that the student best equipped to face the vagaries of the workplace is the one who has a general as well as a specialist appreciation of how it operates’. Students are advised to apply for both the generalist BA and the Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications) because the number of places in the latter is limited. A recent development appears to be a closer relationship between design and communication courses.

Victoria University (VU)

VU offers a Bachelor of Communication (Public Relations) which is recognised by the PRIA. The course ‘has been designed to comply with the accreditation guidelines of the PRIA’. This course provides an example of curriculum development specifically directed towards a particular communication profession.

University of South Australia (UniSA)

UniSA Bachelor of Arts has professional streams in Communication Studies, International Studies, Multimedia Studies and Professional Writing and Communication. These are described as ‘professional majors in the Humanities and Social Sciences’. As well there is a Bachelor of Arts (Journalism) which is a ‘vocationally oriented course that focuses on developing an understanding of the principles and practice of Journalism’. Students are also able to acquire basic skills in shorthand and undertake an industry internship. This is another example of a vocationally oriented degree directed towards a single communication profession. This can be contrasted with more generalist vocational degrees that attempt a more comprehensive approach to media and communication studies and that, arguably, provide a basis for work in a range of professions. UniSA also offers a Bachelor of Visual Communications that comes out of the ‘graphic design’ tradition.

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Curtin has been a major provider of education in this field for many years. Its main degree is titled Bachelor of Arts (Mass Communication). The term ‘Mass Communication’ here is used as a generic title covering ‘a variety of developments in Information and Communication Technology’ and is taken to include new computer based technologies. The principal areas of study are Journalism, Film and Television, Advertising, Photography, Marketing, Multimedia Design, Public Relations, Screen and Culture and Post-modern Studies. Professional recognition is characterised as ‘not applicable’. Curtin also offers a Bachelor of Arts (Design) that, as well as including a principal area in Graphic Design, includes principal areas of study in Advertising, Photography and Multimedia Design. Curtin also, however, offers a more specialised Bachelor of Arts (Multimedia Design) which covers ‘a range of computer based media production, processing and delivery technologies’ and describes a ‘genre of communication characterised by the digital convergence and integration of graphics, text, sound, video, animation and interactive computing’. This is a excellent example of the quite specialised Bachelor of Arts degrees that have developed as a response to the challenge of multimedia technologies. The areas of Information and Library Studies which, in a number of other universities has been placed within the ‘umbrella’ of Communication degrees, is offered at Curtin as a Bachelor of Applied Science.

New universities Institutions in this group became universities following the introduction of the Unified National System. Some, for example Charles Sturt University, were created through the amalgamation of a number of regional institutions; others, such as Canberra, were strong regionally-based, CAEs prior to 1987.

University of Canberra (UC)

UC is a major provider catering to a number of communication professions. It currently offers five specialisations in its Bachelor of Communication: Advertising/Marketing Communication, Media/Multimedia Production, Journalism, Public Relations, and Information. Until 1998 the first four of these areas were offered as specialisations within a Bachelor of Arts (Communications) course, but subsequently the specialisations have been included in the course titles themselves. The relevant award was changed from Bachelor of Arts to Bachelor of Communication. A further interesting development at UC is the repositioning of Library and Information Studies. This was previously part of a Bachelor of Information Management but is now as a specialisation in the Bachelor of Communication. Another development is the introduction, from 2002, of a Bachelor of New Media Production offered in conjunction with the Canberra Institute of Technology.

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Charles Sturt University (CSU)

CSU is a major provider of communication courses primarily via its Bathurst campus. Key sentiments in its course descriptions include: ‘providing an education which prepares students for the competitive employment market’, ‘vocationally oriented courses developed in consultation with industry’ and courses ‘utilising industry standard equipment and techniques’. CSU, if anything, adopts a more practical ‘vocational orientation’ than, for example, UTS with the latter having greater emphasis on critical studies. All courses include internships in the final year and professional recognition is regarded as a priority. The structure of total CSU offerings is in part determined by the fact that it is a multi-campus University. The Wagga campus offers a Bachelor of Arts (Multimedia) and a Bachelor of Arts (Television Production) while the AlburyWodonga campus offers a Bachelor of Arts (Photography). These appear to be quite specialised courses, even though they are called ‘Bachelor of Arts’ degrees.

University of Western Sydney (UWS)

Because UWS is a multi-campus institution and Communication courses were originally developed separately in what are now various parts of the University, it provides an interesting case study of a variety of courses which, on the surface, appear similar (based on their titles) but which on closer inspection are quite different in their orientation and degree and type of practical work. The example allows us to ask what the relationship is (areas of commonality and areas of difference) between a Bachelor of Arts (Communication Studies) as offered at the Penrith campus and a Bachelor of Communication, also offered at the Penrith campus, and the Bachelor of Arts (Communications) offered at the Blacktown and Richmond campuses. A generalist Bachelor of Arts, that includes a principal area of study in Communication, is offered at the Campbelltown and Bankstown campuses. There is also a Bachelor of Design (Visual Communication) offered at the Penrith campus that comes out of the Design, Graphic Arts tradition—graduates qualify for membership for the Design Institute of Australia—and a Bachelor of Visual Communication (Photography and Imaging), offered at the Bankstown campus. This latter course is a specialised vocational course with roots in photography and new visual technologies. This latter course does not involve professional recognition by the Design Institute, but nevertheless includes graphic design amongst its principal areas of study. The Bachelor of Arts (Communication Studies) as offered at the Penrith campus is a more generalist degree: ‘in this course students complete a Communication Studies major beginning with a general Humanities and Social Science first year, followed by a Communication Studies focus in second and third year’. The principal areas of study include Journalism, Media Production and Public Relations (but professional recognition is regarded as not applicable). The Bachelor of Arts (Communications) available at the Blacktown and Richmond campuses also indicates that professional recognition is not applicable. This course appears, however, more decidedly a theoretical program in that, while having practical components, its principal areas of study are, ‘Film, Writing, Language and Discourse, Multimedia, Video, Media Studies, Popular Culture, Philosophy of 49


Communication, Theories of Technology and Information, Culture and Communications Industries, Semiotics’. Specific professional areas, such as Public Relations and Journalism, are not included in this program. The Bachelor of Communication available at the Penrith campus is the most vocationally oriented of the available courses: ‘this course is aimed at students who wish to enter the fields of Journalism, Media, Public Relations and Writing’. It adopts the familiar double major model with one major comprising studies in Communication and one in a specialist professional area. This course is accredited by the PRIA. The variety of courses seems best explained by the particular historical circumstances of UWS and, in particular, the fact that it is a multi-campus institution. Certainly the current range of courses does not seem to reflect a systematic approach to the provision of an appropriate diversity based on providing students clear choices. Another possibility is that the current range and diversity of courses reflects a particular moment in time and that, in due course, there will be a more rational set of options. A recent development involves further exploration of synergies amongst current design, communication and media programs.

Southern Cross University

In this university a Bachelor of Arts student can do principal areas of study in Cultural Studies, Media Communications Theory and Media Production. Professional recognition is indicated as not applicable. A major feature is that ‘students undertaking the Media Production major have the opportunity to become involved in the University owned radio station as part of the Media curriculum’. There is no mention of internships. Southern Cross University is linked with private Sydney provider Macleay College in offering joint programs in Journalism and Advertising (see below).

University of Southern Queensland (USQ)

The Bachelor of Arts course includes Mass Communication (including Journalism), Public Relations and Media Studies. While USQ is a major provider in areas such as Journalism and Public Relations it has not chosen to offer specialist degrees but stayed with the Bachelor of Arts nomenclature. However, consideration is being given to developing a Bachelor of Mass Communication utilising the same courses (that is, rebadging) in order to get better recognition particularly in the Asian market. USQ has taken the more specialist route in naming its Bachelor of Multimedia Studies: this course focuses on multimedia skills and management, supported by studies in Communication and Media Theory and relevant personnel management/education subjects. Again we see that the area of ‘communication’ lends itself to combination with many other areas including, in this case, Management.

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Central Queensland University (CQU)

CQU offers a Bachelor of Communication and states that ‘graduates will be skilled professionals able to be employed in a range of media, journalism or communication related fields’. The program includes studies in Public Relations but it is indicated that professional recognition is not applicable. The program focuses on new communication technologies and combines media and cultural studies with practical work, but there is no mention of internships.

Edith Cowan University (ECU)

As well as majors in Advertising, Journalism, Film and Video, Mass Communication, Media Studies, Photomedia, and Public Relations, ECU’s Bachelor of Communications has a specialisation in ‘Interactive Multimedia technologies’. This has principal areas of study in ‘Cognitive Science, Information Science, Media Art and Design, Education, Communication, Engineering and Computer Science’. This appears to be another example of the way new combinations (under the general rubric of a Bachelor of Communications) have been developed. It also suggests how Communications can be combined with many other areas of study. The Advertising major is stated as being ‘endorsed by the Advertising Federation of Australia’.

Northern Territory University (NTU)

The NTU Bachelor of Communication ‘offers prospective students a wide range of skills in all areas of oral and written communication’. It is stated that ‘overall, the degree is a well balanced qualification designed to give graduates an interdisciplinary and coherent knowledge of communication and the ability to perform ethically, responsibly and creatively in their chosen careers’. The degree is described as ‘vocationally oriented’ and a wide range of possible work areas is suggested. Amongst principal areas of study ‘candidates may choose their areas of specialisation in one of three areasfor example, marketing, technology or media studies’. Advertising is mentioned as an area of work for graduates who take the Media Studies specialisation. It is not clear how much practical work is provided in this program. It appears to be more generalist than most Bachelor of Communication degrees. There is no specialisation in specific areas such as Journalism or Public Relations.


Film and Media Studies are available as part of a Bachelor of Arts. There is also a more specialised Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing and Editing. This combines Creative Writing and technical aspects of editing and publishing. There is also a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Graphic Design/Multimedia), a course that comes out of a creative arts tradition. This is a different positioning of multimedia than many programs in other universities and helps illustrate the variety of ways in which multimedia studies have been incorporated into programs.

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University of the Sunshine Coast (USC)

USC offers a Bachelor of Arts (Communication). This appears to be a quite generalist degree that includes compulsory case studies in communications and humanities as well as in ‘Advanced level courses in Communication Studies’. The latter comprise 50% of the degree.

Gumtrees These institutions reflect the massive expansion of higher education during the 1960s and 1970s and a policy of decentralisation on the part of the Commonwealth Government during this period.

Griffith University

When we look at the courses on offer at Griffith there is some evidence of the historical development of the field and a movement from generalist to more specialised degrees. Griffith offers a Bachelor of Arts degree that enables students to ‘combine vocational subjects and subjects that satisfy your personal interest’. Among the vocational options are Journalism, Public Relations and Screen Production. While these areas are available in the BA, they are also repackaged as a Bachelor of Communication. One assumes that this latter (more recent) degree has a greater concentration on Communication and Media areas. Even more specialised is the Bachelor of Screen Production in Digital Media. This degree is constructed around specialised subjects in digital production coupled with electives available from broader offerings in Communication and Media. Griffith is a multi-campus institution that incorporates the Queensland College of Art. The Queensland College of Art offers a Bachelor of Screen Production in Film and Television that combines production and film studies subjects and comes out of the ‘visual arts’ tradition. Griffith also has a campus at Logan and this is the location for its Bachelor of Business Communication, yet another construct in the field. In this course the emphasis is on combining business subjects (Business Accounting Principles and Introduction to Marketing) with Communication Studies but the course also offers students the opportunity to take a major in Journalism. As in quite a number of other universities, the student needs to navigate this terrain quite carefully because of the quite subtle distinctions amongst courses.

