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Are journalism qualifications worth getting? Ryan Fletcher investigates W


hen the Mirror’s associate editor Kevin Maguire graduated from the University of York in 1982 with a degree in politics, he immediately set about applying for journalism jobs.


“I must have written 60 letters,” Maguire said. “I only got


one interview, at the Sheffield Morning Telegraph, which doesn’t exist anymore. I even got turned down by the Croydon Advertiser – that was the one that hurt me.” More than 30 years have passed since then, but it’s still a story thousands of today’s aspiring reporters can relate to. Finding a foothold onto a journalism career has always required determination – it’s just that some of those footholds have shifted. So what are the best routes into journalism now? The path Maguire followed is still well trodden: he gained a postgraduate diploma that gave him the preliminary National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) qualifications that can help anyone joining the profession. Postgraduate study, however, is not what Maguire would describe as the optimum route. “The postgrad I did at Cardiff was my passport to a job and


it was great. But if you can get a job without a postgrad, I’d say grab it because you’ll save yourself debt,” he says. “At one time it was ‘do a degree and then do a postgrad’. There was a lot of snobbery against people who just did undergraduate journalism degrees, but that’s going now. Journalism degrees are becoming more common and people are getting jobs out of them.” The results of a 2015 survey by the NCTJ correspond with Maguire’s statements. Of the 205 journalists who had recently completed an NCTJ diploma, 53% held an undergraduate degree or equivalent compared to 35% who had a postgraduate qualification. Of those who gained the NCTJ diploma as an undergraduate, 75% had found employment in a journalism related industry. For Mary Williams, principal journalism lecturer at the


University of Portsmouth – which offers NCTJ accredited degrees – the undergraduate route provides advantages for those seeking to enter the industry. These days, a good journalism degree includes not only


12 | theJournalist


industry recognised qualifications and hands-on training for multimedia and digital platforms, Williams explained, but also a solid academic grounding in analytical and critical thinking. “We think that our courses, and courses like ours, offer the best of both worlds. You get the practical and vocational skills you need but coupled with all the benefits of studying at degree level,” said Williams. “It gives extra maturity and problem


In our modern highly commodified labour market, qualifications speak


”


solving skills that are really helpful when you’re thrust into a working environment. I’m not knocking people who go straight into a traineeship from A-levels but the advantage of doing a degree is that it opens up all sorts of other possibilities.” Nor is it just Williams who espouses the undergraduate route. Senior lecturer Timothy Holmes teaches candidates for the postgraduate journalism diploma at Cardiff University, but believes it can be an expensive option for an industry that doesn’t always pay well. “It is an increasingly middle class career that has turned into a degree level job. You’re expecting people to get into unfeasibly high debt to do a degree and then pay for a postgrad conversion course,” Holmes said. “I think that makes it too expensive for a lot of people who otherwise be would interested and who would benefit the profession.” Despite this, Holmes makes it clear that people who are considering journalism as soon as they leave school


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