ESSACHESS – Journal for Communication Studies

Article received on the March 21, 2021. Article accepted on the June 1st, 2021. Conflict of Interest: The author(s) declare(s) no conflict of interest.

Marina VUJNOVIC Professor, Monmouth University West Long Branch USA e-mail: mvujnovi@monmouth.edu Dean KRUCKEBERG Professor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte USA e-mail: dkruckeb@uncc.edu Abstract: This article examines public relations education in the context of neoliberalism and argues that, if we want public relations practitioners to have an important role in public discourse, we must first educate public relations students for public life. Neoliberalism, however, stands in the way because the growing emphasis in public relations education is on vocational skills and training, rather than on comprehensive liberal arts education. The authors discuss the tensions between theory and practice that is reflected in part in those who teach public relations courses, as well as in the current state of public relations education. The article concludes that public relations education must undergo a paradigmatic shift away from vocational training and toward a more comprehensive liberal arts education.

Keywords: public relations education, neoliberalism, higher education, public discourse, vocational training

ESSACHESS – Journal for Communication Studies Volume 14 Issue 1(27), p. 161-179 © The Author(s) 2021 Reprints and Permission: Ó ESSACHESS https://www.essachess.com/ DOI: 10.21409/essachess.1775-352x

Running Against the Tide: Educating Future Public

Relations and Communications

Professionals In the Age of Neoliberalism

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Courir à contre-courant : former les futurs professionnels des relations publiques et de la communication à l'ère du néolibéralisme

Résumé : Cet article examine l'enseignement des relations publiques dans le contexte du néolibéralisme et soutient que, si nous voulons que les praticiens des relations publiques jouent un rôle important dans le discours public, nous devons d'abord éduquer les étudiants en relations publiques à la vie publique. Le néolibéralisme, cependant, fait obstacle parce que l'accent croissant dans l'enseignement des relations publiques est mis sur les compétences et la formation professionnelles, plutôt que sur l'enseignement complet des arts libéraux. Les auteurs discutent des tensions entre la théorie et la pratique qui se reflètent en partie chez ceux qui enseignent les cours de relations publiques, ainsi que dans l'état actuel de l'enseignement des relations publiques. L'article conclut que l'enseignement des relations publiques doit subir un changement paradigmatique de la formation professionnelle vers un enseignement plus complet des arts libéraux.

Mots-clés : éducation aux relations publiques, néolibéralisme, enseignement supérieur, discours public, formation professionnelle

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Introduction

For decades, particularly since the 1980s, higher education in the United States and throughout the remainder of the Western world has been enveloped by a corporate-minded agenda that mirrors that of other industries. Bessner (The Nation, 2020, September 8), in describing how higher education has addressed COVID-19, refers to higher education as “the house of cards,” that is, a system that’s “built on exploitation, anti-intellectualism, and massive debt,” which future promises little more than total collapse. Those reading The Chronicle of Higher Education are aware of the ways in which decades of concerted acts, which Giroux (2014) had termed a warfare on higher education, is playing out in institutions in the United States, as well as elsewhere throughout the world. The problem began mostly with the elimination of the liberal arts programs that were often deemed to be budgetary burdens because they were enrolling decreasing numbers of students. This declining enrollment has resulted in the elimination of faculty lines, even those of tenured faculty in some majors, together with a focus on revenue-producing skill-based programs that offer industry-preferred skills sets. These actions were accompanied by enormous tuition hikes that have been sold and packaged at a price that is perceived as the proper value for a “college experience”. All of these are markers of the trend to dismantle higher education that historically had been predicated on education for public good.

Conversely, public relations education has struggled between being a traditional liberal arts discipline and vocational training. Such education has spent most of its existence attempting to legitimize its place in academia, as well as to be recognized as an accepted profession. The discipline has arguably been in constant state of