Deakin University

The offerings from Deakin University also show the marks of an amalgamated institution and a diversity of approaches to nomenclature. For example, Journalism is available as a principal area of study within the Bachelor of Arts rather than through a specifically named degree. Public Relations is also available as a principal area of study within the Bachelor of Arts but in addition there is a specific Bachelor of Arts (Public Relations) available at the Geelong campus. It is the specific Bachelor of Arts (Public Relations) that is accredited by the PRIA. Two other interesting points emerge from an analysis of the Deakin offerings:

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•

The potential of the area of Communication to be linked with other areas of knowledge so as to form new kinds of degrees. This potential is almost limitless. A good example is the Bachelor of Arts (Eco-Communication) which ‘aims to produce graduates who have specialist knowledge of contemporary environmental and ecological issues, have specialist knowledge in Public Relations and Communication and are able to combine these two specialist areas of knowledge in innovative ways attractive to prospective employers in the ever widening job opportunities in ecology related work’.

•

The Bachelor of Arts (Professional Writing) appears to be essentially a creative writing program. This raises the question of how the term Professional Writing is used in course nomenclature.


Macquarie has a Bachelor of Media in which students choose a visual production strand, a writing strand or a multimedia strand. There is a production orientation, but the course is not specifically directed towards a particular professional area such as Journalism. It also offers a Bachelor of Music and Media for students who want to work in the music industry: ‘Graduates will be able to work in areas such as music industry management, radio, television and multimedia’. This is an interesting example of a specialist course combining two areas. Media is also available as a principal area of study in the Bachelor of Arts.

James Cook University (JCU)

At JCU students can undertake a Bachelor of Arts in Communication. This is another notable example of ‘creative combination’. This course brings together Communication Skills, Journalism and Literary Studies with Business Studies in Marketing and Management and a semester of foreign language study ‘as this is seen as a vital means of understanding the communicative potential of language’. This is a quite unique combination. On the other hand, the course is rather constrained compared to what is being made available to students in other population centres. Also offered is a Bachelor of Journalism and a Bachelor of Communication Design with the latter coming out of the Graphic Design tradition.

La Trobe University

La Trobe offers a Bachelor of Media Studies that is described as a ‘vocationally oriented degree’. The course provides students with ‘a broad understanding of the cultural, social, political and economic role of the media in society’. Students choose one specialisation from Print Journalism, Video Production or Radio/Audio Production. In the Journalism area only print journalism is available.

Murdoch University

Murdoch University is a major ‘new university’ player in the field. When it first established courses in Communication they were more exclusively theoretical in their orientation. but in recent years Murdoch has moved to a much greater 53


industry focus. It is novel in its approach in that it offers graduate entry level courses in Media Production and Journalism whereby, through a further year of study, graduates are awarded a Bachelor of Media Production or Bachelor of Journalism. These are innovative alternatives to the traditional Honours or Graduate Diploma programs. The undergraduate programs are: Bachelor of Arts (Communication Studies), Bachelor of Arts (Mass Communication), Bachelor of Arts (Media Studies) and the Bachelor of Multimedia. The Communication Studies degree seems to be the broadest one, providing students ‘with the knowledge and skills for analysing and producing cultural and media texts’. The Bachelor of Arts (Mass Communication) appears to be mainly a study of Mass Communication in Society, while the Bachelor of Arts (Media Studies) also includes production units. The distinctions amongst Communication Studies, Mass Communication, Media Studies and Media Production, (which are represented as separate courses) are rather fine ones, at least to the outside observer. The Bachelor of Multimedia covers Computer Sciences and Information Technology as well as Media Studies and Multimedia Design and Production and is a good example of the convergence of communication and information technology studies.

The University of Newcastle

At Newcastle Bachelor of Arts students can ‘choose from disciplines that traditionally contribute to a general degree in the Humanities or select from more vocationally focussed disciplines’. Students may take studies in Communication and Media Arts as part of a general BA but are excluded from practical and applied or fieldwork. The more specialised and more practically oriented degree is the Bachelor of Arts (Communication Studies) which ‘prepares graduates for a variety of professions in the media and communications industry’. Students are allowed flexibility to study areas of particular interest and their ‘skills and knowledge will be applicable to broadcasting, corporate communications, marketing, public relations, journalism and education’. While public relations is mentioned, it is also indicated that ‘no formal professional accreditation exists’. The role that the University’s radio station, 2NUR FM plays in providing practical experience for students is also worth noting.

University of Wollongong

This Bachelor of Arts (Communication Studies) ‘examines Communication practices and texts in socio-cultural and political contexts’. The program ‘is both practical and conceptual as it investigates communication in the areas of text, images, media industries and technologies including screen and new information technologies’. This is an example of a course that does not appear to be directed to specific communication professions, but is more theoretical in its orientation.

Redbricks These three universities have much in common with the ‘Sandstones’ although Monash has taken a very different trajectory to any of the other ‘traditional’ universities. 54


Monash University

Monash University has moved from a position where it had very little focus on Communication and Media studies to one where it is a major player. This has largely come about through amalgamations with smaller institutions including the former Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education. Most recently it has developed Communication courses at its major campus in Clayton, largely drawing on the experience of the former CAEs that it incorporated. The structure and naming of various courses seems to reflect different campus traditions and priorities as well as a variety of approaches to curriculum design and marketing. At the Gippsland campus studies in Journalism are available as part of the Bachelor of Arts generalist degree and as part of the Bachelor of Arts (Communication) or, alternatively, as a Bachelor of Arts (Journalism). The Bachelor of Arts (Communication) requires students to undertake major studies in Communication Theory in combination with studies in a field of the Humanities plus ‘an area of specialisation which will direct future career paths’. The specialisations include Business Computing, Journalism, Marketing, Management, Tourism Management or Writing. Specialisations that have not traditionally been associated with Communication studies, such as Tourism Management, are here presented within a ‘Communication umbrella’. The Bachelor of Arts (Journalism) does not require a full major in Communication Studies. Rather, a major sequence in Journalism is combined with other Arts subjects. The Journalism sequence is skills oriented with particular attention ‘…on the skills applicable across print, radio and television; desktop publishing; electronic journalism; narrow casting as well as broadcasting on television and radio; local or regional and international journalism’. A Bachelor of Communication degree is available at the Berwick campus which has principal areas of study in Communication, German, International Studies, Japanese, Journalism, Korean, Philosophy and Spanish. The ‘Communication’ framework has, it appears, been used to frame a fairly general Bachelor of Arts degree, albeit one that highlights communication technologies and ‘the practical operation of these media as well as the social and cultural dimensions of mass communications’. The Berwick campus also has a Bachelor of Multimedia designed for students who wish to pursue a career in Multimedia. The degree combines ‘computer based digital multimedia systems with the graphic design and business skills necessary for multimedia work’. The degree illustrates the way in which convergence of interest in areas such as Information Technology, Arts and Design have created new forms of curricula. The Peninsula campus offers a Bachelor of Arts (International Communication) that includes Communication Studies plus a language. This course does not include a Media Production or Journalism emphasis but instead links language studies with a broad study of communication processes in society. Finally, one should note the Bachelor of Design (Visual Communication), offered at Caulfield Campus, which comes out of the Art and Design tradition and is directed towards students who seek employment in ‘graphic design, publishing, advertising, packaging, digital/electronic media, illustration, information design, television, animation, interactive media and corporate identity’. The range of courses offered at Monash suggests an admirable diversity but, at the same time, appears to reflect some inconsistency of approach to the naming of degrees.

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The University of New South Wales (UNSW)

UNSW recently commenced a Bachelor of Arts (Media Communications). UNSW promotes the fact that students can combine a media and communications core program with a wide range of possible majors in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The course is ‘intended to provide a broad education with specific competencies necessary for developing a career in media related fields’.

The University of New England (UNE)

UNE includes Communication Studies (but not more specific areas such as Media or Journalism) as a principal area of study in its Bachelor of Arts. Traditionally this university has been a major distance education provider. Now it has entered the Communication field it is planning to branch out offshore with an Honours program in Communications offered with the City University of Hong Kong. This is a good example of the way institutions are able to build on their existing strengths (in this case distance education) when they move into the field.

Sandstones In these universities Communication and Media Studies is most often taught within a traditional liberal arts context. With the exception of the University of Queensland, which has a long tradition of teaching journalism, these institutions tend to be late-comers to Communication and Media Studies and the emphasis remains on adding Communication and Media to a traditional liberal arts education.

The University of Sydney

This university has created two new vocationally oriented versions of its Bachelor of Arts course. Students take one major in the vocational area, either in Media and Communications or in Infomatics, and combine this with traditional Humanities areas. An interesting aspect of the Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications) is the large role taken by the internship. This represents ‘1/3 of the standard annual workload in the third year of the program’. The large internship plays a very significant role in providing practical work. In the course itself, there is a single major in Media and Communications that covers units of study in Radio and Television News Production and Print Media Production. The way academic subjects are repositioned under the rubric of ‘professional training’ is worth noting: ‘the program provides students with specific professional training in the fields of media and communications, both through the internship and through units of study in English, Law and Government developed specifically for this program’. Interestingly, the fourth year is devoted entirely to academic subjects, providing students with the ‘opportunity to acquire a broader humanities and social sciences education’.

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The University of Queensland (UQ)

Communication, Journalism and Media Studies are available as principal areas in the Bachelor of Arts degree. UQ also offers a specialist Bachelor of Journalism which covers practical subjects as well as media theory. This is one of the best established Journalism courses. It has its own newspaper and broadcast news service and involves an internship with a newspaper or broadcaster. As well as studying Journalism, students undertake specified subjects in the Humanities and the Social Sciences. The course is a good example of a specialised program catering to a particular communications profession. [See also ‘Recent Developments’ later in this section.]

The University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne has introduced a Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications) that aims to provide ‘academic grounding in media oriented arts and humanities’ as well as ‘advanced training in communication skills across new technologies, professionally oriented subjects on the Australian and regional media industry and high level understanding of cross-cultural issues’. Principal areas of study include Professional Writing, Marketing and Media, as well as more general Communication and Cultural Studies. At second year students can enter either and ‘enriched major stream’—described as ‘a comprehensive program of study in media and communications designed for preparing for careers in media and communications’—or a ‘double major screen’—described as a concentrated program of media and communication study designed to be taken in conjunction with a major in another area of study. The claim to ‘comprehensiveness’ in the enriched major stream is noteworthy. The University of Melbourne also offers a Bachelor of Media and Television through its Victoria College of the Arts campus. This is a long established course in screen writing and direction and production techniques and is an illustration of a well established program developed in the college system prior to the introduction of the Unified National System and then entering the university system through the amalgamation of institutions.

University of Tasmania

‘Journalism and Media Studies’ is listed as one of 24 principal areas of study in the Bachelor of Arts. This is an example of the model where the area is listed as one of many possible majors and no large claims are made for vocational outcomes. The overall objectives of the course are framed in a traditional liberal arts way. Professional recognition is regarded as not applicable and there is no reference to internships.

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Private providers Avondale College

This College offers a Bachelor of Arts degree ‘designed to present Arts disciplines within a Christian world view’. The ‘BA is an academic, not a professional degree’. Avondale report that an MA in Communication is planned and should be established within the next three years.

Bond University

Bond offers a Bachelor of Communication ‘structured to give students the ideal mix of theory and practice’ combining foundation studies in Communication and Media with focused studies in professional disciplines including Film and Television, Journalism and Public Relations. It also offers a more specialised Bachelor of Film and Television ‘intended to provide the conceptual understanding and basic competencies for a career in the screen based entertainment and information industries’. There is the opportunity to take a number of specialisations, including ‘interactive media’ which involves selecting subjects from the School of Information Technology multimedia subjects. Bond also offers Communication and Media majors in its BA degree.

