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Crisis Aside, Journalism Schools Struggle to Modernize Journalism became separate from literature or history as a branch of higher education in the USSR when Moscow State University opened its School of Journalism in the late 1940s. By the time the Union collapsed in 1991, there were some two dozen schools and departments from Vladivostok in the Far East to Lvov in Western Ukraine. Journalism was for many years a popular course of study, with one of the reasons being that future propaganda-oriented jobs provided easy access to Communist Party membership and paved the way to swift career advancement in state and party bodies. Young workers and peasants had special privileges when applying for admission to journalism programs. Despite their ideological nature, many journalism schools were quite liberal. Some, for example in Tartu and Moscow, gave refuge to sociologists disliked by the regime. The curriculum was taught on a five-year basis with the first two years devoted mainly to the general education core: History of the Communist Party, Marxist Philosophy and Economic Theory, Atheism, a foreign language, Russian and Russian Literature, World Literature, Basics of Journalism, and Military Training (for men). In the third year, students chose their field of specialization: either print, photo, or broadcast journalism. Despite the fact that students received substantial practical training in both labs and newsrooms, their curriculum was full of ideological subjects, such as History of the Party Press, Criticism of Bourgeois Journalism, and History of Proletarian Journalism in the West. To obtain a diploma, students were required to pass State Examinations which consisted of Marxism and Journalism. There was a strict system of job assignment for graduates, usually to provincial newspapers and broadcast stations. Everyone was to work there for three years before receiving permission to change job locations. Subordinate both to the USSR and republican Ministries of Higher Education, all journalism schools were to coordinate their curricula each year at special conferences, usually held at Moscow University. There was no autonomy in regard to the subjects to be taught, number of hours for both total courses and courses taught each semester, ratio of professors and students, or textbooks used. Since the early 1960s, the Soviet educational establishment provided education and indoctrination (usually free of charge) to large numbers of students from the communist bloc countries and “progressive” states of the Third World. In the late ‘80s this practice started to collapse, and then, in 1991-92, the former Soviet republics simply refused to finance their foreign students who poured into the Russian universities which reluctantly let them complete their courses. Currently, Russia provides journalism education to a small number of students from Vietnam, Arab countries, and South Korea, as well as to handfuls of westerners eager to learn Slavic subjects. Tuition is usually $ 2,000 (US) per year for undergraduates and $ 3,000 for graduate students. Starting from the same point in 1991, the former Soviet schools went in different directions. Given the economic difficulties in all post-Soviet republics, most of the schools have drastic financial conditions: they cannot buy new textbooks, furnish labs and classrooms, repair their facilities, etc. At least in Russia, a university professorship is now one of the lowest paid and least prestigious jobs. The current crisis in journalism education and training in the ex-USSR has been caused in part by a lack of new non-Communist textbooks and manuals, since Russian publishers do not want to print non-profitable books. Western organizations are of some help here. Last year, the Commission on Radio and Television Policy co-chaired by President Jimmy Carter and Eduard Sagalaev, and the Soros Foundation have assisted in translating and issuing a timely brochure, Television and Elections, by Charles Firestone and Ellen Mickiewicz (Kazakh and Ukrainian editions of the book are in progress as well). The World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC) has published a Russian edition of its Handbook for Journalists of Central and Eastern Europe, while the International Newspaper Financial Executives organization (INFE)—sponsored by the Freedom Forum—has translated its primer, Newspaper Financial Management: An Introduction, into Russian for distribution in the former Soviet Union. In Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, reform of higher education commenced with the introduction of university statutes approved by the parliaments. The statutes, that function as state laws, protect national universities from government interference and guarantee broad internal autonomy. Education, nevertheless, is financed from the state budget. It is still free in Lithuania, but Estonia introduced a loan system for students in 1993. The Baltic schools have altered the number of years required for degree completion to four for B.A. and six for M.A. The main emphasis in the 1991-92 curricula reform was the development of practical workshops in print or broadcast media. The new subjects in the curriculum include Media Law, Media Ethics, Theory of [Western] Media, History of [Western] Journalism. Hours of credit have become a measure of students’ progress, and optional courses comprise 25-30 percent of the curriculum. Some distinctive changes will emerge from partnerships with journalism schools and similar programs in Europe and the United States. Thus far, however, these partnerships have been inconsistent in their impacts. Andrei Richter, Moscow
State University |
Last Updated: 11/20/99 |
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© 1999 Post-Soviet Media Law &
Policy Newsletter |
