A changing appeal: why are traditional journalism schools struggling to attract students?

Thirty sanctioned seats. Not a single filled. At the Indian Institute of Mass Communication’s Amravati centre, the PG Diploma in Hindi Journalism has been discontinued after failing to attract the minimum enrolment required to run the course. The centre, established few years ago to provide professional journalism education to the youth of Vidarbha, now has just nine students in English journalism and 10 in Marathi. Students have also raised concerns over placement support, career opportunities, faculty and facilities.

For IIMC, one of India’s most prominent journalism institutions, an empty classroom is difficult to dismiss as an isolated admission problem. It raises a larger question: what happens when journalism schools can no longer persuade young people that journalism is a viable profession?

The evidence predates Amravati.

In 2024, it was reported that five leading private journalism institutions had recorded enrolment declines ranging from 15% to 40% over five years. At Commits in Bengaluru, the master’s programme that once enrolled about 50 students admitted only 18 in 2020, 19 in 2021 and nine in 2022. The institute eventually shut down after 23 years. The Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media followed, closing after 24 years because admissions had fallen below what it considered financially viable.

The problem, however, is not simply that students have lost interest in journalism. The economics of the profession have become harder to ignore.

Journalism degrees can be expensive while entry-level employment remains uncertain. The placement crisis makes that calculation sharper. At Chennai’s Asian College of Journalism, placements for the 2024–25 multimedia journalism batch reportedly fell by 40%, with no television channel visiting the campus by the time of the report. Student strength at the institution had fallen from around 120 in 2018 to 80. At Mumbai’s Xavier Institute of Communication, only three of 48 students secured television-news jobs. At Jamia Millia Islamia’s AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, only three of 23 students in one MA programme had found jobs at the time of Newslaundry’s reporting.

Even IIMC’s placement picture carries a qualification: its reported 82% placement rate last year was largely driven by advertising, public relations and digital marketing rather than journalism itself.

This creates an uncomfortable gap between what journalism schools promise and what newsrooms can offer.

The profession is changing rapidly. Print and television are no longer the only destinations; digital journalism, multimedia production, social platforms and new forms of reporting have expanded the field. But the transition has also brought gig work, stipended internships and uncertain career paths. At the same time, journalism education has struggled in places to keep pace with the newsroom it is supposed to prepare students for.

Then there is the question that cannot be measured through placement statistics alone: credibility.

It was found that students, media professionals and educators cited declining trust in mainstream media alongside high fees, low salaries and the changing social-media landscape as factors behind falling enrolment.

That credibility problem has become increasingly visible in public life. During the CJP protests this year, mainstream television journalists were heckled with cries of Godi media, while some independent reporters found greater acceptance among demonstrators. That episode did not establish that all mainstream journalism lacks credibility; it revealed something more consequential — that the institutional authority once attached to the news microphone is increasingly contested.

For a student considering a journalism degree, the calculation is therefore no longer only about passion. It is about fees, placements, salaries, job security and whether the institution they are entering still commands public trust.

Perhaps that is what the empty classroom at IIMC-Amravati is really asking.

Students may not be abandoning news. They may simply be questioning whether becoming a journalist is still worth the price.

And if journalism schools are losing the generation meant to fill tomorrow’s newsrooms, the question is no longer only what is wrong with journalism education.

It is what has happened to journalism itself.