I have noticed that Public Relations has been dramatically transformed over the past decade into a profession with a large-scale impact on society throughout the world. However, this profession has become often prone to scathing critiques of its practitioners since most of them have learned the job by experience. In the past, public relations was considered as one of journalism skills and there is no need to have a graduation in this course. Public relations can be just enhanced by further training in writing, editing and publication design. Some journalists went further by saying that Public Relations is an affiliation of journalism and its course falls under the school of journalism and sometimes under the school of business as part of marketing course, and for that reason there is no need to create independent PR courses.

I believe that all these viewpoints have sparked a debate among PR practitioners and professionals whether PR industry needs education and qualification and training or should the PR remains open to others – notably journalists – to practise the job?

I think that the situation has been reversed now and we notice the number of public relations students and courses around the world is on the rise. There is a clear trend in this industry where people are tending to have a graduation in public relations in order to start off a career in this field.