Students’ Perspective on Public Relations Curriculum and Their Preparedness for the Industry

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-098-5_14How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Public relations; Curriculum; Students’ perspective; Industry Preparedness; Malaysia

Abstract

Public relations scholars and practitioners have raised a concern on the gap between students’ acquired knowledge and skills in the classroom learning and meeting the expectation from employers. There is a call for public relations educators to better prepare students before they enter the industry. The themes of public relations education, public relations curriculum and practices are the conceptual understandings of this paper in gauging the perception of undergraduate students on public relations curriculum and their preparedness for the industry. A qualitative interview was conducted with seven student participants. Public relations students of both public and private universities in Malaysia perceived the knowledge and skills acquired in the classroom learning were mainly theoretical with a mix of practical skills. Most students claimed that they were not prepared to enter the industry even though they have positive feedback on their lecturers’ pedagogy. Although students of this study are satisfied and have a positive perspective of the public relations curriculum in Malaysia higher education institutions, they suggest students acquire external knowledge outside the classroom by attending personal development courses and having good mindsets in preparing the students for the industry. This paper brings implications for public relations education and course development as well as for professionals in the public relations industry to consider working effectively with educators in identifying the knowledge and skills important for the future of public relations practice.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Sharon Tan
AU  - Cheng Ean (Catherine) Lee
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/08/31
TI  - Students’ Perspective on Public Relations Curriculum and Their Preparedness for the Industry
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Communication and Media 2022 (i-COME 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 153
EP  - 162
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-098-5_14
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-098-5_14
ID  - Tan2023
ER  -