*Mohammad Sahid Ullah & Rawshon Akhter
Abstract:
This article is concerned with a lack of an agreed framework for the curriculum of journalism education in Bangladesh. Starting from the want of any agreement between educators and professionals, which has hindered its journalism education as a mature discipline in Western higher education, the article argues that a lack of agreed values and beliefs about the journalism profession itself still persists in Bangladesh. Examining the existing curricula, facilities and capacities at 14 different public and private universities of Bangladesh, this article focuses on the generic problems of framing a comprehensive curriculum and the challenges ahead in the corporatization of local media industry, privatization of knowledge institutions, and new media intervention by clarifying curricular differences. It also tries to help point the way forward following basic principles of journalism curricula in Bangladesh’s context. The result also comes out from 35 interviews with media management people, senior journalists and former journalism graduates working in media houses and journalism department heads. This study finds that Bangladeshi university journalism curricula and pedagogue style cannot fulfill the demand that seeks in the media houses due to the curricula’s inadequate focus on practical courses, technological inadequacies in the university and controversy over the mission and merit of university-based journalism education.
Keywords: Journalism education, curricula framework, Bangladesh