OBJECTIVES

The objectives of the Department of Communication and Journalism and its Courses are:

• To train students interested in taking up Mass Communication as a profession for their lives through intense theoretical / practical teachings, research works etc and thereby prepare them to face the challenges of the emerging times,
• Inculcate a critical, analytical and enthusiastic bent of mind so that they can improvise upon on their own caliber and talent in their professional lives,
• Make them acquainted with local / regional / national / international issues confronting the media today and in the days to come so that they can link up important developments with each other and scrutinize the implications in a professional manner,
• In a way, familiarize them with the way how the establishments of different mediums like journalism, advertising, public relations as well as other related avenues actually operate so that after completion of the course they need not find much difficulty performing such duties when employed by such an organization.

Media expansion

On the other hand mass media in the country and the world has been going through revolutionary developments. Today we have more than 53,000 newspapers/journals of different types all over the country in addition to hundreds of TV/Radio channels offering entertainment, news etc.

The North-East region is also not lagging behind in any way in this regard. Today Assam alone can boast of more than 10 Assamese dailies in addition to the English ones and two TV channels uplinked from Guwahati.

So, we can see that in the near future such a development is going to throw open tremendous opportunities to upcoming youths for professional engagement. This is because these journals, TV/Radio channels would definitely require thousands of people for running those ventures in a professional manner.

Thus it would be prudent to train and create suitable manpower for filling up these positions in the coming days.

UGC guidelines

Further, in the absence of a regulatory body for media education in the country so far the University Grants Commission has formed an expert committee for overseeing all issues concerned with this aspect. This committee has recommended replacing all the courses in mass media of different tenures and nomenclatures in various institutions by full-fledged two-years, four semester master degree courses in Mass Communication. Besides, it has been observed that quite a few public sector undertakings, government organizations and departments have specified two-year MA in Mass Communication as the qualifying educational standard for the jobs of Public Relations Officers or Corporate Communications officers.

Besides, a student would definitely learn a lot more in an MA course than a diploma or bachelor's degree course.

Considering all these facts Gauhati University also intends to launch M. A. In Mass Communication course to cater to the growing demands of the students community of the region.