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By Dr Mira K Desai Media courses in India come in a bewildering variety of nomenclatures, and are subject to differing standards of accreditation and course curricula
In India, ‘communication’ - mainly from the interpersonal and group communication angle - and ‘media’ - denoting technology or audio visual aids - has been taught under various disciplines ranging from medicine to literature and social work to home science. But the so-called discipline/degree courses in journalism or communication/media studies are more recent. Today they have expanded to include film, electronic and ‘new’ media and media ‘management’. Historically, since print media was the first to arrive on the scene, ‘journalism’ education formally began first. In 1938 Aligarh Muslim University started a Diploma in Journalism, which was discontinued after two years. In 1942, the Department of Journalism of Punjab University, Lahore (now in Pakistan) marked the beginning of ‘communication/media education’ in pre-independent India. This increased in the 1960s when various traditional universities opened either ‘journalism’ or ‘communication’ programmes. Madras University started a course in Journalism in 1947. Calcutta University started a Journalism course in 1950. The University Grants Commission (UGC), an apex institution for providing coordination and dissemination of standards in universities, colleges and research institutions came into being in 1956. By the 1970s, institutions like the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), the National School of Drama (NSD), the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), and the National Institute of Design (NID), all under State leadership, contributed directly or indirectly to the growth and human resource requirements of the media sector in India. Indian universities, which started journalism as an academic discipline, are increasingly replacing it with ‘communication studies’ or ‘mass communication’ in the last three decades. The challenge in the Indian context is also about the medium of instruction in these courses, especially in State-owned universities. That is the reason most universities offer journalism courses in vernacular languages. Public Institutes offering mass communication education The programmes started under traditional universities “had to naturally situate themselves in the academic mould of the university system with concern for nomenclature, curriculum inputs, evaluation criteria and faculty resources…(but) it was as late as 1977 when the University Grants Commission (UGC) constituted a subject panel for journalism and communication” (AMIC, 2002: 6). In the 1970s communication/media studies at undergraduate level began in southern India, and took some time to spread to other parts of the country. The University of Mumbai offered a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Media in the year 2000 with 13 colleges, which became around 30 by 2005 (Solomonraj, 2005). In the 1990s many diploma programmes offered by universities across the country were converted to Master’s degrees. Mahesh Chandra Guru and Madhura in their online article note that by 2005 some 60 universities, 25 agricultural universities and 100 private institutions annually train about 2000 students in various aspects of mass communication and journalism. Apart from traditional universities, many polytechnics and professional bodies offer vocational programmes like the Sophia Polytechnic in Mumbai. Press academies, advertising clubs and professional bodies like the Association of Voice Artists also offer regular training programmes of varied durations. There are ‘deemed’ universities like the Symbiosis Institute, and Manipal Academy of Higher Education that offer programmes in media management and advertising, communication etc, many with a self-financing framework that charges very high fees unlike traditional universities. The staff training institute in Delhi, established in 1948, trains programme staff for All India Radio. Prasar Bharati has training institutes for technical and programme staff in Bhubaneswar, Shillong, Hyderabad Ahmedabad, Lucknow, and Thiruvanthapuram. In Kolkata, the Satyajit Ray Institute of Film and Television, and in Orissa, the Biju Pattnaik Film & Television Institute have been set up along the lines of the National Film and Television Institute of India in Pune. The only national institute of journalism, the Makhanlal Chaturvedi Rashtriya Patrakarita Vidyalaya (or Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism) established in Bhopal in 1990 came into existence via a Bill passed in the Madhya Pradesh state assembly. Confusion in nomenclature and faculties In the index of the Association of Indian Universities Handbook, which lists 273 university level institutions including 52 deemed universities, postgraduate degrees in communication/media subjects are listed as Master of Arts (MA) in some universities and Master of Science (M Sc) in others. Not more than 20 institutions offer degrees in communication/media, but the number of institutions offering diploma programmes is much higher. Degrees are offered under various names: visual arts, film studies, mass communication, communication