THE STATE OF JOURNALISM EDUCATION AT JOURNALISM DEPARTMENTS IN UKRAINE (Pilot Survey Findings) by Mary Dachkovska

THE STATE OF JOURNALISM EDUCATION AT JOURNALISM DEPARTMENTS IN UKRAINE (Pilot Survey Findings) NGO Detector Media

Kyiv

2016

SPECIAL REPORT

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T H E S TAT E O F J O U R N A L I S M E D U C AT I O N AT J O U R N A L I S M D E PA R T M E N T S I N U K R A I N E (PILOT SURVEY FINDINGS)

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The State of Journalism Education at Journalism Departments in Ukraine (pilot survey findings).

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Special Report. – Kyiv: Detector Media, 2016. - 48 pages.

SPECIAL REPORT

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General editorship: Diana Dutsyk Roman Shutov

Design and layout: Yana Dobrianska

NGO Detector Media has had a research into the quality of journalism education in Ukrainian higher educational institutions (HEIs). The study identified the key problems in the content and organization of journalism education, exposed the views of representatives of the media industry and journalism departments graduates about the quality of journalist training at universities for a broader picture of the situation, a better understanding of the problems in journalism education and opportunities to improve its quality.

The research effort was implemented within the scope of the project "Promotion of Improvement in Media Education in Ukraine" supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of NGO Detector Media and might not reflect the views of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.

Photo by: Pixabay

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TAB L E O F C O N T E N TS Preface

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Summary Section 1. Methodology Section 2. The Results of Rating Evaluation of Journalism Departments and Chairs at Ukrainian HEIs 2.1. Curriculum and Faculty 2.2. Resources, Technical Infrastructure and Professional Development Opportunities Available During Study 2.3. Interaction with the Media Industry 2.4. Integration in the International Context 2.5. Communication with Outside Audience and Alumni. Online Presence and Activity Section 3. Journalism Education as Viewed by Journalism Department Graduates: Results of Focus Group Discussions Section 4. Journalism Education as Viewed by the Media Industry: Questionnaire Survey Results

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P R E FA C E

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he quality of Ukrainian journalism education attracts more and more criticism each year, as the media market if often unhappy with the level of knowledge and skills of journalism department graduates. Some editorial offices have made it a principle not to hire graduates with academic background in journalism since they believe that they have neither adequate knowledge nor enough practical skills to work in today's intricate and ever-shifting media market environment. It is obvious that the whole system of journalism education needs a profound reform. And NGO Detector Media has been doing its best to expose the problem to all stakeholders. It was for this reason that in early 2016 we made a research of higher education providers offering training of specialists in journalism and held expert discussions about journalism education reform attended by teachers and representatives of the media market. This pilot study of the situation with journalism education at journalism departments in Ukraine came as continuation of our effort which would not be possible if not the kind support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. We consider this study as a small step on the way of comprehensive changes in the journalism education. And the first thing we need to change here is to introduce a new system for evaluation of the journalism education quality, with the relevant licensing system, too, calling for new approaches. For the time being, we have seen little interest on the part of the Ministry of Education of Ukraine in encouraging changes in journalism education, with even less enthusiasm shown by higher educational institutions (HEIs) who, as our communication within this research has shown, remain too conservative and inflexible to adapt to changes.

P R E FAC E

The preservation of the status quo would only widen the gap between the existing journalism education system and the media market which, too, has been having hard time over the last 25 years, and in general will not help in strengthening of democracy in Ukraine, a mission impossible without independent and professional media. This is why representatives of the media market, educators, media-related NGOs, and the government must join their efforts to create a new system of journalism education.

Executive Director NGO Detector Media Diana Dutsyk

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SUMMARY

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Evaluation of the journalism education quality in Ukraine was based on journalism chairs and departments performance indicators as well as on the polling of media industry representatives and journalism departments graduates, and revealed the following trends and problems:

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▪From a formal perspective, available curricula for training future journalists looked fairly balanced in terms of practical and theoretical courses. However, the content of training programs stirred much controversy and plenty of criticism from graduates and media industry representatives. The vast majority of respondents were dissatisfied with the curricula content, insufficient focus on practical skills and the quality of training in general. ▪Since a good few of journalism chairs emerged as spin-offs of philology departments, the teaching approaches in Ukrainian HEIs are often predetermined by the legacy of philological tradition, which has grown into a drag of its kind since firstly, curricula are often heavily packed with philology-related subjects; secondly, the very philosophy of journalist training derives from the philological tradition. ▪On the face, the faculties at most journalism departments are staffed by both academics and practitioners, while in many cases professors have little practical journalistic background. The FGDs of journalism departments graduates have shown that students are often dissatisfied with the quality of teaching and the level of teachers' competence. ▪Different journalism departments had different infrastructure and technical aids available to them: only several HEIs could boast of well-equipped studios for production of audio and video content, newsrooms and multimedia classes, while the vast majority of departments only had computer classes and some photo and video equipment available. With lack of technical infrastructure being a major problem in itself, FGDs with graduates have shown that, in reality, students face even a bigger problem of limited access to technical facilities available at many departments. ▪Being out of touch with the media industry was one of the most serious problems reported by representatives of the media community and graduates. Thus, according to the survey of media representatives, staff members of editorial offices would often have no record of journalism education NGO Detector Media

and would not feel that to be an issue, and this is one of the indicators to flag this problem. Nevertheless, the analysis of work of journalism chairs and departments revealed a positive trend of growing practice to involve media practitioners through such activities as workshops and guest lectures. However, relationship of journalism departments and the media seem to be limited to such contacts and cooperation in student internships, with little or practically no significant cooperation projects (for example production of joint media products, summer schools, etc.). ▪The analysis of activities of journalism chairs and departments has shown their weak integration in the international context. Most of the surveyed chairs had but few cooperation projects with international partners, and even when they had, they would often have no direct relation to journalism. Only four of all HEIs that responded had guest courses taught by foreign specialists. Departments also lack initiative in developing new projects and raising grants. The level of students' international mobility remains pretty low, despite increasing opportunities offered by international programs. ▪Another typical problem lied in communication of chairs and departments with outside audience. Out of 39 journalism departments and chairs that train future journalists only 20 have their own website. Of these 20 websites, only 2 contain comprehensive information about the faculty, students, alumni, educational process, curriculum, chair/ department activities, etc. Information in most of the sites was sketchy and poorly updated. The situation with representation of journalism department/chairs in social networks is pretty much the same: their pages lacked dynamic page features; the content was mostly made up by announcements of upcoming events, with little information that would help students in their professional development. Failure to respond to enquiries sent within this study on the part of many journalism departments/chairs was an evidence of another problem these educational institutions had: a lack of openness in their communications with the environment.

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Section 1.