Macleay College

Southern Cross University and Macleay College offer a joint two-year program in Media Education, leading after the first year to a Diploma Award in either Journalism or Advertising from Macleay College and after the second year to a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Southern Cross University. This is an intensive program that provides a three-year degree within two years. The Macleay course has a strong emphasis on practical skills. For example, its Diploma of Journalism includes 15 practical subjects but only one theory subject (in Media Law).

The University of Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame (Perth) offers a Bachelor of Communications degree that ‘offers students the opportunity to achieve an understanding of theories and a wide range of genres in print, non-print and multimedia texts, and mastery of the new and emerging modes of communication’. Subject offerings include ones in journalism, media and multimedia. It is noted that as ‘part of the Bachelor of Communications degree, students may elect to take a number of units which will provide them with a suitable background for a career in the media’.

Recent Developments The development of new and revised courses in Communication and Media Studies continued apace during 2001. Two further ‘sandstone’ universities signalled their 58


entry into the field and two major providers have signalled new directions in course provision.

Adelaide University

Adelaide University announced the introduction of a Bachelor of Media from 2002 which aims ‘to attract students who want to work in media and media-related fields’. The course combines ‘exposure to a range of technologies and skills in media’ with ‘a strong analytical and critical component with concentration on global issues and innovative applications’. Students ‘will have an active role in constructing their own career outcomes through internships and practical or research projects in their particular area of interest’. (Source: Faculty of Humanities and Social Science newsletter, September 2001.)

The University of Western Australia

The University of Western Australia will introduce a BA (Communication Studies) from 2002. The course largely draws on existing Arts subjects relevant to the field of communication including subjects from languages, linguistics, English, sociology and anthropology. In addition students undertake four core communication studies subjects over their 2nd and 3rd years. These ‘present an integrated cross-disciplinary approach to communication studies, with one of the units having a specifically applied communication focus’. (Source: personal communication.)

The University of Queensland (UQ)

The University of Queensland (UQ) is broadening the range of its offerings. As well as the Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Journalism courses noted earlier, UQ has introduced a Bachelor of Social Science (Applied Communication) and a Bachelor of Business Communication. A cross-Faculty Bachelor of Communication is also planned. This will offer ‘a comprehensive core in interpersonal/intergroup/ mass communication and communication and new technologies and a wide range of concentration areas’. As well as providing ‘professional training’ the new UQ courses are ‘based in theory and empirical research in communication, and work from this base to develop graduate attributes of critical analysis and thinking in communication based on a deep understanding of the field’. (Source: personal communication.)

Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has repositioned its communication and media courses in the context of a ‘Creative Industries initiative’. QUT explains the rationale of this change as follows: QUT's Creative Industries initiative is driven by changes in the international economic and social environment. The convergence of broadcasting, telecommunications, and computer communications has reached a stage where technical infrastructure, connectivity and market capitalisation of the new economy are well advanced. With the advent of broadbanding on a wide scale, the time has come when economic

59


expansion, for graduates and businesses alike, is decisively moving to the creative and content industries, both in Australia and internationally. The current worldwide shortage of IT specialists is one indication that there will be a significant requirement for graduates with creative talent who are trained in content-provision for the technologies. … The vision is to take the best of what we already offer in the performing and visual arts, computer and communication design, and media and journalism, and co-locate them in an interdisciplinary cluster dedicated to the creative aspects of the new economy and to the content industries.

One outcome of this initiative has been a range of new courses to commence in 2002 with the title Bachelor of Creative Industries. These include Bachelor of Creative Industries (Media Communication), Bachelor of Creative Industries (Communication Design) and Bachelor of Creative Industries (Creative Writing). (Source: QUT website).

Discussion and summary From this review of the pattern of undergraduate offerings in Australian universities in the fields of Communication and Media Studies we can make the following observations:

60

•

Most evident is the extraordinarily dynamic nature of these fields and the dynamic nature of curriculum development. There appears to be an ongoing and continuing process of new course development. Furthermore, the frameworks within which particular curriculum ideas emerge also appear to be under review. For example, QUT has recently repositioned its programs within a creative industries framework.

•

Curriculum development in the field of Communication and Media Studies is the site for efforts to resolve tensions inherent in much professional education including the tensions between the development of specific skills and attitudes expected in particular professional contexts and the critical assessment of professional work. The courses that we see show a variety of solutions to this tension.

•

There has been a pro-active response to new technologies both in incorporating such technologies into existing courses and in the development of new programs. This has all happened in a very short timeframe at a time when resources are very stretched. This has been a major achievement.

•

There has been an openness to new alliances and new multi-disciplinary connections—quite the opposite of disciplinary rigidity. This is illustrated by the number of combined and double degree courses currently on offer and the number of institutions reporting moves to develop inter- and multi-disciplinary courses. This stands in contrast with areas (for example Psychology) where there is much closer control (via accreditation) and where a slower pace of curriculum change might be expected.

•

There is some evidence of cross-sector cooperation, particularly in the multimedia area, with at least two examples (RMIT and UC) of combined


TAFE/university programs and one (SCU and Macleay) of public/private cooperation. •

There is broad student choice with respect to type of program, ranging from quite generalist ones to programs directed very specifically towards a particular communication profession.

•

The University of Queensland Journalism school apart, specialist courses have mainly been developed in universities from the ex CAE/Institute sector. The major providers were the large Institutes of Technology plus the Canberra CAE and a few regional CAEs. These developed the ‘classic’ curriculum model, broadly based around a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 curriculum concept: with 1/3 of the course comprising academic studies in the emerging disciplinary fields of communication and media studies; 1/3 a communication profession specialisation with Journalism, Public Relations, Advertising, Film and Television and Media Production being the main areas on offer; and 1/3 in a second area of study that might be in the Humanities, Social Science or in Business.

•

There also emerged in the late 70s and early 80s a number of more theoretically oriented courses emerging out of a cultural studies paradigm, for example at Murdoch University, while at the same time, some departments of English— such as Macquarie University and the University of Queensland—were broadening their studies to include culture and media.

•

We now have the situation where nearly every university offers courses in Communication and Media Studies. Furthermore, the range of offerings and approaches has increased significantly. On the one hand, there are more specialist programs, particularly in multimedia. On the other, there are more generalist programs which, while offering studies in communication and media, do not necessarily focus on specific communication professions.

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Curriculum development and delivery Survey respondents were asked to address various aspects of curriculum development and delivery in the Communication and Media Studies field. We have chosen to use the term ‘curriculum’ rather than ‘course’ development because curriculum speaks to the whole institutional structure in which programs are delivered. What is significant in the survey responses is the high level of cross discipline, multi-discipline and inter-disciplinary activity reported as well as an ongoing process of restructuring in Australian universities.

Curriculum development Curriculum development is the heart of education and training: what do students learn, when, and how; and in what institutional context? Survey instruments are not the best research method for exploring the diversity and innovation that is constantly taking place in universities as staff strive to respond to the needs of their specific student populations. Curriculum development is also the most frequently overlooked aspect of the work that staff in universities do (most overlooked perhaps because it is so hard to quantify). Given these constraints we have included in this study a review of each institution’s 2001 course offerings as described on the DETYA website designed for prospective students (see Curriculum models and contexts). We also invited survey respondents to describe one significant undergraduate curriculum development undertaken in their university in relation to Communication and Media Studies in recent years. Most innovations described by survey respondents are strongly oriented towards incorporating new media into courses and preparing graduates for the new occupational markets opening up in the field. The responses include: The most significant curriculum development has been the move to make the courses more industry-oriented. Units are based on industry practice incorporating real life production experiences and workplace practica where the students are subjected to assessment by the public as audience or industry supervisors. Students are expected to meet industry standards so the best will be 'industry-ready' on graduation. The highest performers are able to do an industry placement and this has led to a high proportion being offered employment or cadetships at the end of their course of study (Murdoch). Multimedia major available as one of possible majors in Bachelor of Communication Degree; and Diploma and Bachelor of e-Journalism programs which require students to do some multimedia units that incorporate internet issues and practices into some journalism units (CQU). 62


In 2000, UWS began a major restructure…resulting in the formation of the School of Communication, Design and Media. This School acknowledges the current convergence of discipline fields across the spectrum of communication, media and design, and is currently working towards the consolidation of existing specialisations in the Bachelor of Communication, which also integrate with specific pathways across Design, including script writing/animation, photojournalism, display and event design and management, advertising and art direction, multimedia production, design and communication. The BA Communications is also undergoing consolidation, which places it into a more general humanities and cultural studies context (UWS). Full revision of course around cultural studies and professional writing, to be made web available (Curtin). Creating a generic degree with a foundation year (EWU). Introduction of key issues surrounding new media in society and greater cross faculty teaching with staff in design and multimedia in engineering (Swinburne). Introduction of new media production units and associated development of multimedia laboratories (UC). The initial course developed at Gippsland has migrated to all other campuses. It forms the base of generalist degrees in the humanities. It has been contextualised for South Africa and SE Asian delivery. The internationalising of the degree and the move to on-line e-forums has led to cross-cultural learning (Monash).

Modes of delivery Most Communication and Media Studies courses are currently delivered on campus. However, a number of universities specialise in distance education and offshore provision as is illustrated in the examples set out in Table 6.1. When asked in what ways they expected delivery modes in their university to change in the next three years almost all nominated increased on-line delivery (20/27 respondents). Moves to more flexible modes of delivery were predicted as more likely to be realised than full on-line delivery by most, although several respondents also linked the development of more flexible delivery with increased distance and off-shore provision. While respondents predicted that this would be the direction of change they did not necessarily endorse it: The move to on-line delivery is inexorable but access and resourcing issues slow it down considerably. A raft of flexible modes (a combination of different learning opportunities at different times of the day and week) is most likely for some time to come. There is a tendency to believe all lecturers will happily, and easily, ‘convert’ their materials. I believe the cost in time for lecturers to produce online ‘versions’ is severely underestimated. Continued/increased support and training for web-based teaching is essential. The production skills required, and time taken, need to be acknowledged. Universities may need to acknowledge the time it takes to prepare materials for a new mode of delivery.

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Table 6.1

Institutions offering distance education and offshore delivery.

Institution

On Campus %

Distance

Other %

Education %

Curtin

90

10

Deakin

65

35

Monash

40

50

10 (in Singapore)

Murdoch

92

6

1 (online)

New England (Undergraduate)

34

66

New England (Honours & Post-Graduate)

25

49

Northern Territory

80

20

U of South Aust.

92

UCS

75

25

UQ

95

5

VU

95

5

Wollongong

98

2

26 (offshore) 8 (off shore)

5 (off shore)

Source:Survey of Heads of Departments/Schools.

One rural university appeared to be going against the trend towards greater on-line delivery: We are resisting so-called ‘distance education’ because it is not as effective, is more costly, and puts greater strain on already fully committed staff.

One urban, technology-oriented, university was considering joining a consortium of on-line providers: Probably join a consortium to look at international online delivery of undergraduate and post-graduate teaching.

Another commented on moves in their university to extend on-line courses both to post-graduate and off-shore students: …moving into Distance Education/E-learning modes at post-graduate coursework level. Also developing offshore programs.

Two universities, one private and one metropolitan public university, predicted no change in their modes of delivery (both 100 per cent on-campus). One

64


metropolitan university predicted a shift to postgraduate coursework and another to short courses.

Changes in enrolment patterns over the next three years

The majority of survey respondents expect both undergraduate and postgraduate enrolments to increase over the next three years. Overseas enrolments were also predicted to increase. Specialisations predicted to show growth varied depending on the different priorities and specialisations of individual institutions. However, at the undergraduate level, amongst the areas predicted to experience continued high demand were: •

Multimedia;

•

Public relations;

•

Journalism;

•

Advertising; and

•

All specialist majors.

Reasons for predicting undergraduate growth were largely related to employment opportunities: Employers expect graduates to possess skills of the kind most routinely produced in communication and writing programs.