and journalism, development communication, mass communication and journalism, communication studies, communication, broadcast journalism, mass media, audio visual media, mass relations. Similar titles are given for undergraduate degree. The University of Mumbai offers a Bachelor of Cinema Appreciation and the Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University offers a Master’s in Educational Communication. Apart from the multiplicity of nomenclature, the programmes are positioned under various faculties. The University of Pune offers a Master’s in Communication Studies, Master’s in Journalism and Communication, and evaluates the Master’s in Mass Relations, all three under different institutions and faculties. Avinashilingum Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, offers a Master of Arts-Journalism (Hindi) degree in the faculty of Humanities. The postgraduate programme in Development Communication of Madurai Kamraj University states its eligibility criteria as ‘Bachelor’s degree except in Commerce/Business Management/ Home Science with 60% marks’ (AIU, 2002: 655). An MA in Audio Visual Media is offered by the University of Hyderabad while an MA in Broadcast Journalism is offered by Makhanlal Chaturvedi Rashtriya Patrakarita Vidyalaya, Bhopal. There are hundreds of diploma programmes, many positioned under the faculty that initiated the programme such as SNDT Women’s University’s Postgraduate Diploma in Communication & Media, which is under the faculty of Home Science. The UGC brought out the ‘model curriculum’ for Mass Communication in April 2001 and stated clearly that the nomenclature should be ‘Master of Arts (Mass Communication)’. Universities were asked “to amend their statutes to bring uniformity in the nomenclature throughout the country” (UGC, 2001:8). It also clearly defined eligibility criteria, entrance test, intake of limited students, staffing pattern, necessary infrastructure including library, placement service, separate faculty of mass communication within the university structure and examination/assessment/evaluation procedures. However, most universities continue with the old processes and nomenclatures, and private initiatives need not conform to, nor come under the purview of the State mandate. Though they can approach the UGC for accreditation, most private institutions do not as accreditation demands certain procedural formalities. Several of these private institutions are funded by their owners or registered under a variety of public trusts. They are not answerable to anyone for their curriculum or examination processes, a fact not generally known to students who enroll in them. The Press Commissions (1954 and 1984) have recognised the importance of Mass Communication and Journalism training in the country. However, the second Press Commission, headed by Justice K K Mathew, made only a passing reference to it. There seems to be utter chaos in the nature, scope, mandate and processes of mass communication education in India. Private institutes Many media houses such as The Times of India, Indian Express, The Hindu, regional dailies Vaarta, Eenadu, and Daily Thanthi have in-house training schools for their employees or in some cases open to the general public for a fee. The Times of India group also re-started its media school in 2004 after having shut it down in 1997. In a 2006 article in Business World, Tanmoy Neog comments that “of the 80-odd media schools that we counted, over a dozen have come up in the last three years (this includes media courses being offered by universities.)…Back in the summer of 2005, three newspapers, Hindustan Times, DNA and Mumbai Mirror, were launching in Mumbai. The joke was that there was such a scarcity of journalists that a board outside The Times of India’s office read: Trespassers may be recruited.” The beginning of the 21st century witnessed many more private initiatives with international affiliations starting up, among them Wigan and Leigh India, in Mumbai, Whistling Woods International, Mumbai, ZEE Institute of Media Arts, Mumbai, and Sri Sri Centre for Media Studies, Bangalore. In January 2009 NDTV announced a short-term course in broadcast media, joining the bandwagon of industry-owned/run media education initiatives. Public vs private There is a gap between what is taught at the institutes and what the industry wants from those it recruits. Traditional government-funded universities are taking too long to respond to the rapidly changing demands of the media industry, particularly when it comes to technology. Technological advancement is crucial but it is difficult for institutes, particularly traditional universities with limited resources, to invest in technical equipment and upgrading, and allow the students to experiment. The UGC is funded by the Ministry of Human Resources Development, and therefore traditional universities are funded entirely by the State. Many traditional universities run communication/media programmes under the self-financing format but they still have to follow UGC guidelines for collecting fees and utilizing funds. University regulations with regard to faculty qualifications, fees, curriculum committees and examination policies are rigid. A seasoned cinematographer may not be allowed to