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turmoil that L’Etang (2013) aptly describes as “a field of fractured and sometimes radically opposed identities”. A debate has continued over the role of public relations in deliberative democracy (Edwards, 2016), whether it is an unscrupulous force for corporate interests or a way to rebuild community (Kruckeberg & Starck, 1988), a practice that can enable civil society (Taylor, 2010), or is a communication force that can enable social change (L’Etang, 2008). The dominant understanding of public relations as an organizational management function has stripped away its historical context in which public relations had emerged as a social practice, rather than as an organizational communication function, which has consistently clashed with academic voices that see the role of public relations professionals in the perpetual construction and reconstruction of the society-at-large (L’Etang, 2013). However, the dominant and functionalist view of public relations that had emerged at about the same time as did neoliberal ideology, which was followed by policies and with further emphasis on technical skills-based education, promises to remain the dominant public relations paradigm, despite the growing number of scholars who are critiquing it. Some critics of the functionalist academic agenda, such as Miller & Dinan (2008), point out that focusing on technical aspects strips away “…the broader issues of what evasion, deception and manipulative communications are doing to democratic structures are avoided or neglected” (p. 2). This is profoundly important for public relations education because the curriculum through which college students are educated is often ahistorical or offers only the dominant organization-focused history of public relations, which lacks critical introspection and is increasingly technical skills-based (Fitch & L’Etang, 2020).

Thus, we must ask, “What is the future of public relations and communications education as well as of the profession itself?” However, if we ask what are the skills that public relations and communications professionals need to perform an evolving role in public discourse, we must first ask: “Are we educating our future public relations and communications professionals to perform that important societal role in the first place?”

In this article, we will first examine neoliberalism in higher education in general, after which we will discuss problems in public relations education by providing an historical and contemporary context. Finally, we will analyze how neoliberal principles have co-opted public relations education in the United States and throughout much of the world. We conclude that public relations education necessitates a paradigmatic shift that would liberate its potential to develop into a true liberal arts discipline that would be away from the vocational grip that is dominating public relations education. Otherwise, we as educators will continue to remain complacent about an exploitative neoliberal education system that doesn’t serve public relations students. Today’s public relations education is not preparing students to become successful human beings in today’s increasingly multicultural and complex global society that requires more than technical and tactical digital social media skills and a knowledge of business acumen.

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1. The Problem: Neoliberalism and Higher Education

Much scholarly discussion in recent years (for example, Busch, 2017; Giroux,2014; Nussbaum, 2010) has focused on the profound and highly consequential impact of neoliberalism and neoliberal policymaking in higher education. Harvey (2005) observed that neoliberal ideology has gripped most aspects of our lives, including education. Market-driven principles have been prioritized over the public interest by the infusion of market economy principles into every segment of society. Neoliberalism, according to Busch (2017), is a “thought collective” (p. 11), not a single doctrine. Neoliberalism is accepted as an ideology, as a set of policies, and as a social movement. Its alliances can push market-centered principles forward. One notable alliance that has been forged in the age of neoliberalism is the relationship between policy-makers and the private sector. This relationship between policymakers and private interest is by no means conspiratorial, but nevertheless is evident, according to Letizia (2016), “and demonstrated by over three decades worth of literature, that educational policymaking has been dramatically influenced by the private sector interest” (p. 364).

Historically, a large turn toward neoliberalism had occurred in the 1970s as a result of the sharp turn from the social and cultural movements of the 1960s; however, this turn toward markets had been evident since the end of the World War II and, more recently, after the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s (Busch, 2017). The sites of calls for social changes, in many instances, were universities. Policymakers eager to punish those institutions soon aligned with private interests who were seeking to curb the autonomy of higher education institutions by devising performance-based funding that was styled on its corporate counterpart. As a result, Letizia (2016) argues, borrowing from Klein (2007), that, “the ‘hollow state’ government is creating a ‘hollow university’ which is simply a coordination and administration apparatus for the needs of business and industry” (p. 361). In this context, for institutions of higher education, and for public higher education in particular, government support is predicated upon these institutions’ ability to align with the interests and needs of corporate and other for-profit systems.

More importantly, Letizia (2016) notes that institutional boards have been influenced by private sector interests, in addition to foundations, for example the College America Foundation, that have pushed performance-based funding into higher education to rewrite its role as a factory for human capital rather than as a site in which discourses of social justice, social change, and public service could thrive. This fits with Busch’s (2017) assertions that call for public institutions, including education, to be transformed to market- or quasi-market-based institutions in ways ranging from outright privatization to alignment with the needs of the private sector, thereby introducing commercial practices and more. Busch (2017) emphasized that markets, themselves, are a form of governance, rather than just a logical economic model as neoliberals would argue. Indeed, proponents of neoliberalism push for legal and administrative changes to turn universities into a market-driven enterprise, while, at the same time, arguing that it’s just based on market-driven logic (Busch, 2017).