Some respondents predicted a possible decline in demand for theory-based courses as part of a continuing ‘vocationalisation’ of higher education: The massification and commercialism of tertiary education results in the prioritisation of vocationalism and professionalism. The acquisition of practical capacities is more favourably looked on by employers and students. This is a regrettable trajectory, because policy making and representational practices require the highly analytical and ethical capacities (including the ability to predict likely political and social outcomes of decisions taken) which theoretical studies are designed to supply.

One respondent predicted a decline in undergraduate enrolments resulting from a strategic decision of the university to put greater focus on research and full-fee paying post graduate courses. At the post-graduate level strong growth was predicted in full-fee course-work programs. The market for these courses was seen as those working in the industry (upgrading skills and credentials). Overseas enrolments were also predicted to increase. Some respondents saw increased demand as related to the status of their particular university: Demand for this degree has been growing among international students—I believe this is because the degree offers students the chance to study Arts at ___University and pursue vocational skills.

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In other institutions increased demand is seen as linked to effective marketing, successful student outcomes and the growing importance of the field to developing economies: Strong marketing strategies have been put in place to increase overseas enrolments at ___. This university is seeking to diversify its overseas stakes and to be a strong presence in overseas marketing of courses. The specialisations mentioned are increasing in popularity and result in graduate employment. Many of the overseas students are able to find employment in industries in their home country.

Most respondents predicted that increases in overseas enrolments would be in oncampus modes. Five respondents predicted that their universities would increase off-shore campus enrolments and three predicted growth would be in distanceeducation modes.

Delivering course information to students One of the aims of this project was to evaluate the sources of information available to students. It had been suggested that, because of the wide range of courses that come under the banner of Communication and Media Studies, students do not necessarily make informed choices when they enrol. We therefore asked survey respondents to indicate which of the sources of information available to students seemed, from their experience, to be the most effective (in terms of promoting a match between students’ expectations and actual course offerings) in each of the categories: undergraduate students, post-graduate students, and overseas students. Results indicated that in all three categories universities found a combination of strategies the most effective. For undergraduates: university specific handbooks and web-site information and university open days rated highly. Word-of-mouth (between students) and personal contact with university staff—such as the course convenor—was also rated very highly. For postgraduate students: the Departmental handbook (or website), personal contact with staff, and word of mouth (between students) all rated highly. For overseas students: the university handbook or website, the Departmental handbook or website, local contact with university staff, and word of mouth (between students) all rated highly. For overseas students, respondents commented that explaining course structures and specific ‘academic cultures’ in person was essential. One respondent commented on the need for greater clarification of the English language proficiency expected of overseas students and suggested that a standardised examination, similar to TOEFL, would help set guidelines as to a suitable level of proficiency for post-graduate as well as undergraduate studies. The perception of the need for detailed information specific to each university may reflect a recognition that (as demonstrated elsewhere in this report) there is a great diversity of courses, with varying emphases and outcomes. This contrasts with courses in fields such as Psychology or Law where tighter accreditation processes result in greater consistencies in approach amongst institutions. 66


Staffing Survey respondents were asked to provide information about staff working in the Communication and Media Studies fields at their university. Not all survey respondents chose to provide information about staffing. Many respondents commented that staff worked across disciplines or were developing cross- and interdisciplinary courses and programs. Some features of the overall staff profile were as follows:

Level of appointment

It was not possible from the survey to identify the total number of full-time academics working in this field. Of the 409 full-time equivalent staff reported 5 per cent were at Professorial level; 9 per cent at Associate Professor level; and 82 per cent at Lecturer levels (Levels A, B, & C).

Staff profile by age

The age profile of full-time academic staff indicates that universities appear to be doing reasonable well at ensuring that sufficient numbers of younger academics are being appointed to career-level positions to ensure future replacement needs at present levels of demand. Fifty-six per cent are aged between 35 and 50; 35 per cent are over 50; and 22 per cent are under 35 years of age. Of the group aged between 35-50 years 92 per cent are Lecturers (levels A, B, & C). Only 2 per cent of this group are Professors and 6 per cent are Associate Professors.

Staff profile by gender

Of the 409 staff reported, 58 per cent were male; 42 per cent female. Nineteen (16 male; 3 female) were reported to be at the Professorial level. Only at the lowest appointment levelAssociate Lecturer level (Level A)do females (at 11 per cent) out-number males (7 per cent).

Part-time and sessional staff

The proportion of the teaching load that was undertaken by part-time and sessional staff was less than 25 per cent in 10 out of the 26 institutions that responded. Twelve respondents reporting that it was between 25 and 50 per cent of the teaching load; and four reported that the proportion was between 50 and 75 percent.

Disciplinary fields of academic staff

The majority of academic staff members are drawn specifically from Communication and/or Cultural Studies and/or Media Studies (57 per cent of sample). Those drawn from Humanities and Social Science (including those from Communication/Cultural Studies/Media Studies) make up 86 per cent of the sample. Other areas: 67


•

Visual/Performing Arts (including film and TV production) make up 9 per cent of the sample;

•

Education, 4 percent; and

•

Admin, Business, Economics, Law (including marketing), 2 per cent.

Industry experience of academic staff

Survey respondents reported a high level of experience in the communication and media industry among staff members. For example, of 28 responses 10 reported that more than 75 per cent of academic staff had worked in the communication and media industry for three years or more. Eight reported that their part-time and sessional staff were currently working in related industries or had three or more years experience. It is difficult to know how to interpret these responses given that they do not sit well with comments received elsewhere in the survey. For example: It is extremely hard to locate, recruit and keep qualified journalism and media staff. Most don't have academic qualifications sufficient to teach at university level, and most find the salary less than they could get in industry. Generally, experienced industry based staff (both academic and technical) are difficult to find, and to retain within the university context. Suitably qualified staff in vocational disciplines are difficult to attract because of salary differentials. Substantial growth in course work in recent years, but major reduction in full-time staff within the organisational unit (down from 13 to 7). Madness! Difficult to get highly qualified staff with industry experience.

One interpretation is that high numbers of those teaching at Associate Lecturer level and as sessional staff are not well qualified academically. This comment, from a respondent in a regional university, may reflect the reality in many other institutions: Many professional media people do not have higher post-graduate qualifications (eg. MAs and PhDs). So at regional universities it is difficult to promote higher levels of graduate scholarship and research. We can be extremely effective vocationally, but that is quite different from graduate and postgraduate scholarship. (I suspect the same applies to our "big city cousins" but in many cases they don't like to admit it!).

The main areas from which academic staff were likely to have had experience (in order of frequency reported) were:

68

•

Journalism;

•

Media production (radio, TV, or film);

•

Public relations;

•

Multimedia production;

•

Advertising;


•

Marketing;

•

Library & Information Management; and

•

Writing, editing, publishing.

Technical support Given the link between Communication and Media Studies and the new information and communication technologies the level of technical support available within the university for this field of study would seem an indicator of the commitment of individual universities, and the system as a whole, to preparing students for the emerging ‘knowledge economy’. It is therefore a little surprising to find that 62 per cent of our survey respondents reported that the level of technical support had not increased during the past three years in their area of responsibility. One respondent reported that technical support in the area had actually decreased (by 0.2 of a staff member). Another respondent noted that, due to organisational restructuring, there was now a greater reliance on Divisional support and that while this had increased the level of support the change made it hard to quantify in actual staff hours. One respondent, responsible for courses in Mass Communication and Writing, and Communication and Media Studies, at a large metropolitan campus, reported that there was no technical support available in her area of responsibility. Some respondents noted that technical resources were shared with other areas or provided as part of ‘Media Technology Services’ that provided university-wide support. One respondent also noted that their university maintained a ‘flexible teaching and education support unit’ that provided support to academic staff. A number of respondents noted that moves towards the development and delivery of on-line courses put increased pressure on staff and that the necessary technical training and support were not available to underpin these initiatives. Extrapolating from the numbers of academic staff reported to be teaching in the field and the technical staff working in the field the ratio of academic to technical staff is in the order of 9:1. However, this ratio is based on reported full-time equivalent academic staff only and makes no allowance for support of sessional teachers. It also makes no distinction between technical staff employed to support staff in ICT use and those employed to maintain student resources. The levels of support varied across institutions and were higher in those institutions that specialised in production areas. The tasks being undertaken by technical staff varied in level from full management (including budgeting) of technology aspects within Departments, through managing and maintaining specialist studios, design and maintenance of web sites and support to academic staff undertaking electronic course development, and down to ‘lending equipment to students’. In universities with strong production-based programs technical staff provide technical expertise in: •

Broadcasting: radio and TV;

•

Video and film production;

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•

Specialist animation production;

•

Theatre production;

•

Photography; and

•

Multimedia.

Infrastructure The high cost of providing the infrastructure that underpins production courses in communication and media is reflected in one respondent’s comment that at their university (a University of Technology) over $1 million has been invested in new equipment over the past three years and that the leasing costs of equipment was now running at $250,000 per annum. A number of other respondents commented that hardware and software up-grades put pressure on the Department/School budget. We asked survey respondents to indicate the kinds of facilities available to students studying in their area and whether students in their Communication and Media courses produce work that is made available to the wider community. Tables 6.2 and 6.3 show the range of responses. It should be noted, however, that the facilities listed in Tables 6.2 and 6.3 do not indicate whether all Communication and Media Studies students (or even what proportion) have access to these facilities, and on what basis. Anecdotal information suggests that many undergraduate courses are taught in lecture formats, with little or no ‘hands on’ communication or media experience. It is only in specialised courses, often offered at post-graduate level, that production experience is available. This is reflected in the report from one survey respondent that staff/undergraduate student ratios in his institution were current 1:30 to 1:40. The amount of ‘hands on’ production experience in situations such as this is likely to be minimal. This university also delivers some 35 per cent of its courses by distance education. Distance education students have web-based resources but no access to production resources. Another regional multi-campus university pointed out that most sites do not have production facilities. There is also, again, the question of cross subsidisation. One respondent pointed out that, in their university, ‘resources are dedicated to the journalism program with considerable cross subsidisation from other departments’.

Discussion Staffing issues

There is a diverse and expanding number of Communication and Media Studies courses on offer across Australia and these courses are supported by academic staff predominantly drawn from Communication Studies, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies, and from other Humanities and Social Science backgrounds. Most 70


universities take advantage of part-time and sessional staff arrangements, with some institutions using these staff members to deliver between half and three-quarters of their teaching load. The high percentage of sessional staff reported by some institutions suggests that the administrative loads of full time staff may be fairly high. There is also some evidence to suggest that, particularly at the undergraduate level, student/teacher ratios are high in some courses. In addition, a number of respondents pointed to Table 6.2

Communication and Media facilities available to students

Facility

No of institutions with this facility

TV studio

18

Multi-media Laboratory

20

Audio studio

19

Radio station

12

News room

11

Editing suites

5

Other (each nominated by one institution) Screen Acting Studio Writing Laboratory Computer Editing Facilities Information Studies Computer Laboratory

Sound Mixing Suites Photography Studios Animation Studio Journalism Laboratory

Source:Survey of Heads of Departments/Schools No of responses: 27

Table 6.3

Communication and Media students’ production work made available to the wider community

Type of production work

No of institutions with this facility

A community radio station

16

A community television station

5

University supported website

20

Other website

12

Pay or cable television/multimedia service

2

University published newspaper

17

Other newspaper

9

71


Literacy/cultural studies magazine

2

Film and video festivals

2

Other: International radio network Media co-productions Theatre production Public screenings, exhibitions Free to air TV station Source:Survey of Heads of Departments/Schools No of responses: 27.

the fact that recruiting suitably qualified and experienced staff in this field is extremely difficult given the salary differentials between industry and teaching institutions.