teach a course in photography because he/she does not have the formal qualification to teach in a university department. Since UGC guidelines make a PhD mandatory for moving up the academic hierarchy, “most journalism colleges, going strictly by UGC guidelines, fill teachers’ post with PhD holders with no substantial experience in the media industry. Such teachers tend to go by the book, a book long abandoned by the media industry!” writes M Ranganathan in ‘A statutory body for media education’. While private institutions can be responsive to market needs and job demands, the pressure to ‘place’ students turns education into an exercise for merely providing diplomas/degrees that would get students jobs. Policies in terms of recruitment, curriculum reform, and evaluation are far more arbitrary in private set-ups compared to traditional universities. There are private institutes that have been able to ‘brand’ themselves but this is no assurance of the quality of instruction they impart. The high fees, too, do not ensure good teachers but merely attract glamorous media celebrities. The fees also mean that more students from the upper economic strata are enrolled which introduces an upper class bias into the recruitment and ultimately into the provision of media services Private institutes generate resources from students’ fees and can fix the fees at will, thus putting them out of the reach of the average student. They are answerable to no one regarding the fees they charge and how this money is utilised. Students are entirely at the mercy of the institute during the course and till the degree/diploma is awarded. As Ranganathan rightly comments in his article, “Most reputed journalism schools are in the private sector where fees charged put them beyond reach of economically-disadvantaged classes. While some private schools have indeed produced sensitive professionals, most of them are managed by organisations whose agenda does not match the high ideals of journalism.” Examination processes in traditional universities are more objective compared with the private set-ups. Experiences at Wigan & Leigh and Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism suggest that students were evaluated on questions that were taught in the class rather than on questions that need to be asked. Question papers were similar, irrespective of the nomenclature of the diploma or degree course the student had chosen, and merely served to fulfil the requirement of the evaluation process. From barely a handful of educational/training courses 30 years ago to the proliferation of courses today, media education has come a long way in terms of numbers. Private institutes are more fashionable today as students buy the ‘higher fees better quality’ slogan. Conventional universities are also being forced to run ‘self supporting’ courses, which mean charging relatively higher fees. The making of media professionals is becoming a market-driven activity rather than an educational process whose objective is to make media relevant to society. Much more thought needs to be devoted to mass communication education both by private as well as government bodies. A ceiling on fees charged by private institutions, a review of activities by government aided or run institutes to avoid duplication and wastage of resources, accreditation by competent authorities and the development of instructional material are some of the issues that need to be discussed seriously. (Dr Mira K Desai is a Reader in Communication Technology at the SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. She can be reached at
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) References AIU (2002) Universities Handbook, Association of Indian Universities, New Delhi, January 2002. AMIC (2002) Communication education and media needs in India, A study conducted by Asian Media Information and Communication Centre of India, Principal Researcher - Dr B P Sanjay, Chennai. Aram Arul I (2005) ‘Where go communication studies and media education?’ Journal of Communication Studies, Vol 4, No 4, Shishir Winter, October-December 2005, p-83-102. Guru Chandra Mahesh B P and Madhura V M L (2005) ‘Journalism education in India: A quality perspective’, February 21, 2005, accessed on January 28, 2009 at: http://www.whatisindia.com/univpubs/ Desai Mira (2007) ‘Reviewing communication/media education in India: Many players, diverse directions but lost focus…?’ Paper presented at 16th AMIC conference on Media, Education and Development: Quest for New Paradigms, and First World Journalism Education Congress held from June 25-28, 2007 at Singapore. Neog Tanmoy (2006) ‘Media schools widening gap’, Business World, April 17, 2006, http://www.businessworld.in/APR1706/index.asp Pattanayak Chandra Subhas (2006) ‘Journalism education and its spread in Orissa’. Posted on August 25, 2006 URL: http://orissamatters.com/2006/08/25/mrinal-on-media-edn/ Ranganathan M (2006) ‘A statutory body for media education’, Vidura, journal of the Press Institute of India, Vol 43, Issue 4, October-December 2006, p-31-32. Also online URL: http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/searchdetail.php?sid=2336&bg=1 InfoChange News & Features, February 2009
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