While nationwide trends and anecdotal evidence that show students who study communication are landing on their feet after college — sometimes in fields radically different from their formal studies — may encourage communication professors and administrators to take credit for shaping successful, versatile adults, they should pause. Students studying communication with a sincere interest in breaking into the field should be able to do so with the four years’ training they receive at college. Those who graduate with communication degrees and no intention of using them should have the opportunity within their university to declare a personally relevant major before it is too late into college to change fields.
Behind the academic and career fates of College of Communication students and graduates is the philosophical uncertainty that impedes effective education: Should an education in communication be skills-focused or liberal-arts-based? Undecided as to the relative roles of these educational goals, COM prevents students from determining quickly and with certainty if they belong within the school. By requiring general, introductory classes for all students as prerequisites to even picking up a television camera, writing a news story or creating a public relations campaign, the curricula prevent students from seriously dipping into their field of study before late sophomore year.
The COM curricula need to reconcile the competing goals of liberal-arts education and pragmatic know-how with classes specifically created for COM students. While these students should have the same access to College of Arts and Sciences classes as others, there should be classes tailored to the needs of future mass communicators. While any math class will help a COM student fulfill a liberal arts requirement, a specialized class to help students learn how figures can be manipulated and the significance of statistics they disseminate would be more useful for future flaks and hacks than the fundamental theorem of calculus. Likewise, a required two semesters of management classes would be more valuable than a cursory knowledge of Japanese.
The curricula in COM should make the undergraduate experience into something that does more than help students bide time and pick up a diploma. By quickly immersing students in career-specific classes, the curricula could help them realize whether they belong in COM and to accelerate progress toward applying for all-important internships and gaining practical experience. By keeping curricula apace with trends in all communication fields, making sure students have taken an intensive class in their chosen field by the end of freshman year and requiring students to complete a meaningful liberal-arts concentration, COM course planners could increase the probability that graduates plan to work within communication fields — and have the skills and knowledge to do so.