Professional Journalism Education in Eastern Europe: Ukrainian Experience
Professional Journalism Education in Eastern Europe: Ukrainian Experience

Summary/Abstract: Ukraine‟s civic revolutions of the last decade were supposed to bring democratization. Highly expected were improvements in media industry and journalism education that is still experiencing follow-ups of the Soviet theory-based teaching model rather than adherence to the internationally accepted best practices. The reforms have been introduced recently with adopting of new Law of Higher Education, but they meet problems and obstacles as social humanitarian crisis is in high gear in Ukraine. The objective of this study is to analyze how Ukrainian journalism education faces demands of the time and prepares students to successful careers. For this reason, the survey method was used. An online survey was conducted considering graduates of leading journalism schools, faculties and institutes of the country regarding how they evaluate the role of practical trainings during the course of higher education. The study findings prove its main hypothesis that professional journalists value practice the most. Internships are among their priorities during studying at universities. The survey results showed that graduates connect high number of practical trainings with their professional growth. Respondents generally expressed the idea that journalism schools should model professional journalism environment as much as possible by providing students with as many practical disciplines and journalism internships as available. Positive correlation between a number of internships and successful job search among students-journalists has been discovered. The study concluded that Ukraine‟s journalism education has to be transformed in accordance to market-driven media industry of the country. Both the survey and the analytical research of this study have shown that Ukrainian journalism education still has obstacles to overcome. Among them, there are quite theorized academic process, highly bureaucratized and corrupted education atmosphere, financial and conceptual crisis of journalism and professional education in Ukraine.

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