Infrastructure issues

Most universities appear to be under-resourced in terms of technical support staff given the importance of providing ‘hands on’ experiences to students who are being prepared for employment in the communications and media industries and the high level of reported moves toward on-line course delivery. However, given the wide range of activities reported as being undertaken by technical staff across the different institutions, and the range of production facilities being maintained, it is difficult, from this study, to get a clear picture of either the actual or projected support needs of the field as a whole. It is clear, however, that there is great variation in the resources and facilities available across the system. Institutions specialising in production, notably the ‘universities of technology’, report that meeting the cost of industry standard infrastructure is a major issue. This issue is compounded by funding under the Relative Funding Model in that this model takes little account of the cost of providing and maintaining ICT infrastructure in these courses (which are often funded as Humanities and Social Science units). On the other hand, those universities with high enrolments in ‘traditional’ Bachelor of Arts degrees that include some production elements have lower infrastructure costs and are able to cross-subsidise those costs against large undergraduate units taught in lecture formats. In addition, the well-resourced specialist institutions are located in the large urban centres. While there are clear exceptions, regional and rural universities are less likely to be able to provide production experiences for their students and are likely to find it even more difficult to recruit and hold qualified and experienced staff than institutions in large population centre. Distance eduction students are particularly disadvantaged in terms of access to these kinds of resources.

Moves to on-line delivery

The cost, in both resources and staff time, of staff training in ICT use, particularly in relation to development of on-line courses, is a major concern to many.

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Summary This section looked at a range of matters canvassed in the survey of Heads of Departments/Schools. Matters covered range from innovation in the field, changes in modes of course delivery, anticipated changes in enrolment patterns over the next three years, effective delivery of information to prospective students, staffing and other resource issues. The survey indicated that courses are supported by academic staff predominantly drawn from Communication Studies and Cultural Studies and from other Humanities and Social Science backgrounds. In addition, universities take advantage of part-time and sessional staff arrangements but the proportion of course delivery undertaken by part-time and sessional staff varies across the system. Most providers deliver courses to students on campus and, while there is evidence of widespread moves to on-line delivery, most providers appear to be moving to ‘mixed modes’ of delivery (making more on-line materials available to on-campus students) rather than developing fully on-line delivery modes. Most of the larger providers appear reasonably resourced in terms of technical support staff and facilities but it is unclear what proportion of these resources are used to support and train staff in ICT use and what proportion are devoted to the support of students’ learning experiences. The high cost of communication and media infrastructure is a major concern for those managing Communication and Media Studies areas in the universities surveyed particularly when, in many universities, they are funded as Humanities and Social Sciences under the Relative Funding Model and this Model takes little account of the cost of maintaining ICT infrastructure.

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Industry links and employment outcomes Critics have suggested that student outcomes in Communication and Media Studies fields are not as strong as the hype surrounding the new communication and media industries sometimes suggests. In order to obtain information about the ways Communication and Media Studies courses articulate with industries in the communication and media fields the survey posed a number of questions about professional accreditation, opportunities for student industry placements and internships, as well as the methods used to monitor employment destinations. In addition to survey responses we also examined data provided in the Graduation Destination Survey (GDS).

Student outcomes In an article published in 2000 in The Australian and headlined: ‘Popular, but no meal ticket’ columnist Jane Richardson paints a less that rosy picture of student outcomes in the field. She notes: •

Communications and media studies have enormous pulling power with students—at least one course requires a tertiary score almost as high as that for medicine or law—yet one in three communication graduates fails to find full-time work;

•

Graduate salaries in communication and media are among the lowest for graduates in any field;

•

Communication is highly feminised, something it shares with humanities and social science courses. Women make up more than 70 per cent of enrolments;

•

Communication students tend to enrol mostly in humanities subjects (64), with 9 per cent drawing subjects from the social sciences and 12 per cent from visual and performing arts disciplines;

•

Within humanities, communication studies was the principal discipline enrolled in—49 per cent of all students. Five per cent enrolled in English. Only 1.7 per cent studies another language; and

•

Starting salaries are about $24,600 to $34,345. Sixty-two per cent of graduates go into the private sector, 23 per cent enter the public sector and 9 per cent find work overseas.

These findings mirror graduate outcomes in the Humanities and Social Sciences more generally and tell us little about the outcomes for the more specialised courses 74


and post-graduate studies. We asked our respondents about the kinds of links with industry they had and the methods used to monitor outcomes.

Course accreditation Courses in the fields of Communication and Media Studies are not subject to comprehensive accreditation procedures as in more well defined professional areas such as psychology and accounting. This reflects the diversity of professional outcomes for students in these courses as well as the stage of development of these professions and their relevant associations. Formal accreditation is available in the fields of Public Relations, Library and Information Studies and Advertising through the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA), the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) and the International Advertising Association. The International Advertising Association is a New York based body which accredits courses globally. There is no formal accreditation within Australia, though universities may have affiliations with the Advertising Federation of Australia. There is also no formal accreditation in the area of Journalism. Discussions are currently being held between the Journalism Education Association and the Media, Entertainment, and Arts Alliance (MEAAA) to establish a system of formal accreditation of Journalism courses. In the meantime some Institutions have indicated 'professional recognition' of their courses by organisations such as the Advertising Federation of Australia and the MEAAA but there is not a consistent approach to such claims among institutions. Survey respondents were asked to indicate which of their courses had formal accreditation with professional bodies. These are shown at Appendix B (courses on offer in Australian universities). Fourteen different professional bodies to which courses were affiliated were identified. The PRIA was the body most cited. Thirteen institutions reported courses accredited by the PRIA. Four institutions had courses accredited by the ALIA and three had journalism courses ‘accredited’ with the Entertainment, Media & Arts Alliance. Other affiliating bodies named included AFA (Advertisers’ Federation of Australia), the International Advertising Association, the Advertising Institute of Australia, the Society of Business Communicators, the Australian Institute of Training and Development, the Society of Business Communicators, the Australian Graphic Design Association, Multimedia Industry Network (mmIN), and the Design Institute of Australia (DIA). The Griffith University combined degree in science and communication has Royal Australian Chemistry Institute and Australian Institute of Physics accreditation; while the University of Canberra has Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation (ACHER) accreditation for its Sports Media degree.

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Industry placements and professional work experience for students

Of the large number of courses on offer only 21 courses were reported to have mandatory industry placements/professional work experience components. These components varied in length from semester-long placements to 80 hours. James Cook University reported that their Bachelor of Journalism course involved continuous industry experience across all three years. Edith Cowan University reported the highest number of semester-long mandatory placements, in the areas of: •

Public Relations;

•

Advertising;

•

Film and video;

•

Media Studies; and

•

Photomedia.

Twenty-nine courses were reported as encouraging a period of industry placement/professional work experience. Of these five were optional semester-long units. Most other placements ranged from 2-4 weeks in duration. The University of NSW reported a one-year long ‘Honours Industry Partnership Scheme’ (paid). Overall opportunities for students to participate in work experience programs are relatively limited despite the stated desirability of such placements. Respondents commented on the difficulties of providing work experience programs, especially for their undergraduate students. Typical of the comments received is the following: Work experience is very valuable, but student numbers at undergraduate level make it prohibitive (production based courses would have more manageable numbers).

One respondent, from a regional university, pointed out that opportunities to engage with relevant industry bodies was in some ways conditioned by the location of the university: Regional campuses suffer by comparison with metropolitan institutions with regard to the number of opportunities they have to develop industry links.

Employment destinations Three-quarters of the survey respondents estimated that at least 50 per cent of graduates obtained career-entry positions directly related to their major area of study within one year of graduation (one quarter were confident that more than 75 per cent of graduates did). However, when asked what these estimates were based on, by far the most common response was ‘student feedback to staff’. The next most commonly cited source of information was the university-based graduate surveys and the GDS. 76


Four respondents used feedback from employers. Only one respondent reported using their own Departmental research. One respondent, providing a post-graduate program, observed that many of their students were already in employment when they entered the program. Several respondents indicated that they had no formal mechanisms in place for monitoring student employment destinations or career development for Communication and Media Studies graduates, citing lack of resources available to do so. Medium (1-5 years after graduation) and long term (10 years after graduation) strategies employed by some universities included contacts with past students through the alumni association and university-based graduate surveys.

Gaining entry level employment in the field Respondents were asked to indicate from a list of items what they thought were the most important for students in terms of gaining entry level employment. Three items were highly ranked: •

Internships and work placements;

•

Prior employment in the industry; and

•

Student personal contacts in the industry.

Rated less significant (in order of ranking): •

Personal contact between university staff and industry representatives;

•

Cadetships;

•

Employment got by responding to ‘positions vacant’ advertised in newspaper; and

•

Employer recruitment within the university.

Ranked least significant: •

Employment brokers.

One respondent indicated that student exhibitions, to which employers are invited, are significant for graduates in their university.

Labour market trends We asked survey respondents to identify the specialisations their saw as having a bright employment future. Overall, respondents were highly positive about future employment opportunities for graduates in the field, citing continuing strong labour market demand for graduates with ICT skills and experience as the basis for their predictions. Specialisations in which strong and continuing growth was predicted included: •

Public relations and the related ‘public communication’ area, as well as advertising and marketing; 77


•

All forms of electronic ‘message production’ (for example, e-journalism, writing for web-sites); and

•

Traditional media production—TV, radio, newspapers.

One respondent pointed out that, because of the volatile nature of the new media, ‘old employers using new media are the likely growth areas’—that is to say, it is in the take up of the new media within established companies, rather than in new industries, that the demand for graduates is likely to remain strong. One respondent noted that universities specialising in the Communication and Media Studies area had a bright future as training providers for industry. This respondent also notes the need for closer links between universities and industry. This is a theme taken up by a number of respondents: With the media industries devoting fewer resources to training the universities have an opportunity to fill the gap with relevant industryfocused skills development. Links with industry are vital to ensure a supply of industry professionals as instructors; to help foster effective and efficient links so universities can work in partnership with industry in the training of potential industry recruits; universities can be training providers to industry.

As we have noted elsewhere, other respondents pointed to the strength of their combination of traditional liberal arts education with training in ICT use as providing the future employment strength of their graduates, particularly in relation to management (rather than production) level positions. The growing number of combined degrees also reflects this trend. Survey respondents were asked to indicate where they saw the medium term (1-5 years) growth areas in the communication and media industries that will result in employment opportunities for Communication and Media Studies graduates from their university. Public relations and ‘media relations’ (corporate communications, online journalism and website content provision) were the most commonly cited areas of growth. ‘Traditional’ media production—such as print (journalism and creative writing) TV and radio were seen as still strong areas of employment opportunity. Media support to community organisations and NGO (nongovernment organisations) was also cited as areas of growth—perhaps reflecting the move away from government provision of public services and the subsequent expansion of community bodies now providing these services.

The Graduate Destination Survey (GDS) The GDS is the main longitudinal data collection of Australian graduate outcomes. University graduates are surveyed around four months after completion of their qualifications. According to this source, of the graduates who completed their bachelor degree studies in 1999:

78

•

83.6 per cent were in full-time employment within four months of completing their degrees;

•

A further 9.7 per cent were working in part-time or casual employment;

•

Some 6.7 per cent were not working or still looking for work; and


•

The median annual starting salary for bachelor degree graduates was $33,000. Graduate Careers Council of Australia, 2000, GradStats

However, counterbalancing this rosy picture, it needs to be noted that the GDS had only a 61 per cent response rate to its 1999 survey and there is no way of knowing whether the responses received constitute a random sample or a sample skewed in favour of those who had satisfactory outcomes. Some attempt has been made by the GDS to research the non-respondent group but the results appear to be inconclusive (see GDS, 1998, p.172). In addition, 21 per cent of males and 14 per cent of females who responded already had full-time employment in May of their final year of study (that is to say, their employment was not the result of their graduation). At the same time, the median starting salary tells us nothing about the range of salaries on offer. The GDS note that, for all graduate occupations, there is a difference of $25,000 between the top ranking (Dentistry and Medicine) and the bottom ranking (Humanities, Other Social Science and Art and Design) fields (Gradstats, 2000, p.8). In addition, the GDS only records that a graduate has work four months out from graduation. It can tell us nothing about the kind of work and whether the work is a career-entry position in the field in which the graduate studied (that is, whether the course ‘added value’ to the graduate’s employment opportunities and put the graduate on a career path in their field of study). It is clear that, statistically speaking, all graduates fare better in the labour market than non-graduates. The GDS quote Australian Bureau of Statistics census data that shows that, in the Australian population, graduates have amongst the lowest unemployment rates. According to GDS recent figures show that, while the rate of unemployment for the Australian population as a whole was 8.0 per cent, it was: •

2.6 per cent for higher degree graduates (masters and PhD combined) and 2.2 per cent for postgraduates overall;

•

3.5 per cent for bachelor degree graduates; and

•

5.0 per cent for those with any type of post-school qualification. Graduate Careers Council of Australia, Media Release, 30/11/99.

