Journalism students from Australia’s Macleay College programme with 50 participants are saying their degrees have been cancelled just two weeks into the course.

Macleay is a private tertiary institution with campuses in Sydney and Melbourne. Macleay students say that on Friday afternoon they were sent an email saying their Bachelor of Journalism degree course would be cancelled due to low enrolment numbers.

The email states that first-year students can either switch to a digital media course or withdraw and receive a statement of attainment for their completed units.

Macleay College also requests that the students inform it of their decision by the census date on March 18.

This would leave the students with an extremely short time to make such an important decision.

Since the unexpected email on Friday afternoon, the university has not provided any further support to students, student Ezra Bell told Pedestrian.TV.

“There’s been no communication from the uni they’ve really just hung us out to dry,” she said.

“Why couldn’t they have said this to our faces?”

Bell doubted that enrolment numbers — about 48 are on the programme — were the reason for the shutdown.

“What’s the real reason because we all know low enrolments is not the case.”

This point was echoed by another Macleay journalism student, Kelsey Richmond. Richmond claimed that student enrolment numbers had actually increased.

Macleay students have taken to Twitter to vent about the experience.

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) confirmed on Saturday that the degree had been cancelled. The union estimated about 48 students would be impacted.

Student Chelsea Caffery claimed the college told students to reach out to psychologists if they need it. But the university’s mental health services do not re-open until Monday.

Chelsea further alleged that staff were not aware that the degree was going to be cancelled.

“To be told on a Friday afternoon after hours is really heartless,” Chelsea told news.com.

“The head of Journalism [Sue Stephenson] only found out minutes before the students did… after 5pm… on a Friday.”

After spending the day at @MacleayCollege just found out that my journalism degree has been canned two weeks in due to “low enrolments”. Absolutely devastated. 1/2

— Ezra Bell (@ezrabell_) March 11, 2022

The college has not released a statement about the situation yet, but it is already copping flack online.

Macleay College advised the dumped journo students to reach out to the psychologist if needed. Funny that. The psychologist isn’t open until Monday morning, and we were informed of the cancellation Friday afternoon. So I guess mental health can just wait til Monday, right?

— Chelsea Caffery (@ChelseaCaffery) March 11, 2022

As pointed out by Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) president Dr Alexandra Wake, most universities have now closed their enrolments.

It’s a very difficult time for this decision to have been made with first semester enrolments now closed at most universities – and it’s a long weekend in Victoria. Not sure what offer other unis can make but am looking into it.

— Alexandra Wake, PhD (@WakeinFright) March 11, 2022

This means it could be really hard for those students to re-enrol in other degrees.

On top of everything else, Macleay college’s degree in journalism is not cheap.

It costs $54,000 to complete all 24 units so the potential financial burden on students is high.

The private university is owned by fashion entrepreneur Sarah Stavrow. She told news.com that she would not be commenting.

Asia Pacific Report adds: A statement by the Australian Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) said it was seeking further information about Maclean’s decision and support that was being offered to affected students to complete their studies.

“The timing and manner of how this was communicated by Macleay College to their students is also of concern to TEQSA,” said the statement.

It added that if there had been a breach of the Higher Education Standards Framework, “appropriate enforcement action” would be taken to protect the students’ interests.

Kathleen Farmilo and Sweeney Preston are writers for Pedestrian.TV.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

News Corp Australia and Google have announced the creation of the Digital News Academy in partnership with the Melbourne Business School at the University of Melbourne. It will provide digital skills training for News Corp journalists and other media outlets.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

The academy won’t provide full degrees, just certificates and a chance to upgrade digital skills in a fast-changing media environment.

Many companies in various industries have partnered with universities to deliver what used to be in-house training programmes. Strengthening the links between industry and the academy has been welcomed in many sectors and certainly encouraged by governments for many years.

Why then are we as journalism academics concerned?

There are several reasons. The first and most obvious is the incursion of a high-profile and controversial media company into the higher education sector and the extent to which that is funded by a large disruptive digital search company.

Antagonism towards academia
It is telling that the Digital News Academy will be housed in the University of Melbourne’s private arm, the Melbourne Business School, rather than its Centre for Advancing Journalism within the Arts faculty.

Australia’s largest commercial media company has long criticised university journalism education, and journalism academics, including each of the authors of this article and many of our colleagues.

The company even once sent an incognito reporter into a University of Sydney lecture to uncover criticism of News Corp in the classroom. That reporter, Sharri Markson, is now investigations editor at The Australian and a member of “the panel of experts” that will oversee the Digital News Academy.

So it comes as no surprise that News Corp has avoided journalism programmes.

News Corp Australasia’s executive chairman Michael Miller has said part of the academy’s role will be building a stronger Australia by keeping society informed through “strong and fearless news reporting and advocacy”.

Yet partnering with a journalism programme would have facilitated that. It might also have helped assuage News Corp critics, some of whom have been active online during the week with reminders about News Corp’s unethical conduct during the hacking scandal and its disregard for scientific evidence in its reporting on climate change.

University journalism courses teach ethics and critical thinking alongside practical skills such as new digital ways of fact checking, gathering information and telling stories.

Google Australia already offers free tutorials to journalism programmes about smart ways to use its search engine to find and check investigative stories.

