Media Education in Pakistan: Curricula, Facilities and Practices in Public Sector Universities
Amna Ashraf, Naveed Iqbal Chaudhry

Abstract
Pakistan has multilingual, widespread canvas of radio, television, print and online media outlets operating at local, national and international levels. In the past one decade, mushroom growth of electronic and online media has revolutionized traditional journalism practices. Private television and FM broadcast industry has accommodated a large number of graduates at notable pay rewards, that has heavily attracted youth to join media education for perusing better career opportunities. Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) has invested generous recourses to strengthen media education curricula, pedagogies and faculty at public sector universities. HEC and public universities are collectively working on empowering teaching faculty, mass communication research and media training facilities for better education of this leading discipline among humanities and social sciences. This paper presents the media education scene in Pakistan by analyzing curricula, training facilities, research and teaching practices at public sector universities of the country. The study considers the public sector universities of all provinces of Pakistan (Punjab, Balochistan, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federal Capita Territory) offering Media/Communication Studies at undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral levels. Content analysis of syllabi/curricula investigates common practices and modern trends in courses offered at various academic levels. It further explores the potential facilities and faculty possessed by each university offering the discipline. Some effective strategies are recommended at the end of this paper to strengthen the quality of mass communication education in Pakistan. The results present inter-university as well as inter-province analysis of media education in the country.

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