Media Studies is not just an exciting field in academics, but also one that offers lucrative opportunities immediately on completion of the undergraduate degree programme. All one needs is to make the right choice of specialisation and to pick the institution that has all the relevant facilities to equip one with the widest range of skills.
There are the older universities, such as Delhi University, which have recently started bachelor’s degree programmes in journalism. Then there are newer institutions like Bennett University, which not only offers state-of-the-art facilities, but also the best in-house expertise from The Times of India, Times Now and Times Internet. There also is Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU), which is government run and offers journalism courses through its affiliated private colleges.
Career counsellor Pervin Malhotra said that a bachelor’s degree can be backed by specialisation through a master’s degree course. “A bachelor’s degree in mass-media studies or journalism is an introduction to the medium. It is important to have a bachelor’s degree in media studies to understand new media, such as social media, and to learn how people are consuming news these days on mobile phones, Facebook and YouTube, among others,” said Malhotra. “One can work for a year or two after graduation and then decide on a specialisation. It could be with print or digital media or even in event management. One must remember today is an era of specialisation.”
However, universities have started offering specialisation even at the undergraduate level. For examples, at Bennett University in the final semester, students can choose from five areas of specialisation: print, television, web and mobile journalism, advertising and public relations. Apart from print and television, these specialisations open up career opportunities as a content producer/writes for websites. There is an explosion of the job’s in the digital space with e-commerce and fashion sites offering the job to journalists and content writers or students familiar with video/digital content production.
Though the first batch will graduate only in 2020, Bennett university is already in the list of experts, the destination for media studies. The institute draws its strength from being the first media school owned by a media house and, therefore, knowledgeable about what future journalist should be equipped for.