METHODOLOGY

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M E T H O D O LO G Y

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he study of the journalism education quality in Ukrainian HEIs is to identify the key problems in the content and organization of journalism education, to find out views of representatives of the media industry and journalism departments graduates about the quality of journalist training at universities in order to have a bigger picture of the situation, a better understanding of the problems facing journalism education and opportunities to improve its quality.

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The study is comprised of several components: journalism departments/ chairs/schools rating, polling of media industry representatives and journalism departments graduates in Kyiv. The data has been collected by polling journalism departments/chairs/schools (by means of official enquiries), online questionnaire survey of media industry representatives and holding two focus group discussions with journalism departments graduates in Kyiv.

METHODOLOGY

In the course of survey we received replies to our enquiries from 19 out of 39 journalism departments of Ukrainian universities and colleges. Despite their failure to respond, the rest of the departments were also made a part of the survey: the research team analysed their online presence and activity, with these two parameters being set as one of the indicators of communicative capacity of journalism departments. The study also involved online questionnaire survey of representatives of 39 editorial offices in five Ukrainian regions, including Lviv, Odesa, Vinnytsia, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia regions. The focus group discussions were attended by 12 journalism departments graduates in Kyiv. The rating component of the study was based on the assessment of several key categories/blocks of indices (indicators) which were set by the research team as the ones that reflect the quality of training at educational institutions, conditions for professional development and environment offered by journalism departments.

Categories/blocks of rating indices

curriculum and faculty;

resources, technical infrastructure and professional development opportunities available during study;

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interaction with the media industry;

communication with outside audience and alumni.

integration in the international context;

The study involved identifying specific indicators for each component evaluated by the project research group based on the replies from journalism departments/chairs/schools. NGO Detector Media

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Curriculum and faculty (highest possible score – 6 points)

The content of the curriculum and the level of teaching are the key components of quality education. Having this in mind, the survey considered the following indices: ▪balance of curriculum; ▪availability of innovative courses; ▪faculty (teaching staff); ▪teachers' development and mobility. Departments with more practical and innovative specialty courses in their curricula and more teachers with academic degrees and practical experience received highest scores, while other aspects considered when rating departments included activity of their teachers, i.e. whether they participate in professional and academic development programs, conferences, trainings, etc.

Resources, technical infrastructure and professional development opportunities available during study (highest possible score – 5 points)

This rating component reflects the level of resources and opportunities available at journalism departments for students to practice their skills and make use of knowledge during their studies. Technical facilities and infrastructure are an important element of quality education of journalists as it allows students to create various types of content, try different journalistic genres, master new technologies of content production, e.g. diverse multimedia project formats. No less important is the commitment of departments/chairs/schools to encouraging practical application of acquired knowledge and skills “in the field conditions” during studies. Hence, this part of the study evaluated the following indices: curricular internship/off-campus full-time practical training programs; content production and publication occasions for students during their studies; adequate infrastructure and facilities (studios, multimedia classrooms, Internet access).

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Interaction with the media industry (highest possible score - 3 points)

Here, we measured the level of activity of journalism departments/ chairs/schools in their interaction with media outlets and the media industry. This criterion was suggested based on considerations that current journalism education should always stay in touch with the media industry to adapt curricula to the needs of the media market. The study evaluated the following indicators: ▪established partnership links with media outlets; ▪involvement of media industry representatives in the educational process.

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Integration in the international context (highest possible score 5 points)

This block of criteria was suggested in view of the importance of integration of modern HEIs, in general, and their departments/chairs/schools, in particular, in the international context. Considering the especially dynamic development of the media and media technologies, integration in the international context promotes more active response to new challenges, allows adapting the curriculum, accommodating experience of partners and, thus, improving the learning process. For this component, the following indicators were measured: partnership links with overseas universities and organizations, participation in grant programs (international NGOs and funds); guest courses given by foreign visiting teachers; tudent mobility (participation in exchange programs, e.g. Erasmus, international professional summer schools, workshops and trainings). This component also included evaluation of partnership and cooperation with Ukrainian universities (joint programs, educational and research projects, conferences, etc.).

Communication with outside audience and alumni (highest possible score – 4 points)

This part of the rating assessed: openness of journalism departments/ chairs/schools for potential applicants and interested parties, availability of information on department activities and communication with the alumni. When introducing this block we had in mind the fact that a modern journalism department should be open to contact both with its alumni and outside audience, as well as be able to ensure effective communication and provide access to detailed information on its activities. So, this component was evaluated with the following indicators: ▪alumni employment tracking; ▪communication with graduates; ▪communication with prospective students and outside audience; ▪online presence and activity.

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METHODOLOGY

M E T H O D O LO G Y S P E C I F I C S AN D C O N ST R A I N TS The presented rating methodology is a pilot project which may be subject to further modification or changes according to comments and suggestions from stakeholders and experts.

n attempt to develop indicators of quality journalism education offered by Ukrainian journalism departments/chairs/institutes/schools and to make their evaluation is the peculiarity of this approach. This rating is distinct from other HEIs rating approaches commonly applied in Ukraine and often based on the opinions of experts, representatives of professional communities, etc. However, the methodology has a number of constrains which should be considered when analysing the rating research results. Firstly, the research group relied on the responses provided by the chairs and could not trace and check all the information received. Secondly, the replies to official enquiries did not suggest any pre-set format; therefore different departments/chairs/schools took a free hand to present information as they thought fit, with some giving comprehensive overviews, while others sending brief outlines. The lack of uniformity in the format and degree of detail in replies could affect evaluation of some criteria. Perhaps, the most important methodology constraint is that the rating relied on formal criteria allowed by the scope of research, i.e. it involved analysis of written responses rather than that of the content of the educational process and other aspects of actual activities of journalism departments/chairs/ schools. Despite considerable research methodology constraints, the research highlights the key trends and problems of the journalism education system in Ukraine. This could become an important step for systemic analysis of the journalism education quality in the country since it provides a snapshot of the current state of things in the field of journalist training at Ukrainian HEIs and a metric for further tracking of changes. And the polling of media industry representatives and journalism departments graduates added a wider view of the picture outlined by the rating, allowing identification of the key problems in journalism education in Ukraine.

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RESEARCH FINDINGS

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RESEARCH FINDINGS

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C U R R I C U L U M AN D FA C U LT Y

RESEARCH FINDINGS

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oday in Ukraine, one can learn the journalistic trade at 39 educational institutions. However, some of these institutions offer only bachelor's degree programs, as e.g. the Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University and the Odessa National Academy of Law where teaching journalism was introduced quite recently. The same situation is at the Berdiansk State Pedagogical University, the Vinnytsia State Pedagogical University and the Ukrainian Institute of Arts and Sciences. The Ukrainian Catholic University and the National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy" offer training under the master's degree programs only. There are still some schools that train students in three higher education levels: of bachelor, specialist, and master. But since pursuant to the Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education", 2016 was the last year of admissions for the specialist's degree, this program is not relevant for the present research. The higher educational institutions were rated based on replies provided. Of 39 official requests sent to Ukrainian higher educational institutions only 19 responded, with only 13 replies containing full details and having curricula attached. Unfortunately, most of Ukrainian universities with journalism training programs failed to comply with the requirements of Ukrainian laws with regard to public disclosure (to wit: the Law of Ukraine "On Access to Public Information" of 2011 and "On Higher Education" of 2011 (Art. 16, paragraph 2.7)).