However, this information tells us little about how particular groups of graduates, graduates in particular fields of study, or graduates in specific geographical locations fare when they enter the labour market. The brush is just too broad. Finally, but importantly for the purposes of this study, the GDS uses outdated categories that are unable to adequately capture the growth in the number and diversity of Communication and Media Studies courses on offer. The GDS records information specifically on ‘Communication and Journalism’ graduates. This category is a sub-set of ‘Arts, Humanities and Social Science’. Using the subset Communication and Journalism for the year 1998, for example, we find that 47.4 per cent had full-time employment at the time of the survey, with the majority (34 per cent) finding work in the private sector. Of those not in full time employment: •

26.1 per cent were seeking full time work;

•

8.4 per cent weren’t seeking full time work;

•

13.9 per cent were in full time study; and

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•

4.4 per cent were ‘unavailable for full time work or full time study’. (Graduate Careers Council of Australia, 1998 p.53).

Overall, the Arts, Humanities and Social Science graduates had only 14.5 per cent of graduates enter the private sector. But three sub sets of this group all showed significantly higher rates of employment in this sector: Communication and Journalism (at 33.8 per cent) Graphic Arts and Design (at 35.9 per cent) and Visual and Performing Art (at 33.4 per cent). It could be argued that these three sets together broadly cover the Communication and Media Studies field. But it is also possible that, in some universities, courses in this field are recorded as part of the GDS field Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, General. Certainly ‘General’ records the largest number of respondents of all the Arts, Humanities and Social Science categories. Another large category in the GDS is ‘Library Studies’ but this too is, in many universities, offered within the field of Communication (often ‘rebadged’ as ‘Information Management’ to reflect its new emphasis). In Library Studies the reported full time employment rate drops to 23.0 per cent and the number seeking full time employment is reported to be 23 per cent. Twelve per cent of employment in this field is in the private sector. Communication Studies are also located in Business and Economics Departments in many universities. Advertising and Public Relations, in particular, are often seen as part of the communications field. In the GDS the two most relevant fields appear to be ‘Marketing and Distribution’ and ‘Personnel Management and Development’ and these are both listed as part of the discipline area of Business, Administration and Economics. In these areas total employment is reported to be much higher: at 69.6 per cent and 64.1 per cent respectively. Of these: •

53.1 per cent of Marketing graduates and 64.1 per cent of Personnel Management and Development graduates are reported to be in the private sector;

•

19.6 per cent and 15.6 per cent respectively are reported to be seeking work; and

•

10.1 per cent and 6.3 per cent respectively were undertaking further full time study.

For the reasons outlined above we need to be fairly circumscribed in our reading of these statistics. However, one thing they do point to is the fact that the private sector is the main employer of graduates in Communications and related fields. The GDS also provides some evidence to support the claim that graduate starting salaries are low in this field compared to other graduates but can provide no information about the range of starting salaries within the field except to say that areas such as Public Relations and Advertising are likely to pay better than the more feminised areas of Information Management and general Communication and Media Studies degrees.

Too many graduates in the field? There has been some debate as to whether supply will outstrip demand in some specialist professional areas, especially Journalism (Patching 1996, O’Donnell, 1999, 80


Salter, 2001). This issue is outside the scope of this study except to note that the available data and the information received from survey respondents suggests that students graduating from specialist courses in the area have good prospects of gaining employment, and gaining employment that utilises their expertise. Journalism graduates, for example, may not be working in news-rooms but will have access to a wide range of employment areas that draw on their research, analytical, and communication skills. In part the high employability of graduates from specialist courses appears to be related to the clear articulation between the skills taught in these courses and the demand for ICT skills in the industry. In part they also reflect the selection processes used to fill positions in these courses. These ensure a strong match between student aspirations and abilities and course outcomes. What appears to be less clear is the employment outcomes for generalist students. This issue is not confined to this field of study but is related to a larger problem that stems from the ‘massification’ of higher education over the past decade.

Discussion As indicated in Section 3, there are over 13,500 students studying in the Communication and Media Studies fields in Australian universities. Although the courses have strong appeal to students because of their promise of entry into the world of high-tech media and communication the reality for many undergraduate students appears to be somewhat different. Resource constraints restrict opportunities for ‘hands on’ experience or for professional development experiences in the industries for which the students are being prepared. The lack of professional experience is particularly striking if we compare this field with other professionally-oriented undergraduate studies drawing on a similar student demographic—such as teaching, nursing, or engineering—in which professional experience is a mandated component of the undergraduate degree. It is also striking that our survey respondents nominate ‘internships and work placements’ and ‘prior employment in the industry’ as the most important factors in terms of gaining entry-level career positions. This suggests that employment opportunities for graduates are relatively tight in this field and there are few openentry recruitment opportunities (such as the long-gone graduate-entry exams into the public service). In these circumstances, opportunities for students to participate in professional work experience programs and make contacts in the industry are highly significant. In their responses to questions about employment destinations survey respondents appear confident that high numbers of graduates obtain career-entry positions related to their major area of study. The basis of this optimism for many teaching in the field appears to be feedback from students and other anecdotal evidence. Very few Communication and Media Studies Departments appear to have the resources to maintain structured monitoring of student employment outcomes. In addition, the available national data, such as the Graduate Destinations Survey, seems inadequate in that the categories under which information is gathered do not treat the field as a significant whole. Instead, courses in this area are divided up across a 81


number of sub-sets within the discipline fields of Arts, Humanities and Social Science and Business, Administration and Economics. When we add in the fact that Communication and Media Studies enrolments are, like those in the Humanities and Social Science disciplines more generally, highly structured along gender lines the need for more structured monitoring that pays attention to student outcomes across the board becomes compelling. In Communication and Media the ratio of females to males is in the order of 3:1 and many of these students are ‘first generation’ university participants (those who have not come from professional family backgrounds). It could be argued that employment is only one outcome of higher education study. This may be true but changes to the way universities are resourced means that students must now take on considerable financial responsibilities when they undertake undergraduate studies. In these circumstances it becomes important for students to have realistic information available to them about the likely employment outcomes and future financial returns they will get from their ‘investment’ in a particular education and training pathway. In an earlier section of this report (see Section 2) we reviewed American research that suggested that, at least in one professional area—that of librarianship (information management)—employment opportunities were ‘fracturing’ into ‘heartland’ ‘hinterland’ and ‘horizon’ occupations. This research indicated that traditional entry-level positions in ‘heartland’ occupations were contracting, ‘hinterland’ occupations were expanding but also showed a tendency for expansion of both more skilled and more casualised occupational locations. The entry points into the high tech and high salaried ‘horizon’ occupations in the field were not usually based on education qualifications and credentials alone. Often these qualifications were acquired later, in order to consolidate existing career trajectories. What this research points to is the need for better monitoring of outcomes in Australian universities—monitoring that can take account of the increasingly complex and ‘fractured’ occupational labour markets that graduates are now entering. These observations highlight the need for much closer scrutiny of student outcomes and destinations. This is not intended as a criticism of those teaching in these fields. They do not have the resources to appropriately monitor outcomes, particularly outcomes over the medium to long term. The limitations of current formal monitoring means that those teaching in the field rely on information that doesn’t necessarily reflect the outcomes in their fields or in their region. In addition, the tendency to fall back on anecdotal evidence and informal student and employer feedback can have the unintended side effect of reinforcing the emphasis on the high profile students and destinations. This in turn hides from view the outcomes for the majority of students. Concentration on the outcomes of high profile graduates may also reinforce a particular curriculum emphasis that overlooks the needs and career aspirations of the majority of students. The lack of adequate formal monitoring also links to the issue of the quality of information provided to students prior to enrolment. If those providing course advise are insufficiently informed about the actual employment destinations of their graduates they are not well placed to provide sound and realistic advice to potential students. Increasingly, students are being asked to make a considerable financial

82


outlay to obtain a tertiary level qualification. They therefore need to be well informed about the likely outcomes of their choices.

Summary The survey of courses on offer indicates that only a small number of courses are formally accredited with professional associations. This reflects the lack of comprehensive accreditation procedures available in this field. The strongest professional affiliations are in the areas of Public Relations, and Library Studies. Formal accreditation processes in the area of Journalism are under consideration. The survey identified 21 courses that included a mandatory professional workplace component. Many survey respondents considered professional workplace experience to be highly valuable but did not consider they had the resources to introduce or expand such programs given the high numbers of enrolments in undergraduate courses. Although data on student outcomes and employment destinations is sketchy there is some evidence (in, for example, the data printed by the GDS) to suggest that these may be relatively poor for some groups of graduates. At the same time, survey respondents themselves identified internships and work placements as the most important way for students to gain entry level employment. This suggests that there is a need to examine ways to extend opportunities for students to participate in professional experience programs, especially during their undergraduate studies. Survey respondents indicated that most universities rely on anecdotal information and feedback from students, and information obtained from the GDS, to monitor student outcomes. This information is limited in a number of ways. Consequently, there is a need for more comprehensive and longitudinal studies of student outcomes and employment destinations, particularly research that is able to indicate regional variations in graduate employment outcomes and destinations.

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Future directions Survey respondents were asked to reflect on the future of the field: •

In their institution; and,

•

In Australian higher education generally.

A sample of respondents’ comments are reported below. Generally, respondents were optimistic about the future of the field although the tensions we identified earlier are evident in the responses—particularly the tension between preparing ‘work ready’ production-oriented graduates and more broadly educated liberal arts graduates. The issue of resources is also a strong theme. Although some common themes run through the comments there are no clear ‘majority’ positions taken by our respondents and the overall position is best captured by the respondent who replied: The overall outlook is somewhat confused. The field covers a very broad range of activities. There is little coherence about the field so it is difficult to look at this question 'as a whole'

What do you see as the future of Communication and Media Studies in your university? Responses are grouped under the type of institution, using the categories identified in the section of this report titled Curriculum models and contexts.

Unitechs

84

•

Strong future with good undergraduate and post graduate numbers. Key strategic directions of this university are greater focus on research and full fee-paying post graduate courses. We are taking a leading role in a CRC on Smart Internet Technology and have plans for new postgraduate courses in Communications and Media Communications.

•

Will continue to be the 'backbone' (large enrolments) at the Faculty at both undergraduate and post graduate levels. Will play larger role in combined/double degrees with other Faculties.

•

Potentially very bright. High demand, good (and improving) quality of staff, supportive management and a good international base. Priorities are: (a) achieve quality assurance; (b) effort and courteous service; (c) International research profile.


New Universities •

Student demand continues to be strong for Communication and Media programs. Provided we are able to maintain existing levels of resources we will continue to do well. Future growth will involve the development and integration of web based contexts for communication studies and applications in the industry. This school is now well placed to further develop joint convergent areas of study with Design. This will establish our programs with a unique set of characteristics and provide additional flexibility for students. This shift also aims to underpin the convergence of the fields in a broad sense.

