Graduate Employment Opportunities
The Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS)
Howard College Campus, Durban, South Africa (http://ccms.ukzn.c.za)
Why Study Professional Communication, Media and Cultural Industries?
Postgraduate
study (Honours, MA, PhD) in CCMS aims to equip graduates with the
ability to easily adapt to the world of work, in a variety of sectors.
From Honours, CCMS places students in real-world environments where they
work with the best professionals in the industry/profession – learning
the kinds of conceptual expertise, research methods and professional
skills that are required in business, commerce and the civil and state
sectors. This makes a graduate employable. Our
degrees are worth the paper on which they are written and our graduates
can compete with the world’s best. Unlike other institutions, CCMS
offers highly structured degrees with weekly seminars and close
supervision. Students work in small groups, with very intensive expert
support. Each student is allocated an academic advisor to work with
them in ensuring success.
Our
overseas students are attracted by CCMS’s world class reputation. Such
visiting students usually come from places such as Norway, The
Netherlands, USA, Germany, Canada, the UK, Italy, Greece and so on.
CCMS graduates are (or have been) employed as lecturers
at UKZN, University of Cape Town, Rhodes, Zululand, Fort Hare,
Johannesburg University, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Durban
University of Technology, UNISA, and in the private sector at Varsity
College, Vega School of Advertising, Boston College, Rosebank, and
Damelin and the AFDA Film School. Overseas, our graduates are or have
been employed at universities like Monash and Queensland (Australia),
London School of Economics, Atabasca (Canada), Arizona, Towson, St
Thomas (USA) etc. We have also educated lecturers who are now senior
academics at top universities all over Africa (Zimbabwe, Botswana,
Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia, Eritria, Rwanda,
and Malawi.)
In the professional sector
our graduates are or have been employed by UKZN (Corporate Relations,
Administration, Access, and in Media and Cultural Studies on both UKZN
campuses), Caxton’s Community Newspapers, Independent Newspapers,
Media24, SABC, eTV, CNN, a variety of NGOs, the video industry,
advertising and PR, publishing, magazines (Oprah, sports, Country Life,
Get it, and so on), tourism etc. Many of our graduates are directly
involved in South African media developments (policy, community radio,
community TV etc); they are employed in the NGO sector (development
communication, public health communication, media etc.), and
increasingly, in the cultural industries sector, state and municipal
departments.
Our lecturers (and many of our students) have extensive professional and industry experience
and have close links with all sectors of the media and cultural
industries in which employment is usually sought by our
graduates. Employers talk to us when wanting to employ our graduates.
They know us and trust us and take our advice seriously. That means that
they also trust our referred graduates.
Our
graduates remain active in our alumni community after leaving the
University. They feed extensive resources back to our Centre, they
assist with research advising and even lecture on components within
modules such as on i) social media; ii) international communication;
and ii) corporate communication). CCMS hosts
the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, Educational and
Cultural Organisation) Chair in Communication for South Africa. This
places us at the centre of national and global collaborations. In 2012
CCMS will be hosting the prestigious International Association for Media
and Communication Research Conference. Students will have the unique
opportunity of interacting with the world’s best media and communication
professors.
Amongst the outputs on which students are invited to work is our quarterly magazine, SUBtext:
SUBtext
has an audited electronic circulation of 65 000+ plus 1000 in hard copy
format aimed at alumni, staff, students and special interest groups
globally. That’s a pretty good distribution for any magazine when
students are looking to establish their professional profiles. We work
with Independent Newspapers (Durban) on publication of student-written
stories, we place students in real world learning environments, and
we track our graduates’ successes. Just check out the home page of our
web site (https://ccms.ukzn.ac.za).
As one graduate told us, “The
past 1.5 years have been a great learning curve for me. I ended up
getting a job for Club Leisure Group doing digital/social media
marketing. Believe it or not, it was working with Subtext and me running the CCMS website that got me the work! I have since worked my way up to a manager” (Nic Kroone, CCMS Honours graduate, 2009, pers.com, 1, Oct 2011).