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Majors

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ince curricula provide the clearest idea of the structure of the specialist training process, it was the curricula that were first considered in terms of teaching disciplines with practical professional skills as being the things to catch the eye of employers first. It should be noted, however, that Ukrainian and foreign languages, subjects related to studying literature and history as well as educational internships and practical trainings were not treated as majors for the purposes of the research.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

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Analysis of bachelor's curricula shows that, technically speaking, the major disciplines in most of curricula make from 30% to 45% of total academic hours prescribed by the degree course for a student over a 4-year study. The leaders are Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University and Berdiansk State Pedagogical University where the curricula gave more focus on majors as compared to others. While, by contrast, the curriculum offered by the chair of journalism at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University gave less attention to the practical aspect of professional knowledge where majors made slightly less than a quarter of the total academic hours. Donetsk National University had more academic hours dedicated to subjects that focus on practical professional academic training, but, unfortunately, these were still under one third of total hours. The situation with master's curricula was slightly worse. Most of the universities offer master's courses with focus on theory and research courses related to academic activities. This is due to the fact that the Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education" provides for two types of master's degree programs with focus on professional education and academic education respectively. Among the universities that have practical training in place for students studying under master's degree programs were two leading master's schools of journalism at: the Ukrainian Catholic University and the National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy". The practice-oriented major disciplines were above the 50% threshold at both of these universities. Unlike the bachelor's curricula, the master's degree program at the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv State University majors accounted for 38%, just slightly below the figure at the Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, rendering the former the fourth top university under this criterion. When speaking of the subjects taught to future journalists, one should note strait off that the most chairs still have a bend for their philological past, with the subjects bias being merely a function of the origin of the now specialized journalism chair: whether it branched off a chair of language or literature studies. For example, over 4 years, undergraduate students studying towards bachelor's degree in journalism at the Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University are taught subjects worth 40 credits (out of 240 in total) related to Ukrainian language studies. Mind that this does not include literature subjects and two foreign languages. Undergraduates at the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv State University are offered about 50 credits in literature-related subjects, including a stand-alone subject in Russian literature taught separately from foreign literature, with absence of any literature studies at all being the opposite extreme cases found by the survey. 4 universities of those 11 that provided their bachelor's curricula do not teach literature at all, which is an important subject for future media people as it promotes the imaginative thinking skill. All in all, the literature is not taught at the Zaporizhzhia National University and the Ukrainian Institute of Arts and Sciences (Bucha), the Berdiansk State Pedagogical University and the Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University.

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Similarly, most universities did not think it necessary to teach political science to journalists. In 7 of 11 HEIs this subject was either completely absent from the curricula or optional. Most of the curricula feature a standard set of disciplines (such as newspaper journalism, television journalism, radio and online NGO Detector Media

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journalism), a classical set of subject for training future journalists in Ukraine. A large number of universities do not offer focus specialization in different types of media, which primarily is due to low number of students. Our journalism institutes/departments would normally have one or two groups of students of 25 persons each at best, which means only two focused specialization groups, offering not too much of a choice. For this reason they call this type of curriculum "a universal journalist training program". Universities could also make a better use of so called in-house mobility of students, which would allow creation of focus specializations for future media specialists, while students would be able to choose subjects at other departments of their universities to acquire knowledge of one or another field of public life. Under the new Law "On Higher Education" universities have to allocate up to 25% of total academic hours in their curricula for this purpose. But today, when reviewing curricula, one can only see names NGO Detector Media

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of certain disciplines that were put there only to encourage students to select a focus they would like to practice in the future rather than anything else. Naturally, a subject of 4 credits or less (2% of the total hours) cannot but offer only an outline of the relevant problem domain.

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While the graduate programs, as we already mentioned above, were too much theory-biased. Even in their new curricula introduced as recently as this year, most universities offer a certain number of subjects related to social communication. And despite the fact that this field of knowledge ceased to exist de jure, de facto postgraduate and doctoral students, who had been admitted to universities last year, will be eligible for defending their theses in this field.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

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Most of the universities leaned toward graduate programs with more focus on research, hence, the bigger part of curricula we could review were comprised by subjects related to media research methods and teaching journalism studies courses. Only a few of them had practice-oriented master's degree programs to offer their students. These were two schools of journalism - at Ukrainian Catholic University and at National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy", as well as Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University. The first two are focused on training "universal journalists", while the latter concentrates on training TV professionals.

Innovative courses Special attention should be given to introduction of innovative courses as a part of curricula of journalism departments/institutes. For the purpose of discussion, we considered as innovative all disciplines which can help students build skills of creating products that will be competitive in the information society. The innovativeness evaluation criterion included both the curricula and detailed replies of the universities provided in response to our official enquiry. In their responses all universities mentioned that they had innovative disciplines and provided a list of such subjects. But one should not treat

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general courses in Internet journalism (in their different variations) as innovative since online media have been long among leading means of attracting audiences now. Listing of media education, media literacy, and investigative journalism among innovative disciplines looked odd enough as well. However, where investigative journalism included classes on specifics of work with databases and fact checking, it indeed could be called innovative though. Many universities already have such courses as infographics, search engine optimization of texts in online environment (SEO), blogging, data journalism, multimedia platforms, social media, work of convergent editorial office and online editology [editology is the theory of editing - Ed.].

RESEARCH FINDINGS

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There were cases of misnamed subjects. For example, two universities, being Ivan Franko National Lviv University and the National University of Ostroh Academy, offered their students courses in drone journalism and checking journalism. And Ukrainian Institute of Arts and Sciences in town of Bucha offers a subject called “pidcasting” [“підкастинг”, a misspelled Ukrainian word for English "podcasting" - Ed.] as well as an innovative course of "Fundamentals of Creationism" [a theological and philosophical concept, according to which the basic forms of the organic world (life), humanity, planet earth, and the world in general are regarded as actually created by the Creator or God - Ed.]. Some educational institutions could have over 5 innovative courses being a good figure, while some may have no more than 2 which could not be considered an adequate number today. International University of Economics and Humanities Named after Academician Stepan Demianchuk was the only one to view the disciplines of social informatics and applied social communication technologies as innovative. Their titles are hardly innovative, however, maybe, they are in terms of their content. In some cases official responses and curricula provided had inconsistencies with regard to disciplines available to students. A possible explanation here may be that the enquiry responses mentioned the innovative courses as optional so they might have been included in the curricula as a part of socalled working (operational) plans. So, from the formal point of view, the curricula in most of the educational institutions that provided data for the research were balanced in terms of teaching of major subjects. However, if subjected to scrutiny, the situation with subjects in the curricula would not look that bright, with the quality of teaching these subjects remaining an open issue as well.