•

The School of Communication and Multimedia has been identified as strong and strategic, and at long last is being 'rewarded' with resources and staff. Predictions and surveys suggest continued growth and commensurate resources are being made available.

•

Provision of communication skills units to students enrolled in other programs - whether as electives or service units - should remain healthy and perhaps grow somewhat. In this University there has been a faculty restructure and certain rule changes which have resulted in fewer BA students studying in this area. With more concerted marketing, Professional Communication/Public Relations may improve somewhat. Otherwise growth largely confined to units which are compulsory for/attractive to Multimedia students.

•

Secure as far as student demand goes, but resource demands for updating equipment and skills will mean it’s a struggle to keep up with the marketplace. The pressure then is to pass costs on to students.

•

Within the context of a 'liberal arts' BA, and given the limited staffing at present, I see little scope for growth. I am aware of undergraduate student interest in a combination of production and theoretical/analytic units. However the production component is not economically possible. I do think that the impact of the computer/Internet provides opportunities for some multi-media type production, and I suspect that computer based texts will become more common. Better communication and opportunities for staff in Computers, IT and Graphic to work together would reap benefits but is difficult to achieve. Student interest is strong. Interdisciplinary focus challenges the traditional discipline boundaries.

•

This area will become increasingly important to the University.

Gumtrees •

It will continue to develop where there is proper leadership. As the field is vibrant at the moment, no radical changes appear to be necessary, but continuous improvement of offerings and incorporation of new trends in technology and other developments in the discipline need to be done.

•

Communication and Media Studies are thriving areas. They are also becoming more like Science in terms of the technical infrastructure and ongoing expenditure they require to maintain their relevance. The challenge for universities is to acknowledge the need for investment in these areas traditionally seen as 'chalk and talk'.

85


•

Our Townsville Campus journalism and communication programs are well established and continue to grow each year. Our Cairns Campus journalism and communications programs are only three years old and are smaller, but with impressive annual growth. However, the 'catchment' in Far North Queensland is finite. Hence we anticipate a plateau eventually in enrolments as we approach maximum penetration within our region, and as journalism graduates saturate the job market nationally.

Redbricks and Sandstones •

The School of Media and Communications is located in a large and thriving Arts and Social Science Faculty. It attracts high-level matriculants and mature-age students with industry experience because of the combination of a 'core' in Media and Communications and a major in the Arts or Social Sciences. This is an attractive structure, combining an education in the traditional fields with new media creative/production work and the study of the media in their social and cultural contexts. While we can continue to teach students how to think about communication and how to communicate in the new media contexts of the times, we will, I believe, remain popular. The fourth (Honours) year is becoming very popular as students seek to develop high level research and production skills in a competitive world. I see considerable growth here, to about half of all 'core' undergraduates, within three years. The major opportunities are in the post-graduate field. The undergraduate field is stretched and limited by resources and the desire of the University to keep entrance levels high. Coursework Masters degrees and Research degrees utilise different resources and could expand. I see growth in New/digital media Masters degrees, aimed at industry workers and of the Media Education degree recruiting school teachers directly through the Department of Education. Currently, we are responding to many inquiries from overseas students who see Sydney and Australia as attractive and wish to study Media academically combined with creative/production courses in new media.

•

It may become the generalist interdisciplinary foundation study replacing English and other disciplines. It might be 'softened' by this uptake, thus losing the political and social edge of 'usefulness' it could once claim. These are the dangers. With critical mass and with more resources, it might maintain its capacity to be relevant, challenging and responsive to fast changing global media cultures.

Private providers •

86

Closer integration of theoretical and applied studies: Film and Television, Advertising, Design, MultiMedia and convergent media.


What do you see as the future of the field as a whole? Unitechs •

Great future given the nature of globalisation and economic restructuring around the world. Probably see a decline in courses based on textual analysis and related cultural studies and a growth in Internet Studies, Cultural Convergence and New Media, with a market in related production fields. For Australian communities as a whole - a fragmented under-resourced, over stressed group of academics many with low morale.

•

Bright for professional oriented courses, and especially for those that mix this professional emphasis with outstanding scholarship. Less rosy for the Cultural Studies end of the market, possibly, though still viable. Danger is of Unis treating this area cynically as a cash cow, rather than as a symptom of a transformation and reinvention of the Humanities.

•

In terms of demand for entry-level positions, the future is modest. In terms of providing continuous learning opportunities for those already in the field, the future is quite bright.

New universities •

Will expand at the undergraduate, post graduate and international student levels.

•

Fragmenting into a lot of specialisations away from the critical liberal arts tradition and the scope of the early BA (Communication) degrees.

•

An informed and media literate community capable of assessing some of the impact and contribution of media processes/media conglomerates/globalisation is essential to a healthy community. Theoretical/analytical studies/popular culture/audience experience/ pleasure have an important role in protecting and empowering consumers of media culture. Somehow all secondary level media studies seems undervalued (I used to offer film and media method in the Graduate Diploma of Education). The 21st century culture is an image based culture, absolutely saturated with information. Media literacy including web text literacy is essential. So there is a definite value in critical/theoretical approaches as well as in production (emphasis in original).

•

Communication and Media studies are considered to be ideal skills for success and climbing the corporate ladder.

•

It's already difficult to be sure just what we are including in this category. I can't see it getting any less confused - probably more. I doubt whether theoretical communication and media studies will grow further at the expense of more traditional Humanities and Social Sciences.

•

Characterised by rapid change. Our graduates will continue to be encouraged to develop approaches to constant change and to negotiate increasingly changing workplace environments. The emphasis will continue to be on developing strategic communication interventions and team work. In general terms, a move away from 87


more generalist Humanities underpinnings towards workplace specialisations and learning, with resources dedicated towards such activities. More emphasis on project management and collaborative approaches, alongside individual studies. •

Vocational orientations and professional degrees are the areas of projected growth.

Gumtrees •

Major issue is link between the academic field and the needs of media workers.

•

Good. But the way things are the graduates will soon create a glut in the job market as every university appears to be getting on the bandwagon of communication. Some courses are very limited in their scope. Very few courses in Australian universities appear to provide comprehensive coverage of all areas of communication. Most graduates who find employment in media or PR organisations actually get hired for administrative positions, not the journalistic or other professional ones.

•

Though there has been a lot of talk about the plethora of media studies graduates and the incapacity of a glutted market to accommodate them, the field should continue to thrive given the appeal of media production for students as an active, creative applied course. Students need to be shown how their skills (both technical and analytical) are relevant to a wide range of jobs beyond the media and employers need to be made aware of this too through careful marketing of graduates.

•

In a recent issue of the Australian ‘Media Supplement’ (22 Mar 01, p.8) writer Mark Day said there were about 1000 graduates annually from Australian journalism courses competing for about 400 jobs. Though our ‘strike rate’ has been excellent at our Townsville and Cairns campuses, we predict that the continued popularity and growth of journalism both here in North Queensland and in Australia will result soon in saturation. Hence, we're restructuring our BA in Communications (with differing strands) and a BA in Public Relations to spread the risk.

•

Major issue is link between academic field and the needs of media workers.

Redbricks and Sandstones •

88

I expect the more ‘professional’ specialisations to be less frequently studied at the undergraduate level and more at the Masters level (as in the U.S.). This would allow the first degree to focus more on generic ‘skills’ and on what we used to call education, including the development of critical and analytical abilities in all Humanities undergraduates. Media and Communications would then be only part of these degrees and specialisations would be studied later in combination with professional experience, where possible. The development of more and more interdisciplinary undergraduate courses will have to be supplemented by discipline-based options if the degrees offered in Media and Communications are to retain their value. Currently, few students are prepared for Honours and there is a danger that the ‘communications’ degree may become


quickly devalued. I don't think this is just wishful thinking from an old academic. A shake-out is under way and more rigorous courses are attracting the best students. The traditional disciplines (updated and properly taught) are essential to communications graduates' education and students are beginning to realise this. So, I expect growth but in specialisations more at the post-grad level and in a more discipline-based undergraduate education (which incidentally is increasingly attractive to students from the region). •

Communications and media studies are diversifying areas of study. Nomenclature is a contested field. What "communications" as opposed to "communication" offers is the combination of practical skills' acquisition, historical studies, a rigorous analytical training with a study of the ethics of policy-making in a globalised knowledge economy. The field is likely to keep reacting to industry change particularly in the area of telecommunications, teleworking and convergences.

Private providers •

Very bright—there is a high demand for our communication graduates.

•

Positive, but with increasing emphasis on applications.

Summary Survey respondents were generally optimistic about the future of the field both in their institution and in Australian higher education more generally. However, the range of responses points to a range of futures rather than one clear and coherent pathway. In this sense, reflections on future directions appear to mirror the diversity observed in the curriculum offerings and approaches currently in place in the various types of higher education institutions.

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Conclusion This review of the field of Communication and Media Studies has revealed a dynamic, innovative, and creative field that is pro-active in its response to new communication and media technologies. We took as our starting point the 1989 study of the field undertaken by Molloy and Lennie. The changes that have taken place within the field in the decade since that study demonstrate a remarkable achievement on the part of those institutions that have been at the forefront of curriculum developments in this area. Our review also indicates the extent to which institutions have creatively dealt with the pressures that inevitably accompany rapid change. We identified a number of inter-related challenges that have both driven and contained the field. Included in these is the divide between the development of specific skills and attitudes expected in particular professional contexts and the critical assessment of professional work; and between broad educational and specific vocational objectives. There is also the need to respond to the range of roles universities play in an increasingly complex social milieu. The recent history of Communication and Media Studies can in part be read as a positive response to the priorities and purposes of higher education set by governments. In a recent statement of the main purposes of Australian higher education the Commonwealth Government sets the purposes as being to: •

Inspire and enable individuals to develop their capabilities to the highest potential throughout their lives (for personal growth and fulfilment, for effective participation in the workforce and for constructive contributions to society);

•

Advance knowledge and understanding;

•

Aid the application of knowledge and understanding to the benefit of the economy and the society;

•

Enable individuals to adapt and learn, consistent with the needs of an adaptable knowledge-based economy at local, regional and national levels; and

•

Enable individuals to contribute to a democratic, civilised society and promote the tolerance and debate that underpins it. (Kemp, 2001, p.3).

The field of Communication and Media Studies has been particularly well positioned to encompass the full range of educational purposes set by governments. It is well positioned (and this is evident in curriculum design in the field) to provide opportunities for both personal growth and fulfilment and for effective participation in the workforce. The field has also proven itself centrally positioned to engage with the concept of a knowledge-based economy and to bridge notions of ‘creativity’ and ‘industry’. From time to time concern is expressed about the growth in enrolments in the fields of Communication and Media studies on the basis that this creates a gulf

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between numbers graduating in these areas and employment opportunities in related communication fields. This concern is one regularly voiced by commentators, particularly with respect to positions in Journalism. The findings in this report suggest a complex picture with respect to the relationship between courses and their stated objectives and the labour market. Some of the expressed concerns about the growth in graduates in this area arise from an unnecessarily narrow view of appropriate graduate destinations and under-estimate the range of ‘new’ occupations available to graduates from this field. In addition, our review of curriculum models and intended outcomes demonstrated that while most courses claim vocational objectives, the courses vary greatly in terms of the specificity of these. Some are generalist courses that include useful practical studies with general studies while others are much more specifically related to particular professions. It is difficult to generalise about outcomes given these differences in course orientation. Communication and Media Studies has shown itself well positioned to positively respond to the broader social tensions arising from the rapid introduction of the new information and communication technologies. It has been able to respond to the changing needs of both undergraduates for skills that allow entry into new occupational fields and for post graduate studies that allow practitioners to upgrade existing knowledge and skills. But responding to these new demands has put considerable strains on institutions providing specialised and resource-intensive courses. The high costs of providing and maintaining the infrastructure necessary to provide production-oriented courses and experiences for students has been frequently commented on by those who took part in our study. Recruiting and holding suitably qualified and experienced staff, given the salary differentials between universities and the communication and media industry, has also been consistently raised. Finally, Communication and Media Studies as a field of study demonstrates the willingness of those working in the field to push the boundaries of the traditional classifications of knowledge within universities. Academics in the fields of Communication and Media Studies engage in new technology in a multidimensional way. New technologies, their uses and their role in shaping society and culture, are a major topic of Communication and Media research. The critical understanding of the uses and power of new communication technologies in particular professional contexts—for example, in journalism and advertising, and for traditional and new modes of production (print, film, multi-media) are a central component in most communication and media courses. Furthermore, new communication and media technologies are becoming part and parcel of the teaching and learning environments both with respect to on-campus teaching and learning and new modes of flexible delivery. The success with which the academics in the field have responded to these challenges is evident in the innovative curriculum models that have been produced and the engagement with flexible modes of delivery. The increasing maturity of the field is evident from the study. So too is the central role the field plays in both the creation of the messages that make up our multifaceted and media-saturated world, and in our ability to understand that world and shape it to democratic ends.

