Education or Experience?

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Education or Experience (and contacts). Which is more important for PR? This was the topic of the last in the series of debates in class. A kind of chicken and egg question, actually.

Gruning and Hunt (1984, p.81) in their book on Managing Public Relations have said that “public relations will never reach the status of a profession as long as people can get into the field and prosper without having completed a fairly rigorous course of study in the field.” But having said that, a degree in PR is worthless if it is not supported with excellent communication and inter-personal skills at all levels.

The importance of education cannot be stressed enough, why else would at least 5-6 of my classmates, including me, be taking a mid-career break to pursue a Master’s degree in PR?

Ideally, theory should support practice and practice should feed into theory. Some of my classmates who interned with various PR agencies, while pursuing the MA in PR course would probably be able to explain this better than me.

For me, the best classes were when Pam or Michaela or Matt or even the guest lecturers talked about their own personal experiences. The insight and learnings that I gained about PR from those classes is invaluable; something that books could never have taught me.  The true worth of education can only come into light when you are actually working in the field.

From my own experience, I can say that my educational qualifications and the area that I work in have nothing to do with one another. Though my first Master’s degree is in Geology, I have worked in the area of social science and humanities. I am doing my second Master’s in Public Relations with a specific purpose. But whether I will work in the field of PR or move on to something else, only time can tell !

Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.