Paradox in Journalistic Education: Why Can not China’s Journalism Students Become Journalists

There is a paradoxical phenomenon in nowadays China that, many graduated journalism students can’t even find a job in journalism while a large amount of graduates from other education background being recruited. A possible reason may be the disproportion between vacations and journalism graduates - over 660 journalism relative school or departments in China’s universities, the number is still increasing - but apparently it can’t simply explain why press and newspaper recruits so many students with no relative education background. Reflecting is necessary: what is wrong in the education of journalism?
The requirement of a competent recruit graduate is just the aim of journalism education. Which kind of students does media industry needs? From the practical perspective, the most basic three abilities are the creative ability of writing, the ability of percipience to the social phenomena with unique perspective, and being able to forecast the trend of journalism development. To learn and comprehend these three abilities is the most significant aspects for cultivate a competent journalist.

Some argue that the journalism educated recruits mostly can “easy begin but hardly persist” One of the journalists I knew graduated from a famous journalism school started and adapted his job perfectly in the beginning, but not long time later he lost his advantage to another recruit with literature education background who couldn’t even write a piece of full-element news in the beginning. What the literature educated journalist needed was just some most basic training and knowledge, the capacity of better organize language make him outstanding.

Firstly, changes should be made to the course structure of journalism education. Up-to-date courses according to journalism practice should be systematically enhanced, to make students more creative and sensitive with the development of media industry. Secondly, pure theoretical courses should be simplified and even cut off for the aim and time limit of undergraduate education. Students need learn more from practice to obtain the ability of seeing and touching the reality with deeper and more unique angle. At the same time, the development of China’s journalism environment requires more journalists with the ability of deeply thinking and criticizing, therefore variety and depth　should be considered when choose theoretical courses.