Academics or practitioners According to the information provided by the HEIs, over a half of the teaching staff at most chairs are practitioner-scholars. 14 of 18 universities have 50 to 90 percent of the chair personnel with academic degrees. The Ukrainian education system requires teachers to pursue academic degrees. Academic degrees of the faculty are among the criteria monitored during the licensing and accreditation process of a specialty, with doctoral degrees being of especial value for that purpose. In addition, a university is not merely an educational but also a scientific organization. For this reason, scientific contribution of the staff is often viewed as more important than even methodical one, especially where HEI ratings, now in trend, are concerned. In 12 educational institutionsб over half of journalism chair staff-members have practical journalistic background. And two of them have over 75% of practitioners on the teaching staff at their chairs. These were the KyivNGO Detector Media

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Mohyla School of Journalism at the National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy" (NAUKMA) and the Ivan Franko National Lviv University. In their responses, the regional universities quite often reported their teachers being members of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, while omitting to note which media outlet such a member had worked or has been working for. In many cases they quoted such activities as being members of editorial boards of scientific journals and even editing educational publications for students as practical experience (whenever it was the case, this experience was not counted for the purpose of the indicator evaluation). Work record as an editor for book publishers was neither considered as a practical journalistic background for the purposes of this research. So, in reality 6 of 18 HEIs have less than half of the faculty with practical experience involved in teaching journalism.

Professorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mobility The scope of research involved analysis of the so called professorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mobility in the past two academic years. In practically all institutions professors pursue development of their skills, with more opportunities available for educational institutions who could win grants under the programs aimed at development of teachers' professional skills. Among the "lucky" ones here were Odessa National Academy of Law and Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism (NAUKMA), where nearly their entire faculty had completed training under grant programs. 7 of 18 universities had only one or two teachers, who had been involved in mobility programs over the past two years, even though three to four years back some of these universities had had grant programs aimed at development of teachers' media skills. Thus, in particular, Uzhgorod University was a part of the Training for Trainers media skills development program by FOJO media institute. In 9 out of 18 HEIs nearly half of teachers of relevant departments took part in professional development programs or internships or attended international, mostly philological, conferences. There is also a phenomenon of so-called domestic mobility of Ukrainian NGO Detector Media

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professors with its nation-specific features, when some of reputed professors in fact work part-time at two or even three universities at the same time, sometimes located in different cities. Some of them do teach students using modern information technologies (Skype lectures). However, the vast majority of part-time professors are listed on the payroll more for the sake of pro forma rather than anything else, since there are not enough professors for all 39 universities that have training media professions on their education offering. And, as mentioned above, the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) imposes a requirement as to the number of professors on the faculty for the purposes of licensing and accreditation.

RESOURCES, TECHNICAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE DURING STUDY Internship/off-campus practical training programs According to the information from the HEIs, all curricula of all journalism chairs/departments/schools provided for practical training or internship since they are required to be included into training programs by regulations. Almost all departments of journalism that responded to our enquiries had three and more practical trainings on their curricula,

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Practically all departments/chairs surveyed provided information about the media their students do internship with. Though being of crucial importance for the analysis of quality of journalism education, evaluation of this criterion (of practical trainings and internships) based on replies to our enquiries highlighted only its formal side, leaving a number of questions, i.e. the content and relevance of students' practical training, their degree of involvement in the workflow, whether training provides for active tutorship on the part of editors, etc., unanswered. Obviously, the situation at different media and different departments may vary significantly. A more comprehensive analysis of the quality of students' practical training offered by the departments and the media calls for further research using other methods (for example, polling of students, focus group discussions).

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with the only exceptions being the School of Journalism at Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) and Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism, where they only have 2-year master's degree programs, so the curricula provide for only one off-campus practical training.

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Content production and publication by students during their studies The vast majority of the surveyed departments and chairs of journalism declared that students regularly published their materials in the department or university media, as well as in the professional media, where they do their practical training. However, only several universities were seen showcasing students' work on dedicated web pages, thus building students' online portfolio. In particular, the Zaporizhzhia National University has a dedicated page on the BlogSpot platform, while UCU School of Journalism shares links to materials of its students on a separate page of its web site. Printed media were still the most popular university media, though more and more journalist chairs and departments lean towards multimedia such as students' YouTube channels. The scope of research did not provide for a detailed analysis of the students' media, however, even a brief overview of the same revealed a number of problems. Firstly, in many cases online platforms used to post students' materials were not kept regularly updated. Secondly, the quality of the students' media might have been better because more often they not they looked like amateur wall newspapers or department/university bulletins, with the main content being department and university news, showing lack of creative projects of students' media in general.

Technical infrastructure and facilities The level of technical infrastructure varied over the chairs/departments. Among the universities subject to this research, the situation with technical facilities looked best at the Institute of Journalism of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, the Zaporizhzhia National University, the Ivan Franko National Lviv University, the UCU School of Journalism and the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism. These universities have their own TV and radio production studios, multimedia classrooms and Wi-Fi Internet access. A large part of departments have multimedia classrooms, some video equipment, computer classrooms, with the biggest problem being that with content production studios. Several universities (in particular, the Ciscarpathian National University, the Ukrainian Institute NGO Detector Media

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of Arts and Sciences in Bucha) reported that their students had access to studios of regional and local media. Generally, the situation with the Internet access was positive: all journalistic departments that responded to enquiries declared the Internet access available. The extent of available infrastructure is mostly a function of department's efforts in raising external grants. Practically in all cases, where departments had well-equipped studios, content production labs, newsrooms, these was due to grant funding (as e.g. at the Uzhgorod National University, the Berdiansk State Pedagogical University, the National University of Ostroh Academy, the Chernivtsi National University and others).

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The situation with technical infrastructure of the educational process, especially in terms of the content production, was the worst in those HEIs that had been displaced from the occupied territories.

INTERACTION WITH THE M E D I A I N D U ST R Y Partnership with the media According to the information provided by journalism departments and chairs, almost all the surveyed journalism chairs/departments/schools have occasional projects with Ukrainian media: in the form of workshops, short-term training courses, guest lectures, conferences, round tables, while continuous forms of cooperation mostly come as practical training of students at local, regional and all-Ukrainian media. It is a common practice to give such partnership a formal framework: many journalism chairs have a practice of formalizing relations with representatives of the media industry by agreements on internship of their undergraduate and/or graduate students in national and local media outlets (for example, the Chair of Journalism, Advertising and Public Relations of the M. Kotsiubynskyi Vinnytsia State Pedagogical University, the Chair of Journalism Theory and Practice of the Department of Journalisms of the I. Franko Lviv National University (LNU), the Department of Journalism of the Zaporizhzhia National University, the Chair of Journalism of the Uzhgorod National University, the Chair of Journalism of the Vasyl Stefanyk Ciscarpathian National University, the Chair of Journalism of the Y. Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University). Some HEIs do not pursue the practice of entering in agreements with the media outlets regarding students' practical training, though they are engaged in ongoing cooperation with local and national media outlets (as e.g. the UCU School of Journalism, the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism). In such case, this form of cooperation is based on the desire of the regional media either to have extra hands at their editorial offices for free or to tap on the pool of talents for the future where the high level of student training makes media request journalist chairs to send them students for internship (for example, the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism, the UCU). In addition, there are situations when HEIs in one region maintain cooperation with the media outlet in another region as the case is for the chair of journalism in Vinnytsia who has established contacts with the

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media in Chernivtsi, Khmelnytskyi, Zhytomyr, Ivano-Frankivsk regions and the city of Kyiv, while reporting no cases of cooperation with media in the east or in the south of the country.

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Replies of some chairs of journalism with regard to partnership with the media caught our special attention. Thus, the Chair of Journalism and Publishing of Taras Shevchenko Luhansk National University reported that it had lost its partner contacts with the media due to military action and forced evacuation to Starobilsk located in the area close to the front line in the east of Ukraine, however, they have plans to resume the cooperation as they had before.

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The Chair of New Media of the Department of Journalism of I. Franko LNU reverted with a reply saying that "the Chair of New Media maintains close cooperation with all regional media," though failed to come up with a list of specific media outlets. When giving the list of their partners in the media industry, some chairs of journalism also mentioned media which have long been closed or dissolved (e.g. in their reply the Ukrainian Institute of Arts and Sciences referred to the Irpyn Radio and the Oksamyt magazine that do not exist as media anymore). The reply from the Berdiansk State Pedagogical University was somewhat vague: "the chair does have contacts with the local media but currently we have no projects underway."

Involvement of media industry representatives in the educational process All HEIs have representatives of the media in one way or another engaged in the academic activities. On the main part, these involve master classes or trainings held two times a year. However, there are journalism chairs that hold regular (monthly or even more frequent) training events such as lectures and practitioners' master classes (for example, the KyivMohyla School of Journalism, the UCU School of Journalism). Grants and international donor support make master-classes ever more widely spread form of training events. They are held by renowned Ukrainian and foreign journalists and media experts. Among the leading HEIs to employ this practice, one should mention the following: the Uzhgorod University, the Zaporizhzhia National University, the School of Journalism at Ukrainian Catholic University, the Chair of New Media of the Department of Journalism at I. Franko LNU, the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism, the Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University, the National University of Ostroh Academy, and the Y. Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University. At all chairs that responded within the scope of this research, media practitioners teach or co-teach academic subjects, with the only difference among them being the percentage share of teachers with current parttime journalistic job record and those who do not current work record with the media industry, choosing to pursue purely academic career. As a rule, teachers that work for the media are hired by journalist departments as part-timers. However, there are cases when a practicing lecturer teaches a course or its part without any official employment at HEIs. NGO Detector Media

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I N T E G R AT I O N I N T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L CONTEXT

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Partnerships with foreign universities and organizations, participation in grant programs The study has revealed the problem of weak integration into the international context common for Ukrainian chairs and departments that train journalists. Out of 19 universities that responded to our enquiries only 4 departments of journalism could come up with details of joint projects with their foreign counterparts. The top universities according to this criterion were: the Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, the Vasyl' Stus National Donetsk University, the School of Journalism at Ukrainian Catholic University and the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism (NAUKMA). The rest of the chairs had several projects for cooperation with international partners (universities, non-governmental organizations, etc.) Five universities were unable to name any international partnership or cooperation projects. Responses from many universities were limited to just naming their partners, with no details of specific projects provided. One the one hand, this might be viewed as failure to provide comprehensive responses to the enquiry, while on the other it might be well possible that a good deal of these partnerships is nothing else than mere declarations of intent that have never been implemented. Most of these international

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projects were about short internship programs, cooperation within the framework of summer schools, guest lectures, translation of publications, etc., with enhanced collaboration programs such as partnership under the Erasmus or Tempus programs (only several HEIs, in particular, the Chernivtsi National University), joint research, etc. being significantly less common. Only a couple of universities participate in international research efforts, and namely: the international project "The Language of Conflict. Aggression and Arguments" with participation of the Donetsk National University; the international research effort to cover the conflict in Ukraine headed by Sรถdertรถrn University, Sweden, with participation of the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism and several others.

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Peculiar is the fact that it is Polish universities and organizations that Ukrainian journalism chairs and departments have most joint projects with, with the trend most vividly manifested in Western regions of Ukraine, but being not limited to them. An example of such cooperation is co-publication of a dictionary of media terms by the National University of Ostroh Academy and the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. The analysis of replies to the enquiries has shown that one of the key issues in the context of international cooperation was the quality of cooperation projects. For example, chairs often presented youth cultural exchange programs as international cooperation projects (like Study Tours to Poland), while the content of these programs would usually have little to do with building journalist professional knowledge and skills. Some cooperation projects, for example, teleconferences, though having direct reference to journalism, lacked sound educational potential. Though this is a valid format, which can be quite helpful, its impact potential is quite limited. Only a small part of projects mentioned above was directly related to academic training of journalists or media studies. Another problem revealed by the study is the fact that journalism departments and chairs were mostly recipients of the programs conducted by non-governmental organizations with support of international donors (the Polish and the US Embassies, OSCE, UNDP programs, etc.). In other words, departments were mostly on the receiving end, rather than being proactive in seeking and developing projects. Moreover, many departments do not use the opportunities offered by programs long well-known in Ukraine, such as the Fulbright Program. Only several journalism departments that responded had representatives of the Fulbright Program involved in the academic activities (UCU, Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism (KMSJ), Zaporizhzhia National University). Meanwhile, there were positive cases of active interaction with the third sector and international funds. For example, the UCU School of Journalism has initiated and implemented a number of training projects powered by the MyMedia program. Supported by international funds, the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism put focus on teaching information verification and fact-checking practices. A special mention should be made of active efforts by the Donetsk National University, where they launched a number of projects for cooperation with international non-governmental organizations following their forced move to Vinnytsia. Considering considerable attention given Ukraine by the world community in general and the donor community in particular in the wake of the Maidan events and the conflict in the country's East, Ukrainian HEIs should be more active in proposing ideas that could potentially enjoy donors' support. As the study has shown, some journalism departments, as e.g. the Donetsk National University, were able to step up their activities, while the majority of universities still stick to their old-fashioned style they are accustomed to. The weak integration of journalism departments into the international context, low numbers of partnerships and cooperation projects signals generic problems of Ukrainian higher education, which lacks external focus due to low competitiveness. NGO Detector Media

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Cooperation with Ukrainian universities

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The absolute majority of departments/chairs of journalism that responded declared close cooperation with other journalism chairs at Ukrainian universities, with the Institute of Journalism of Taras Shevchenko National University being the leader here. However, the vast majority of replies contained no specific details of cooperation projects, but rather only general words about holding joint conferences, publication of conference materials, membership in doctoral (candidate) thesis defense boards. And while guest lectures of visiting lecturers from other universities were most frequently reported format, in most cases, however, it involved more of stand-alone lectures, rather than guest courses of visiting teachers, which were less frequent. There were almost no joint academic projects or studies among cooperation projects. Several universities mentioned participation of their teachers in the program Digital Media for Universities, carried out by the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism with the support of the Ukraine's Development Fund.

Guest courses According to the information provided by the departments, fully-fledged guest courses taught by foreign lecturers were introduced only at the Institute of Journalism of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, the UCU School of Journalism, the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism and the Ukrainian Institute of Arts and Sciences. The UCU and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy got their foreign teachers via the Fulbright academic exchange program. According to responses, guest lectures of foreign colleagues were a more common practice among departments, which is attributed to a relative ease of arrangement of such events as compared to inviting guest teachers for a whole semester.

Students' mobility The overall students' international mobility (participation in exchange programs, international summer schools, conferences, trainings, etc.) of journalism departments was very low. Only in 8 of 10 universities surveyed had students that participated in international mobility programs over the last year. In absolutely most cases the number of students participating in such programs is very small, just several persons from a department. UCU School of Journalism was rated the best with regard to students' international mobility. Erasmus+ was the most popular among the mobility programs. In particular, student exchange under this program involved students of the Donetsk, Ciscarpathian, Zaporizhzhia and Lviv National Universities and UCU School of Journalism. Apart from participation in the Erasmus+ program, students of journalism departments also took part in topical trade-specific summer schools and workshops. In some cases international mobility involved international youth cultural exchange programs, which would normally have nothing to do with professional training. NGO Detector Media

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Replies from the chairs and departments of journalism also showed that there is a problem with understanding the very essence of students' mobility programs. Some departments mentioned the Work & Travel in the USA program as an instance of international mobility of their students, though this program is only aimed at temporary employment of students during holidays. In this way, one can state that the level of involvement of Ukrainian students of journalism departments in international programs aimed to help them in their professional and academic development is insufficient.

COMMUNICATION WITH

5 OUTSIDE AUDIENCE AND THE ALUMNI. ONLINE PRESENCE AND ACTIVITY One of the tasks in the scope of research was to find how HEIs communicate with outside audience. The analysis was based on responses received from journalism departments/chairs/schools and on the review of their official websites and social network pages.

Open house days Absolutely all chairs and departments of those that responded noted that they hold open house days on a regular basis, with the only difference being event frequency and format: some invite prospective students once a year, while others hold the event twice or even three times a year. NGO Detector Media

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Websites overview Of 39 higher educational institutions that have journalist training on their education offering only 20 had a dedicated website of the journalism chair (department, institute, etc.). Only two of these websites (those of the Institute of Journalism of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University and the UCU School of Journalism) contain comprehensive information about teachers, students, alumni, have valid e-mail address for prompt contact with the journalism chair, inform about academic process, schedules, master classes, give details of curricula and students' projects, admission terms, presentation of students' work. Both of them are regularly updated. Some chairs of journalism only had a page on the website of the department they are a part of. Information about the chair was outlined in a couple of paragraphs, which does not give the vaguest idea about journalism education at the respective HEI. Besides, it appeared as if departments/chairs underestimated the importance of their Internet representation for their image. It looked even more so since the content of some websites seemed harmful to the reputation of the universities concerned. For example, the website of the journalism department of Oles Gonchar Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro) National University in its alumni section presented the following information: "Among the persons to contribute to the department's image are Tamerlan Medzhidov (Head of International Relations Department of the Press Office of the President of the Chechen Republic [this is Ramzan Kadyrov â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Ed.], Russian Federation and Basel Raab (Speaker of the General Staff of the Syrian Ministry of Defense)". NGO Detector Media

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The most common downsides of the websites of journalism departments/ chairs/schools:

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▪incomplete information about teachers (some websites did not have these details at all), or teaching staff profiles without photos of some of them, patchy data with grammar and spelling mistakes; ▪no department/chair e-mail addresses provided, some sites had a single e-mail address for the whole university. obsolete e-mail addresses presented on the websites, as university representatives confessed during phone interviews;

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▪no or very rare (in some cases once in several years) information (news, students' work/achievements, etc.) updates; ▪sections of the sites won't open or their content was out of line with their name. For example, in one of the websites the Grants and Scholarship section contained a posting of an event held by the journalism chair, while another one contained a link with title "Bachelor's Minimum" that lead to the university's regulatory documents; ▪texts in different sections were in need of proofreading and contained grave mistakes; ▪obsolete design in most of the websites; ▪some sites loaded critically slowly, which showed that they were neglected as no action was taken to remove problems (to update the code, to switch to other servers, etc.). In general, in most cases websites of journalism departments/chairs failed to meet the information needs of any of their users (prospective students, students, teachers or other interested persons).

Social networks activity overview The analysis and conclusions were made based on the situation as of 19 September 2016. Only 52%, or 20 of 39, educational institutions concerned were represented on social networks. 90% of these used Vkonkakte, 55% Facebook, 25% - Twitter and 5% had Instagram accounts.

Update frequency Most of the educational institutions have somewhat chaotic management of social media. For example, one of the communities posted five posts on their Facebook page, while had been keeping silence for 12 previous days, having published only 10 posts throughout the summer, with 8 in June. Though the problem of summer breaks in publications is common for many universities and is due to objective reasons, there were cases when information activities ceased for entire 5 months. NGO Detector Media

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Some official websites give links to social network pages that have not been updated for two or even four years. Nevertheless, most of institutions do regularly update their pages: the top performers (the UCU School of Journalism, the Department of Philology and Journalism of the Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University) showed the capacity to produce up to 9 posts per day, while keeping the pace even during weekends. In general, almost all HEIs represented in social media kept their content updated more frequently than once a week.

Content By far not every community published content that has relation to journalism. Most of the pages of journalism chairs/departments had plenty of advertisement of cultural events, job openings, lectures, trainings, mostly of general cultural or educational nature rather than pertaining specifically to journalism. The content of the Classical Private Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s page is comprised mainly of advertisement, with 16 announcements and only three posts related to the university life published since the start of the academic year. On top of that, amid journalist job postings and company development master class announcements they also had an announcement of a coffee festival, a visualizer job offering, and advertisement of a one-man show. The V.G. Korolenko Poltava National Pedagogical University was seen promoting casting for a local X-Factor talent show, student relay races, parties and NGO Detector Media

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cheerleading team draft in social network pages. There was not a single post related to journalism in 19 days since the start of the academic year, i.e. 1 September 2016.

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Department/chair pages sometimes even had unsolicited offers for students to have their course papers and diploma theses written for them on their pages. Naturally, this was mostly the case with social network pages or groups that had been left without updates for a long time.

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One can find an advertisement of "lectures, workshops and abstracts transcription" by following a link in the Leisure section of the official website of Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University. The page itself in Vkontakte social network was registered not as a community page, but as that of individual user (!). The page of Berdiansk State Pedagogical University was registered in the same fashion. The Chair of Journalism at Ostroh Academy maintained communication in the Vkontakte social network using the "discussion" feature. However, there were several communities (the Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism, the UCU School of Journalism) that posted materials created by their students, published photos of academic events and lectures of visiting experts. And the UCU School of Journalism even presented a full coverage of events of the Publishers' Forum when it was held in Lviv, using the school's platform, with stories, including photos, made by their students. In general, the news feed of most of the HEIs primarily featured announcements of upcoming on-campus and other events. The second most popular content was news and official information like class schedules or miscellaneous paperwork procedures, with the least attention given to reports of student activities. It was hard to say whether a social network page of a certain university had the official status since links to such pages were not always found on the universities' official websites.

Graduates employment tracking Only 15 HEIs of 19 that provided information for the survey responded to the question whether they keep track of their graduates employment. It should be noted that two of the four universities that failed to come up with a reply were yet to have their first alumni, while the other two simply avoided this questions in their replies. Among those, who replied, 9 HEIs just said that they do keep track of employment information, without giving any details of how exactly they do this. The other six responded with details of their employment tracking practices, with the most frequent response being staying in touch with graduates via social networks and keeping alumni databases. Some HEIs had dedicated publications with stories of their alumni on their websites. Based on the replies, only six HEIs had a practice of hosting alumni events. Unfortunately, the scope of the survey did not allow us to measure real quality of this communication and consider this information when evaluating performance of journalism chairs. NGO Detector Media

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RESULTS OF RESULTS OF DISCUSSIONS DISCUSSIONS

Section 3.

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JOURNALISM E D U C AT I O N AS V I E W E D B Y JOURNALISM D E PA R T M E N T G R A D UAT E S : results of focus group discussions

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he scope of the survey involved two pilot focus groups with graduates of journalism chairs/institutes/schools located in Kyiv: the Kyiv International University, the Institute of Journalism of Taras Shevchenko KNU, the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism, the Open International University of Human Development "Ukraine", the Kyiv Slavonic University, the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, the National Aviation University, the Kyiv University of Arts, the Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University. 12 alumni of these HEIs who now work as journalists at online periodicals, on TV, in printed media took part in the discussion of the situation with journalism education in Ukraine.

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RESULTS OF DISCUSSIONS

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In particular, participants shared their experiences and thoughts about university journalism education they had completed, upsides and downsides of their training, the academic process as a whole. Respondents also voiced their opinions of how helpful was their academic journalistic background in their real professional lives, what problems they had been facing, when making their first steps in the trade, what they lacked most. In conclusion, journalism practitioners offered their vision of what modern Ukrainian journalism education should be. The main conclusions discussions:

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Philology instead of journalism 10 of 12 respondents stated that during their study at the department of journalism they felt as if they were trained to become linguists.

« Anna, the National Aviation University:

«My journalism studies were more of a literature drill. The academic studies offered by the university and practical journalism have nothing to do with each other at all».

Mariana, the Institute of Journalism of Taras Shevchenko National University:

«If you would ask me, I won't go to study there today as the only tangible benefit I can name was their philological school. I am utterly disappointed with the majors, their level was low. In many cases the names of subjects and their academic content were out of line».

Theory instead of practice: 9 of 12 respondents said that their studies were biased towards theory rather than practice. Among the arguments to support this they reported: that students did not have or had scarce technical aids (1 photo camera for a group of 25-40 students, 2 video cameras, limited access to PCs); the practical subjects were taught by teachers who had never worked for the media and were not competent enough in their subjects.

« Anna, the National Aviation University:

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«Towards the end of our 4th year of undergraduate studies and in our 5th year of master's degree program they gave us a sort of feedback form. There were questions regarding pluses and minuses of education we got. Under the item asking what you would like to change, all of us wrote: the curriculum should be adjusted to reduce general subjects’ hours and to increase those for profession-oriented ones. And nothing has changed: today's students complain of the same».

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« Andrii, the Institute of Journalism, Kyiv International University:

«We had many teachers, who indeed taught us real-life things, things that helped us meet requirements and challenges of the trade. Most of the rest of the subject were a kind of beating the air. And this is true not only for journalism education, but for the whole system of education».

« Vladyslav, the Kyiv University of Culture:

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«There was another problem of administrative character, when old teachers ousted new teacher talents, even though teachers with a long record in teaching, who long should have retired, had no journalistic background at all, did not have a clue how things work in journalism in real life».

Prestige of a university does not guarantee the quality of education: All respondents mentioned the fact that prospective students often opt for a university based on its reputation. It is even the more so for journalism. A still exiting common stereotype is that, for example, a diploma in journalism from the Institute of Journalism of Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University will help in finding a fancy job. And this is a misconception since employers are looking more for knowledge and skills of candidates for the job rather than the name of the university on the diploma.

« Mariana, the Institute of Journalism of Taras Shevchenko National University:

4 « Anna, the National Aviation University:

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«It was easy for me to learn, good grades came easily, one did not have to put much effort in it and could get prepared for an exam in a day. I often felt bored. I owe all of my skill only to the fact that I took a job as journalist early on. And I completed my studies for the sake of diploma only because I often heard them saying that it is a prestigious university you study at!»

Low qualification level of the faculty 10 respondents of 12 were dissatisfied with their teachers, quoting the gap between the theory and practice, obsolete teaching approaches from the soviet times, disregard of student's initiatives, reluctance to adjust the curricula and change outdated subjects for those that keep up with the realities of the trade, among the reasons and as principal problems of Kyiv educators, who train future journalists.

«Rare teachers were journalists themselves. Even those who teach vocational subjects did not have practical skills and understanding of the specifics of the journalistic trade! A month of internship at a news media did more for me in terms of knowledge than four years at the university».

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« Mariana, the Institute of Journalism of Taras Shevchenko National University:

«There was a time when they appointed us our new media teachers, who had no background other than teaching some linguistic subjects. These guys did not have theoretical knowledge, let alone practical knowledge, they had to learn it themselves when making their teaching plans, preparing for lectures».

« Andrii, the Institute of Journalism, Kyiv International University:

«We studied something that was long gone, things from the past, not those existing today. We had a teacher - he is still teaching press and journalism,- who would go about giving examples of his journalistic youth, telling us how he reported life of soviet collective farms back in the 80s».

« Vladyslav, the Institute of Journalism of Taras Shevchenko National University:

«The biggest problem we have is an administrative one. Here's a fresh example. We had two young teachers, and they refused to renew employment contracts with them to spare more academic hours for teachers long past their retirement age. And these are people that live in their soviet past, teaching students from textbooks of the 7080s hardly found even in the library».

Student mobility is still not a common practice: 11 years following introduction of the Bologna system of education in Ukraine student mobility still have not become a wide-spread practice at the departments of journalism in Ukrainian universities. As the results of two focus groups have shown, none of respondents participated in international academic exchange programs as a part of their studies. Moreover, most HEIs do not encourage such practice during the academic year, while supporting only summer practical training or short-term trainings (of 1-2 days.

Vision of the university journalism education (opinions of alumni): University journalism education must be relevant to the needs of the Ukrainian media market. It must also accommodate global trends and the specifics and the needs of the national media industry (of course, this has nothing to do with indulgence for planted materials or tolerance to practices, when owners impose their policies on creative teams). Journalism education must pursue ongoing, and not sporadic, cooperation with the media industry, have its representatives involved in the academic process, implement joint projects, hold conferences. And a continuous dialog between these key links to journalistic trade will contribute to the quality of education. Most of future journalist should be trained under master's degree programs, while the number of NGO Detector Media

undergraduate training programs should be cut accordingly. Journalism should be taught as a separate specialization distinct from public relations and advertisement. Journalist chairs should be subject to attestation by independent experts, since compliance assessments as they are now are ineffective, adding no positive dynamics to improvement of the academic process. Curricula and academic subjects should be flexible to accommodate changes both in the media environment and the country as a whole. For example, today the core disciplines should include those that teach students occupational and information safety, methods of countering propaganda, shunning hate speech, etc.

T H E S TAT E O F J O U R N A L I S M E D U C AT I O N AT J O U R N A L I S M D E PA R T M E N T S I N U K R A I N E (PILOT SURVEY FINDINGS)

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QUESTIONNAIRE FINDINGS QUESTIONNAIRE FINDINGS

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JOURNALISM E D U C AT I O N AS VIEWED BY THE M E D I A I N D U ST R Y: questionnaire survey findings

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QUESTIONNAIRE FINDINGS

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he scope of the study involved questionnaire survey of representatives of 39 editorial offices (of radio, newspapers, TV and online periodicals) in 5 regions of Ukraine: Lvivska, Odeska, Vinnytska, Sumska, and Zaporizka oblasts. It covered not only the media headquartered in regional centers, but also

periodicals and TV channels in smaller towns. The polling was conducted using an online questionnaire form. 69.2% of respondents were representatives of the media industry over 30 y.o., with men comprising 51.3% of respondents.

Should a journalist have a professional academic background? 51.3% of respondents have never had a degree in journalism, having completed education in history, pedagogics and philology. And there was only one person (out of 23), who admitted it "to be a noticeable drawback for his career" as a journalist. Of 48.7% of respondents with relevant (journalistic) academic background, 41.4% believed that it was a benefit for their career. Speaking of the general situation in the industry, it should be noted that 35.6% of respondents reported that people with education in journalism made a "minority" at their editorial offices. 17.9% of editorial offices had "practically no" such specialists. At the same time, 30.8% of organizations had their teams staffed with a "vast majority" of personnel with journalistic education, with only 15.4% of the media able to boast "absolute majority" here.

Are you satisfied with the quality of journalist training at your editorial office? Nevertheless, when asked, "Should a journalist have a professional academic background?" 46.2% of the media professionals responded positively. The question revealed only 7.7% of surveyed respondents satisfied with NGO Detector Media

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the quality of the journalism education itself, with the undisputed leader in journalism education according to the industry professionals being the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy with 25.6% of respondents' votes. 23% thought the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv was the best here and 20.5% gave preference to the Ukrainian Catholic University. Apart from these universities the free response mentioned only the Ivan Franko Lviv National University - 10.2% of votes. What did practicing journalist name among the shortcomings inherent in vocational education? These mainly were "obsolete approaches, focus on theoretical knowledge, [...] lack of sufficient knowledge and skills of the faculty, [...] old or no technical infrastructure, [...] rooted corruption, [...] presence of useless subjects in curricula", superficial editing, video and photography skills", "disconnection from the real-life job environment", "too little competitive selection". At the same time, among the positive aspects of education (it is worth noting here that 53% failed to name any advantages at all) were: "general knowledge taught in conjunction with other basic human sciences", "student exchanges with other countries", "strong patriotic education", "awareness of the legal framework for information", "broad outlook and practical experience", "practitioners engagement, interacademic communication", "cultivation of high ethical standards". Interestingly enough, 46.2% of the editorial offices subject to survey not only relied on universities for training future personnel but had own talent development programs. 81.6% hosted internships for students of local HEIs. When doing so, in most cases they would have to teach graduates quite obvious practical things: "information search and gathering", "input material processing", "text editing, voice-over processing and editing ", "avoiding clichĂŠs in stories," "good writing and expressing their thoughts right", "viewing information from different perspectives and asking questions", "never fear", "working with operator and director", distinguishing genres/styles. NGO Detector Media

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What does journalism education lack most? When asked to name specific knowledge and skills missed out by the journalism education process, 33% of editorial offices responded with the plain answer: "practical", while others added: "story finding and making skills", "manipulation resistance", "sources verification", "linguistic expertise", "consistency, discipline, tactfulness", " knowledge of modern terminology", "mastery of basic newscaster and narrator skills", "efficient interviewing skills", "social networks management", "command of novel presentation formats", "skills of communicating with vulnerable population strata", "decent command of foreign languages", "writing mastery", "understanding of the essence and mission of journalism". The motivation and concern of the professional community is understandable as 46.2% of the editorial offices noted that they needed journalism department graduates.

Recommendations of media industry representatives

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Respondents also gave their recommendations: «We need journalism departments replaced by schools of journalism, where they can teach specialists from other areas of knowledge, who decided to pursue journalistic trade, fundamentals of journalism» «They should engage more editors of commercial periodicals as teachers» «The best way to learn the journalistic trade in Ukraine is just to find a job in the media» «Among other things students should be taught how to find their way out of information trash heaps, and not only how to make them» «Theory must be solidified into practical knowledge by action, and not by ivory tower practice in the curriculum. And more of focus won't hurt!» «In our country journalism (editing) is taught by people, who have never been successful journalists (editors) themselves. In addition, our universities pay too much attention to ethical standards of journalism... instead of teaching modern information technologies and their trends» «Journalism is a trade that should be learned from practice from the very first year of studies, at press offices. A journalist should write a lot, news stories in the first place, and learn from practicing journalists and editors...» «I think they should only leave graduate programs at a couple of universities and switch to a training system like the one they have for actors or directors».

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