It is not a secret that experience is key to boosting employability. In a society where degrees are increasingly common, relevant experience now is not a bonus but rather a necessity for job seeking graduates.
Having met with PR students studying at rival institutions I became interested in the idea of compulsory placements. My degree course encourages us to seek placements from our first year, however other courses take it a step further and require students to complete a designated minimum time of industrial experience to pass the each level. Some courses require a 42 week placement year to be able to gain the degree. Fail to get a year placement, fail to get a degree!
When graduate jobs are competitive and many low level jobs require a years previous experience, by ensuring graduates have a good number of placements on their CV means they increase their likelihood of finding a great job.
Compulsory placements also support the movement of PR towards becoming a profession, a popular movement in some PR circles. Many professions, such as teaching and nursing, involve placements during training. Even dismissing the PR profession debate, can a graduate really be ready for an industry if they have never experienced it first hand?
On the other hand it would be hard to find a PR academic who does not encourage gaining work experience. Even while it may not be deemed compulsory most institutions will direct students towards gaining placements while studying. University is not about spoonfeeding students, it is a place for independent learning and research, supported by classroom theory. Motivated students will actively seek placements without being forced into doing so, these are the students who will graduate with the strongest degrees.
Another issue that could arise from compulsory work experience is the issue of unpaid placements. While I have previously supported such schemes, they do have a time and place. I do not feel easy with the idea of a PR student undertaking a year’s unpaid internship because otherwise they will fail their course.
I would be interested to hear your opinion on compulsory work experience. Good or bad?
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Hi Rachel, I enjoyed reading this as it’s the centre point of what we’re all going through at the moment. I think placements should be more compulsory but I also think they our course hours can be difficult to work around as I’ve had to turn down a couple of placements as they are asking for two or three days a week, which I have the hours to spare at the moment but not consecutively!
How would you feel if the placements or real life work was integrated into the course. So I think we actually work with real life clients at some point, but say in first year we were expected to not only design a campaign but actually run it for an organisation, say a charity?
I am curious how this works in a free market economy. How can universities impose unsuitable and unwilling students on organisations? They probably would have to offer lots of placements within their own institution.
Good students gain good placements; but what about those who might be unwilling or unable?
The students I spoke to said how they were made to run campaigns/do work for charities “because they aren’t in a position to say no”.
They definitely shouldn’t be compulsory but personally there is no way I’d even consider doing a PR degree without the sandwich year. The experience gained in just 1 year is more valuable than the degree. Especially in the climate of £9k degrees a course without placement in a profession that already openly says you don’t need a degree to enter seems like a bit of a waste of time and money to me
Sandwich year placements can be hard to find, how would you feel if it was compulsory to complete one to gain a degree? Would it encourage less motivated students to work harder?
The University of Gloucestershire runs a sandwich PR degree. I was fortunate enough to gain a placement working for Microsoft. However I was doing online advertising rather than PR. Being out in the “real world” provided me with the opportunity to improve my work ethics and industry knowledge – Microsoft pushed me far harder than University. Due to this experience I cannot recommend sandwich degrees enough.
Let’s face the facts though. The UK economy is ruined. The PR class below mine have struggled finding any paid placements. There are too many students and not enough 48 week schemes. Compulsory placements would have the effect of whittling down to the students who are serious about their PR degree but in reality these students are consumers. We pay for our education. The idea of students failing because they can’t get a placement (due to the economic climate) just seems wrong.
Degrees alone are not enough. PR students should get work experience. However this should be found on their own merit and sandwich courses should not be compulsory – lecturers should always reinforce the benefit of experience though.
In my eyes the CIPR needs to take a stronger role in CIPR approved courses. Currently the support they provide to PR students is minimal. My membership has just lapsed and I have found no good reason to renew. The CIPR should assist PR students by setting up multiple networking events.
You’ve made some very fair points here Rachel, and I thoroughly agree with you when you say that experience is now a necessity, and I feel that this is true with PR more than many other degrees. I, too, am uneasy at the idea of failing my degree if I’m unsuccessful at finding a 40-week placement.
I do feel that the culture of ‘unpaid’ placements is slowly dying out, though. For example, out of all the placements I’ve seen advertised over the past 3-4 months, only a very small minority have not been paid (although, somewhat bizarrely, these do tend to be the bigger, better known companies).