University journalism programmes also distinguish between training and education; the former is predominantly about skills, the latter places those skills in context and teaches students how to think critically about the industry and environment in which they work.

By placing this course in a business school and not a liberal arts or humanities faculty, the venture gets the kudos of the University of Melbourne’s backing without the challenging academic culture News Corp dislikes.

News Corp and Google are corporate clients, paying the university for these courses, so the capacity for independent criticism of Australia’s most dominant newspaper company is eroded even further.

What will the Digital News Academy do?
All we know so far about the academic credibility of the Digital News Academy comes from its promotional announcement, in press releases reported in the Media section of The Australian (published by News Corp).

The publicity says the nine-month course will take 750 enrolments from journalists at News Corp Australia, Australian Community Media (the stable of 160 regional publications formerly owned by Fairfax) and smaller media partners.

A “governance committee” will select candidates (who nominate themselves or are put forward by their employers). These students will be expected to use the Google suite of tools as they collaborate online at the Melbourne Business School, to generate, build and sell stories to the course’s “Virtual Academy Newsroom”.

Each year there will be what is being billed as a major journalism conference and a US study tour for a select group of trainees.

There are no public details yet of the academic credentials of the certificate programme but the academy has drawn on a “panel of experts”, almost all of whom come from inside News Corp and Google.

Google gains influence
It’s easy to see why Google was motivated to fund a News Corp training academy above and beyond what it is required to do as part of its bid to stop further intervention in its workings by the Australian government under the terms of the News Media Bargaining Code.

But there are some deeper questions about why a company that has such a stranglehold on the new digital economy is involved. By funding the academy Google may be undercutting full university degrees specialising in journalism.

Relying on Google to make up the shortfall in news organisations’ training budgets is a problem. It allows Google to shape curriculum while appearing to be a champion of the same journalism industry it has been accused of undermining.

As journalism academics we respect the need for specialised training and skills development. But journalism programmes should never be captured or constrained from being critical of the industry for which they prepare students.

They should continue to embed ethics in their courses. The aim, after all, is to improve journalism, for everybody’s benefit.

As it is often said, news is not just another business. While studying journalism often involves the study of business, business imperatives should not drive the study of journalism itself.

Dr Andrew Dodd is director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne; Dr Alexandra Wake is programme manager, journalism, at RMIT University, and Dr Matthew Ricketson is professor of communication at Deakin University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Dr Dodd has worked as a journalist at The Australian newspaper and has provided in-house legal and news writing training for News Corp. Dr Wake has provided in-house training for the ABC and for Australian Provincial Newspapers. She is the elected president of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA). Professor Ricketson has worked on staff at The Australian, among other news outlets. He was a member of the Finkelstein inquiry into the media and media regulation which was sharply criticised in News Corp Australia publications. His appointment as the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s representative on the Press Council was also criticised by News Corp Australia. Full disclosures at The Conversation.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

How disappointing to read another opinion piece in Australian papers repeating time-old arguments that fail to acknowledge the excellent education in journalism provided by universities around the country, an education many working journalists – and therefore readers – have benefited from.

It is concerning that anyone would argue that there are thousands of journalism graduates in Australia each year. There are not thousands of journalism graduates in Australia, as anyone who has tried to hire one in regional Australia would well know.

At my own university, RMIT, we can barely graduate enough journalism students for the needs of the Victorian news industry.

READ MORE: Back to the future: It’s time to rethink the way we train journalists

Universities in the states also report excellent employment opportunities for recent and soon-to-be graduates.

Australian universities generally offer a more general communications degree that can be used for a range of careers beyond journalism. Very few programmes offer straight journalism degrees and even those that do provide students with a range of courses that give graduates a much greater range of skills than the vocational skills taught in the legacy news organisations of yesteryear.

Thirty years ago, there was some in-house training for journalism cadets. I am also a product of the “straight from high school” cadetship system of this period, and I am acutely aware of its deficits.

On-the-job training at legacy media was well-intentioned and concentrated mostly on correct grammar rather than the skills required for modern reporting.

Critical thinking, research skills
Today’s university graduates who want to become are likely to have completed courses that allow them to manipulate data spreadsheets, create visualisations, fact check and verify information, capture photographs and audio, take photographs, and put together audio and visual packages. They also develop critical thinking and research skills, and learn about politics and the economy.

New technology has provided journalism students with opportunities far beyond what is offered by the legacy media. Media fragmentation and the speed of disseminating information and opinion present opportunities for graduates with a good understanding of how to leverage new technologies and platforms such as social media, digital and interactive TV, and how to produce rich mobile content.

I certainly agree with it would be fantastic to have entry-level journalism students paid while learning. For me, the legacy media is no longer in a position to provide sufficient in-house education to young trainees because they’ve been cut to the bone with no space for training and certainly cannot provide the depth of training that a university offers.

However, I’m sure all educators would welcome legacy news offerings offering paid journalism internships which are already an important part of a journalism university programme.

While some are pessimistic about the industry, I have no hesitation in encouraging anyone interested in a career in journalism to enrol in a university programme. Journalism is not only a fun-filled and exciting course of study, it is one from which, when our work is done well, every Australian benefits.

In short, our work is critical to and underpins civil society.

Dr Alexandra Wake is president of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA).

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz