Abstract
Journalism education in China can be traced back to the U.S. tradition of the 1920s and was influenced by the Soviet model in the 1950s. Although it has become very Chinese ever since, journalism education in China fluctuates between the two lines represented by the U.S. tradition and the Soviet model. This article hopes to expound upon the current status quo of journalism education in China, including scope of journalism programs, national education system, journalism curricula, and faculty structure. As is in other countries, in this digital age, journalism education in China is undergoing dramatic changes. The article assesses these changes as Chinese journalism education adapts to a new media environment.
History: U.S. Origin and Soviet Influence
The origin of journalism education in China can be traced back to the 1920s when modern newspapers and universities emerged and expanded in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Modern newspapers were founded in China with heavy colonial influences from Western countries (Huang, 2001). It is no surprise that journalism education in China was also imported from Western countries, particularly from the United States.
The history of Chinese journalism education falls into five stages: (a) 1920s to 1940s; (b) 1950s; (c) early 1960s; (d) 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1977; and (e) 1978 to 2000 (Ding, 1997).
Early journalism education in China was modeled after two journalism schools in the United States: the University of Missouri and Columbia University. The Missouri School of Journalism started the first journalism department at St. John University in Shanghai in 1920, and the journalism departments at Yenching University in Beijing in 1924 1 and Fudan University in 1929. These journalism programs and schools employed American journalism professors to teach Chinese students in English and borrowed journalism curricula and course designs from the United States. As a result, the Missouri model became an accepted model for journalism education in China for quite a long time, and its influence continues even today.
Early U.S. influences also had established an English-medium international journalism tradition with an emphasis on English proficiency. The model has been popular especially in journalism programs at universities focusing on foreign-language studies in China (Guo, 1996).
The second stage witnessed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. China swung away from U.S. influence to embrace the Soviet model of journalism education, which stressed political orientation in social science sectors. Journalism programs in China were re-organized with Marxist–Leninist theories prominent in their curricula (Ding, 1997).
In the 1960s, at the third stage, China broke with the Soviet Union and became more realistic and independent. The target of journalism education was shifted to the “the training of journalistic teaching and research personnel” (Ding, 1997). The curricula of journalism education favored courses on theories and cultures, which deviated from the Soviet model and were better suited to Chinese practices (Ding, 1997; Hao & Xu, 1997).
Journalism education stagnated at the fourth stage during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Faculty members and students were sent to rural areas of the country to receive “re-education” (Hao & Xu, 1997).
In the fifth stage from 1978 to 2000, the reform and opening up policy inaugurated by China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping brought about rapid economic growth and dramatic social changes. Social changes stimulated media development, particularly in the television industry (Guo, 1996). Rapid media development left the Chinese media industry in dire need of qualified journalists and editors. In 1977, journalism education began to reinstate 4-year undergraduate programs. In 1978, journalism schools started to enroll journalism MA students. The first group of doctoral students was recruited in 1981. Since then, journalism programs mushroomed across China, increasing from the original 14 programs in 1982 to 6,186 in 1997 (Hao & Xu, 1997).
Since 2000, journalism education witnessed an unprecedented level of development in China. This article hopes to explore how journalism education in China expands and fluctuates between an administrative line inherited from the Soviet model and a professional line represented by the U.S. tradition. Primary sources such as recent government documents on journalism education and firsthand data including latest survey results and personal interviews are used.
Overview: Chinese Model of Journalism Education
The concept of journalism education in China started with print journalism education. Like elsewhere, it is no longer limited to print journalism, rather it covers a wide range of subjects including broadcasting, public relations, advertising, mass communication, and new media. Journalism education is often referred to as Journalism and Communication Education today.
The Chinese model of journalism education is, to a large extent, a combination of the U.S. tradition and the Soviet model. China has been dominated by a state planning system, similar to that in the former Soviet Union in the 1950s. After 1978, motivated by the booming media market owing to China’s reform and opening up policy, the U.S. model goes in parallel with the Soviet model. Both models have exerted influences on China’s current journalism education, which will be discussed in the following parts. According to the 2015 report of the semi-official National Journalism and Mass Communication Discipline Supervisory Committee (NJCDSC), a total of 637 colleges and universities in China offered 1,073 undergraduate (Bachelor) programs with a focus on Journalism (304), Broadcasting Journalism (224), Advertising (363), Editing and Publishing (80), Digital Publishing (5), New Media (43) and Communication (54; Hu, 2015). The number of graduate (master’s) programs in Journalism and Communication (including Advertising) was about 180, while doctoral programs exceeded 20.
Journalism education in China has reached quite a sizable scale since 2000. The total number of journalism students at all levels in China was about 200,000. The national intake of undergraduate students of journalism and communication enrolled on campus was 141,653. The number of graduate (MA) students was roughly one third of undergraduate students and the number of doctoral students was one third or half of MA students.
The increasing number of journalism graduates has exceeded the actual needs for journalists and editors in the past decade. The employment rate at most journalism schools ranges from 70% to 96%. However, only 10% to 20% of the students are employed by media organizations, while about two thirds are employed by other enterprises and governmental units (Hu, 2015).
This trend is continuing in the digital age. Media organizations in China are recruiting fewer journalism graduates because they prefer interdisciplinary students from areas such as computer science, law, economics, politics, arts, and sports. This has made job competition more intensive than ever for journalism students.
The excessive number of journalism graduates also resulted from the fact that number of students’ enrollment was allocated by the China’s Ministry of Education instead of meeting the market needs (Cai, 2017).
National Education System
China’s economic development instigated the massive expansion of journalism programs. In 1998, the official recognition of Journalism and Communication by the Ministry of Education as the first-tier discipline of social sciences became the driving force. Since 1949, journalism had been listed as a second-tier concentration under Literature. The recognition of a first-tier discipline has significant administrative impacts on journalism education in a centralized education system in China.
First, the recognition of Journalism and Communication as an independent discipline of social sciences means independent funding channel for journalism programs, because the Ministry of Education allocates budgets according to first-tier disciplines for all universities. When Journalism and Communication was a second-tier discipline under Literature, governmental funding would first go to literature departments and schools.
Second, the official recognition allows evaluation and assessment of journalism programs by journalism professors instead of literature professors, as was the case in the past. This can partly explain why many journalism programs in Chinese universities are still affiliated with Chinese departments or colleges and why quite a number of professors in journalism programs have backgrounds in Literature.
In addition, the recognition of Journalism and Communication as an independent first-tier discipline helps to systematize academic division of journalism education and encourages different concentrations. At the undergraduate level, seven concentrations are listed: Journalism, Radio & TV Journalism, Advertising, Editing and Publishing, Digital Publishing, New Media, and Communication. At the graduate level, Journalism and Communication are recognized as two broad concentrations.
Journalism Education Organizations
The administrative and professional lines of China’s journalism education are demonstrated in the setup of journalism and communication education organizations. Professional as they are, these organizations are semi-official because they are organized and supervised by the government.
China has three semi-official journalism education organizations. China Association of Journalism and Communication Education (CAJC) is under the loose supervision of the Ministry of Education. NJCDSC and Journalism and Communication Discipline Appraisal Committee (JCDAC) are supervised by the Ministry of Education and the State Council.
CAJC, set up in 1984, is similar to Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in the United States, even though it is still under the loose supervision of the Ministry of Education. CAJC elects, upon nomination by the Ministry of Education, its own president and vice presidents every 4 years. As of 2015, the number of CAJC institutional members has amounted to about 119, among which 102 are universities and the rest are some national and local publishing houses. These universities with journalism programs fall roughly into nine categories: comprehensive universities, normal universities, and universities focusing on studies on minorities, natural sciences, foreign languages, sports, law, finance, and arts. 2 CAJC usually acts as a networking platform discussing issues related to undergraduate journalism education at annual conferences.
CAJC has five divisions on journalism, advertising, editing, publishing, communication, and radio & TV journalism. Each division convenes its own annual session. The secretariat of CAJC goes with the president’s home university. Since 2014, CAJC secretariat has been located at the Journalism School of Renmin University in Beijing, which is the host university of the current CAJC president.
NJCDSC, set up in 1996, supervises undergraduate journalism education by proposing general guidelines, drafting standards for curricula, textbooks, and teaching styles. The Committee has about 40 members who serve for a 5-year term and are usually journalism professors and also may be CAJC members. The president of NJCDSC is from the Communication University of China in Beijing after 2014.
JCDAC consists of seven members appointed by the State Council. The committee endorses the establishment of new MA and PhD programs in China. Till 2015, the committee has approved 21 doctoral programs in Journalism and Communication in 15 universities and research institutes. 3
Journalism Curricula
Journalism curricula are influenced by the Soviet model and the U.S. model in terms of curricula structure, textbooks, and teaching styles.
The Soviet model best demonstrated in journalism curricula is the national requirement of the same courses on social sciences including Marxism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory. However, as journalism and communication education is media and technology sensitive, the U.S. model is obvious in recent years.
The curricula at the undergraduate level in almost all journalism schools in China consist of the same five categories with a total of about 160 credits: (a) courses in social sciences nationally required to cover 15% to 20% of the total, (b) introduction courses on journalism and communication covering 15%, (c) core courses on journalism and communication covering 20%, (d) elective courses on journalism and communication covering 20%, and (e) professional internships covering 10% to 30%.
A 2014 survey of 18 major journalism schools shows that the journalism curricula were characterized by six major components: (a) basic journalistic courses, such as courses on interviewing, news writing, editing and opinion writing, radio & TV shooting and editing, journalism theory, media law, and ethics; (b) media practice-oriented courses on advertising, public relations, Internet communication, and media management; (c) lab-oriented courses on newspaper design, audio-video production, graphic design, web design, and multimedia production; (d) interdisciplinary courses on philosophy, history, sociology, politics, economics, and international relations; (e) English-oriented courses on English-language journalism, including English news writing, global news reporting and writing, and English–Chinese news editing and translating; and (f) journalistic internship at media enterprises and other institutions (Ni & Cai, 2014).
According to a curricula review of 13 key journalism and communication schools, 4 MA programs require a total of 30 to 36 credits for graduation, with their curricula components varying among different schools. Two courses on Journalism and Communication theory and research methodology are often required, in addition to elective courses on different concentrations of journalism, communication, advertising, public relations, and media management. In some schools, MA students are required to complete media-related internship or media practices if their undergraduate degrees are not in journalism. Doctoral programs require 30 credits. They are more academically oriented in terms of curricula setup.
Faculty Structure
The fast changing landscape of the media industry in China has led to a lack of teaching faculty members with professional media experience.
As of early 2015, journalism schools in China have employed a total of 6,912 full-time faculty members: 43% as full or associate professorships and 43% with master’s or doctoral degrees. Ever since 2010, new faculty recruited at most journalism schools are required to have a doctoral degree, preferably from abroad or at least with overseas study experience for more than 1 year.
The percentage of visiting faculty or faculty with professional media experience is very low at most journalism schools (Hu, 2015). As a result, journalism education in China is too theory-oriented and some students do not know how to do practical media projects upon graduation (Cai, 2017).
This trend seems to be continuing, which has raised a deep concern among journalism educators.
A Model of English-Medium International Journalism Education in China
Despite the centralized administrative system, journalism educators in China are keeping the professional line, to match their teaching and research to the needs of social and media developments in the past three decades.
In an effort to carry out effective global communication, China resumed a tradition of English-medium journalism education. In 1978, the national Xinhua News Agency and the party newspaper People’s Daily initiated the first two English-medium journalism programs. In 1983, five programs, called international journalism, were established in five universities in China, including Fudan University, Communication University of China, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Xiamen University, and Shanghai International Studies University. They employed American professors and used U.S. journalism textbooks for theory and writing courses and integrated journalistic training with English learning. These programs aimed to train qualified Chinese reporters and editors for China’s international communication because they could understand foreign and Chinese cultures and know how to report news stories in an English style (Guo, 1996).
International journalism programs have met the increasing demands of the country that interacted and cooperated more closely with the rest of the world in the past three decades. The model is popular among universities focusing on foreign-language studies.
Challenges
Like elsewhere, the new media environment is radically challenging journalism education in China. Some Chinese scholars observed that the greatest challenges might still come from conflicts between the administrative line and the professional line (Cai, 2017).
Structurally, China ranks universities as equals to government institutions. University presidents and journalism deans are not only regarded as academics but also placed in a bureaucratic hierarchy. A university president enjoys the same rank as a government bureau director, while a dean is in parallel to a government division head. Besides, a Chinese university runs a parallel party system, which matches a president with a party secretary at the university level and a journalism school is run both by a dean and a party secretary. This kind of administrative system has led to a very Chinese journalism education structure in terms of recruitment of faculty members, student enrollment, curricula design, and academic promotion.
With the sudden influx of journalism programs (undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral) in the past two decades, most journalism schools are in urgent need of qualified journalism professors and adjunct professors with professional media experience. Some new programs lack qualified faculty members to maintain their basic teaching. Journalism deans or department heads are always concerned with finding good faculty members.
Furthermore, journalism deans have no final say in recruiting or dismissing faculty members. 5 All faculty members, once employed, have become tenured professors who may become less motivated 6 and are seldom dismissed even though they proved to be incompetent (Cai, 2017).
The administrative and professional lines also conflict in terms of enrolment quotas of journalism students both at undergraduate and graduate levels, which are allocated by the Ministry of Education for all journalism schools in China. 7
As a result, quite a number of programs provide courses according to what their faculty members offer to teach instead of meeting the requirements of a good curriculum. Except for a few well-established schools, most journalism programs in China are not able to offer enough elective courses on interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to expand journalism students’ scope of knowledge and skills to survive in competitive job markets.
The Chinese administrative education system also has an impact on research performance among journalism faculty members, characterized in the process of academic promotions to professorship and associate professorship. The academic promotion system tends to play up the quantity of publications rather than the quality of teaching and research. While the quality of publications attracts more attention, actual academic promotion process still prefers a long list of publications (even of low quality), which may in reality encourage the practice of sponsored books and paid academic papers (Cai, 2017). The practice has led to many overlapping and low-quality studies on Journalism and Communication and even cases of plagiarism.
Besides, the changing media environment in China also poses a challenge for Chinese journalism education. The new media has blurred the dividing line between mass communication and personal communication as social media play a significant role in disseminating news content. To adjust to the new media environment, some leading journalism schools in China are experimenting with journalism education that does not focus merely on journalism. They converge trainings of print, broadcasting, and advertising concentrations for all journalism and communication majors.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.