Personally, I’ve been working really hard to get work experience in the PR Industry since I was 16 years old, but, even with experience I’m still finding it extremely hard to get to the interview stage for placements I’ve applied to. I know that this is right across the board, especially at Bournemouth, so I guess this just shows that competition is fierce for any placement.
In terms of whether placements should be compulsory, I agree with the point made that students finding placements ‘off their own back’ may look better to possible employers. This seems to go against those who are on a sandwich year, simply because employers know that applying is a necessity. Having said that, the sandwich year was what drew me to the course at Bournemouth in particular in the first place. For me, the placement year is a chance to get some real experience in the field (and a chance to see if you really do enjoy the practical side of PR before graduating).
Aside from this, I must agree with Michael White’s point about the CIPR. Another reason for choosing Bournemouth was the fact that the PR course at Bournemouth is both CIPR and PRCA approved. I feel that the PRCA has been making much more of an effort to connect with future practitioners in the industry, creating more opportunities for us to network with practitioners already working in PR.
Many thanks for this post Rachel, it’s definitely given some food for thought!
[...] worthless without the relevant work experience. Rachel Barkley (2nd Year PR Student from Leeds Met) debates in her latest blog post over the nature of work placement and sandwich courses. Should placements be compulsory? It is [...]
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Great blog post Rachel and very interesting topic because all PR degrees are so different. I’m studying at Southampton Solent and my course is 3 years without industry placement. We must however complete a minimum of one month’s work experience during the summer between our second and final year. This is a rather small period of time and in my opinion especially when you graduate, compared to someone who has done one year in the industry, you will be less attractive to an employer.
That said, when I graduate over the summer my main aim is to get some more work experience from as many PR agencies and/or in house positions. Obviously, if they can be paid it would be perfect but I am also rather concerned about if they are no paid… how am I going to fund working for free? Especially if most of the “good” places are in London. I’ll be living back home in Bristol so commuting would cost an arm and a leg. It’s just not practical… but if you have a placement year, at least you can live where that placement is.
Unpaid placements (especially if yearly) should just not be allowed full stop. It’s sickening me to hear of students who are in that situation. Nobody should work for free. Proactive PR interns/students can provide such value to an agency or organisation. We’re always looking to please and network so will do things to the best of our abilities.
Looking back, I would have loved a year’s placement in between my university course. (You can take out a sandwich degree but there is not a popular demand for it) In total, I have 10 weeks agency experience picked up during my summer holidays. You can learn so much on the job that really does help when back at university because you feel more confident about how PR works in real life.
Really interesting response. I’m surprised to hear there isn’t much demand for a placement year as everyone at my uni is keen to grab one.
Really interesting post Rachel. I’m currently doing an MA in PR at the University of Sunderland. Due to the nature of the course (24 weeks teaching time) and having to learn so much in such little time, there just physically isn’t the time to complete a lengthy compulsory work experience placement.
To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about imposing such placements on students. I think students who seek out their own work experience placements in their own time demonstrate many of the skills potential PR employers are looking for; initiative, responsibility, time management/prioritising and determination etc, rather than simply ‘just doing it because I have to’.
I have been undertaking placements (usually one week in length) as well as helping out in an agency one day per week in my spare time (reading weeks, Christmas holidays . . . I’ve even got two more placements arranged for over my three week Easter holiday), purely because the time constraints on my course won’t allow for longer placements.
While it would have been lovely to work in an agency/in-house for a longer period of time and really get to know the complexities of the client, I honestly feel moving from placement to placement (as well as juggling uni work) has taught me the same practical skills as a longer placement would have done.
At the end of the day, writing 20 press releases for one client is no different to writing 20 press releases for ten clients; it’s still 20 press releases and you are still gaining the skills and putting them to use in both eventualities.
Perhaps you could argue because a student in my position has to move around from placement to placement, they are gaining a wider understanding of the PR industry, seeing how different agencies/in-house teams work with different clients, and are able to adapt quickly to hit the ground running after graduation.
[...] strong argument for making placements a part of degree courses, and I have previously written about compulsory placements, how can you claim to be qualified if you have never experienced the job you want to do? I also [...]
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