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This leads us to conclude that it would now be timely to bring together, in a more formal way than presently exists, the Heads of Departments/Schools working in the area. Throughout this study we have highlighted both the innovation in the field and the pressures that grow out of that very innovation and change. We have attempted to document the range of solutions being developed within individual institutions. To bring greater coherence to the field it is important that those providing the leadership in their universities have opportunities to collectively consider the range of options and opportunities available. To this end we would like to see the formation of a body, such as that formed by the Deans of Education, created for the Communication and Media Studies field. A formal recommendation to this end is one outcome of this study.

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Recommendations Communication and Media Studies is, and will remain, a significant field of study. Its significance derives from its links to the economic future of Australia in an increasingly globalised and digitalised world. Our study has indicated that it is a diverse and innovative field but ways need to be found to strengthen that diversity and innovation. At the same time, there is a need to consolidate and strengthen developments in the field. We therefore recommend to DETYA the following course of action: •

THAT copies of this report be circulated to all relevant Heads of Departments/Schools along with an invitation to participate in a forum to discuss the matters raised and to consider the constitution of a Council of Heads of Communication and Media Studies.

•

THAT DETYA consider providing a ‘Grant in Aid’ to help establish a Council of Heads of Communication and Media Studies (or similar).

The purpose of this body would be to provide a forum for Heads of Departments/Schools to meet to discuss developments in the field, to strengthen the visibility of Communication and Media Studies as a field of study in higher education institutions, and to consolidate and strengthen the disciplinary boundaries of the field. Issues arising from this study that the forum should consider include: •

Funding of ICT infrastructure;

•

Staff professional development needs;

•

Ways of maintaining diversity of offerings within and between institutions while at the same time strengthening the quality assurance needs of the field as a whole and addressing matters such as the mix of production and critical studies components within courses;

•

Staff/student ratios in undergraduate courses and the issue of crosssubsidisation of courses;

•

Cost benefit analysis of on-line course development and delivery;

•

Improved monitoring of enrolment trends;

•

Improved monitoring of student outcomes and the employment destinations of graduates; and

•

Consideration of mandatory professional experience components within degree courses as a way of enhancing student outcomes and employment destinations.

Our study has revealed that the positioning of Communication and Media Studies in the discipline field ‘Humanities and Social Science’ can make it difficult for prospective students to readily access the information they seek about the range of courses on offer in Australian universities. We therefore recommend:

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•

THAT DETYA consider a revision of its ‘Fields of Study’ web-site to better reflect the significance of Communication and Media Studies as a field of study and to better assist prospective students to locate relevant course information.

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References Ashenden, D., & Milligan, S. (2000a). Good universities guide to Australian universities and other higher education institutions. Port Melbourne, Vic.: Mandarin Australia. Ashenden, D., & Milligan, S. (2000b). The good universities guide to postgraduate & career upgrade courses & services. Subiaco, W.A. Ashenden Milligan. Australia. Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Higher Education Division. (1998). The characteristics and performance of higher education institutions. Occasional Paper Series 98-A. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2000). Australian Standard Classification of Education (ASCED) DRAFT Field Definitions - April 2000. Canberra: ABS. Brennan, J. L. (1999). What kind of university?: International perspectives on knowledge, participation, and governance. Buckingham, England: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press. Castells, M. (2000). Information Technology and Global Capitalism. On the Edge: Living with global capitalism. W. Hutton and A. Giddens, Jonathan Cape, UK: 52-74. Castells, M. (1998). End of millennium: The information age: economy, society and culture (Vols 1-3): Blackwell Publishers Inc. Castells, M. (1993/1996). The Informational Economy and the New International Division of Labor. In M. Carnoy et.al., (Eds.), The New Global Economy in the Information Age: Reflections on our changing world : The Pennsylvania State University Press. Cully, M. (1999). ‘A more or less skilled workforce? Changes in the Occupational composition of Employment 1993 to 1999.’ Australian Bulletin of Labour, 25(2 June). Cunningham, S., Ryan, Y., Stedman, L., Tapsall, S., Bagdon, K., Flew, T. & Coaldrake, P., (2000). The Business of Borderless Education. Canberra: DETYA, Evaluations and Investigations Programme. Craig, R. T., & Carlone, D. A. (1998). Growth and transformation of communication studies in US higher education: Towards reinterpretation. Communication Education, 47(1), 67-81. Available electronically: Expanded Academic ASAP Int'l Ed. Cronin, B., Stiffler M., & Day, D (1993). The emergent market for information professionals: educational opportunities and implications. Library Trends, 42(2): 257-277. Available electronically through Proquest 5000. Dunkin, R. (2000). Curriculum issues in Australian tertiary education and training. Unpublished conference paper. Paper presented at the LifeLong Learning Network Conference, Canberra, 8 December 2000.

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Elliot, N. L. (2000). Pedagogic discourse in theory-practice courses in Media Studies. Screen, 41(1), 18-32. Gibbons, M. (1999). Changing Research Practices. In J. Brennan, J. Fedrowitz, M. Huber, & T. Shah (Eds.), What kind of university? International perspectives on knowledge, participation and governance. (pp.23-35). Philadelphia: Open University Press Graduate Careers Council of Australia Ltd. (1999). 1998 Graduate Destination Survey . Melbourne, Victoria. Graduate Careers Council of Australia Ltd. (2000). GradStats. (No 5, December) electronic publication: www.gradlink.edu.au. Henderson, M. (1999). Which Crisis this Time? One Future of Australian Literary Studies. Southerly, (Spring-Summer), 43. Hutton, W. and A. Giddens, Eds. (2000). On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism, Jonathan Cape, UK. Irwin, H. (1998). Communication studies in Australia: Tensions and new challenges. Communication Education, 47(3), 274-285. Karmel, P. (2000). Funding Universities. In T. Coady (Ed.) Why Universities Matter, pp.159-185. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Kemp, D. (2001). Higher education report for the 2001 to 2003 triennium. Canberra: Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Lewis, G. (1982). The Anglo-American Influence on Australian Communication Education. Australian Journal of Education, 1&2, 14-21. Marginson, S., & Considine M. (2000). The Enterprise University: Power, governance and reinvention in Australia. Oakleigh, Victoria, Cambridge University Press. Marginson, S. (1997). Markets in Education. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Martin, L. C. (1964). Tertiary education in Australia: Report of the Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education in Australia. Canberra: Commonwealth Government. Molloy, B., & Lennie, J. (1990). Communication Studies in Australia: A statistical study of teachers, students and courses in Australian tertiary institutions. (Policy and Research Report 1). Brisbane: The Communication Centre, School of Communication, Queensland University of Technology. O'Donnell, P. (1999). The other 66 per cent? Rethinking the labour market for journalism graduates. Australian Journalism Review, 21(1), 123-142. Patching, R. (1996). 900 into 300 won't go: Are Australia's journalism courses producing too many graduates?. Australian Journalism Review, 18(1). Putnis, P. (1988). The Communication curriculum: Educating communication practitioners. Australian Communication Review, 9(2), 31-44. Putnis, P. (1987). How a curriculum develops: Communication studies at D.D.I.A.E. Australian Communication Review, 8(3), 26-29. Putnis, P. (1986). Communication studies in Australia: Paradigms and contexts. Media, Culture and Society, 8(2), 5-19.

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Richardson, J. (2000, 5 October). Popular, but no meal ticket. The Australian, pp.058. Ruthven, K. (1998). The Future of Disciplines: A Report on Ignorance. In Knowing Ourselves and Others: The Humanities in Australia into the 21st Century. Australian Research Council (Vol. 3, pp. 95-113). Canberra. Salter, D. (2001, 9 May). Strange pull of the press: What should the universities be teaching? The Australian, Higher Education Supplement, p.47. Turner, G. (1998). Media and Communication Studies. In Knowing Ourselves and Others: The Humanities in Australia into the 21st Century (Vol. 2, Chap 18). Canberra: Australian Research Council Teese, R., Davies, M., Charlton, M. & Polesel, J. (1995). Who wins at school? Boys and girls in Australian secondary education. Melbourne, Department of Education Policy and Management, University of Melbourne: 118.

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Appendix A: Survey Respondents Institutions that responded to the survey Australian Catholic University

Swinburne University of Technology

Australian Defence Force Academy

Tasmanian Maritime College

The Australian National University

University of Adelaide

Avondale College


Bond University



The University of Melbourne

Charles Sturt University

The University of New England


The University of New South Wales

Deakin University

The University of Newcastle

Edith Cowan University

The University of Queensland

Flinders University of South Australia

University of South Australia

James Cook University of Northern Queensland

The University of Sydney

La Trobe University Monash University Murdoch University Northern Territory University Queensland University of Technology Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Southern Cross University

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University of Southern Queensland University of Tasmania University of Technology Sydney University of the Sunshine Coast The University of Western Australia University of Western Sydney University of Wollongong Victoria University


Institutions that submitted partial responses to the survey (that is, confirmed courses on offer) Griffith University Macleay College Macquarie University The University of Melbourne The University of Notre Dame

Institutions identified as not offering Communication and Media Studies Courses in 2001 Australian Catholic University Australian Defence Force Academy The Australian National University (Undergraduate program) Flinders University of South Australia Tasmanian Maritime College University of Adelaide University of Western Australia

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Appendix B: Communication and Media Studies Courses in Australian Universities, 2001 How this data was compiled In the later part of the year 2000 the Research Team conducted a search of each institution’s web-site and compiled an initial list of Communication and Media Studies courses on offer. In early 2001 these lists were mailed to the identified Heads of Departments/Schools as part of the wider survey canvassing a number of issues in the field. Heads of Department/Schools were asked to confirm or amend the list. The wide range of courses on offer, the diversity of organisational arrangements in place in the different institutions, the fact that in some multi-campus universities organisational units are not necessarily under the one Head of Department/School, and the diversity of course nomenclatures has made it difficult to identified all course on offer. In addition, while the majority of Communications and Media Studies courses are still linked with the discipline area Humanities and Social Science, course in areas such as Public Relations and Advertising are more likely to be linked with the discipline Business and Economics; and Information Management may be linked with the Technology area. New terminology—such as ‘Informatics’—is likely to be overlooked completely if searching electronic data bases with the key terms ‘Communication’ or ‘Media’. To complicate matters further, organisational reorganisation is in full swing in a number of institutions. QUT, for example, reported that they were unable to confirm any of their course offerings because they are all being reorganised. All this reflects a highly dynamic and active field and, although we have made every effort with the resources available to us to identify the full range of courses currently on offer in this fast changing field we acknowledge that there may be errors and omissions.

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