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In this context, higher education—and within it the humanities—has been the greatest casualty. Nussbaum (2010) argues that we’ve found ourselves in a crisis of higher education that is characterized by a consistent attack on the humanities. Majors in humanities have been under a decades-long attack, and many of these majors have been slowly cut from the higher education curriculum. The most recent crisis, COVID-19, has been used to further eliminate liberal arts departments (Hubler, 2020, Nov. 2). This persistent move to limit or to eliminate literary critical thinking and profound engagement with social issues, as well as to expel discussions of public service and social justice from the higher education curriculum, is at the core of our current woes with authoritarianism and a floundering democracy. We are presently witnessing what extracting “education” from higher education really means. This is profoundly important for public relations education. As an academic discipline, public relations has historically struggled between being a vocational or a liberal arts degree. Recent developments, particularly in the United States, follow the trajectory of much of higher education in becoming a training hub for corporate human capital.

Next, we will discuss the trajectory of public relations education as an academic discipline, which will be followed by a discussion of troubling recent changes that are seeking greater alignment of public relations education with corporate and private interests and away from its role as a social science discipline.

2. Historical Overview and Vocational Nature of Public Relations Education

For well over a half century, public relations education has been deeply entrenched in U.S. higher education as well as in institutions of higher education elsewhere through much of the world. The trajectory of U.S. public relations education is different from that of other countries; nevertheless, American public relations theory and practice have had major influences on public relations education and practice elsewhere throughout the world, and the American model of public relations dominates globally (Auger & Cho, 2016).

Among the most succinct, albeit not comprehensive, histories of public relations education is provided by Hallahan (2013), who describes both the evolution and the exponential growth of public relations education. Appropriately, he begins with the first course that was titled “public relations,” which was offered by Edward L. Bernays at New York University in 1923. Wright (2011) emphasized that it was Bernays, that course, and his book, Crystalizing Public Opinion, that had lifted public relations from a publicity technique to a social science field, in part by arguing that public relations should not be taught in any other than a public relations department. Hallahan (2013) identifies the first public relations major, which was initiated at Bethany College in West Virginia during World War II, while Wright (2011) identifies Boston University’s Master in Science in Public Relations, which was initiated in 1947, as the first institution to offer a public relations degree. Bernays and Doris Fleischman’s survey that was published in 1937 noted that 31 schools were offering university-level public relations education. By 1956, courses having public relations titles had

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increased to at least 136, and 14 institutions were offering majors in public relations. Most of these could be attributed, according to Wright (2011), to Cutlip and Center’s influential 1952 book, Effective Public Relations. This period also began the substantial publication of books and articles on public relations. Hallahan (2013) observes that public relations education had continued to expand throughout the 1960s and 1970s. At the time of his writing in 2013, public relations programs were at 300-plus U.S. colleges and universities:

By the mid-1970s, public relations education flourished as academic departments committed themselves to the professional training of practitioners. These included speech and communications departments in addition to journalism programs. (p. 731)

Conrad (2020), in her comprehensive analysis of Australian public relations education, argues that, in Australia in the 1970s and early 1980s, public relations courses were offered in mostly teaching institutions and were being taught by teacher-practitioners. Fitch (2016) similarly argues that the focus of public relations education was and always has been vocational. Conrad (2020) also points to the tension that has been a part of public relations education from the start, that is, the tension between theory and practice (and academics and practitioners). This tension is between vocational training and more research-oriented education within a specific academic discipline.

By the 1970s, as reported by Hallahan (2013), public relations agencies and departments had begun recruiting graduates directly from colleges, unlike previously when practitioners had been former newspaper and magazine writers and editors. Also by the 1970s, as Hallahan (2013) had noted, (speech) communication departments began offering public relations education. Among the first (speech) communication-based textbooks was Crable and Vibbert’s (1986) Public Relations: An Introduction to Communication Management. Considerable differences may have existed in what first appeared to be (speech) communication’s re-orientation, if not re-definition, of public relations professional practice and its education, which was oftentimes perceived by journalism-mass communication-based scholars to be a co-optation of public relations education by organizational communication scholars. L’Etang (2013) argues that it was around the early 1980s is when we saw the scholarly emphasis shift toward definitions of public relations as a management function, for example the globally dominant Grunig and Hunt (1984) four models of public relations. This is where the significant shift toward a functionalist and instrumental philosophy of public relations as an organizational communication function diverged from its very real history of being a social practice.

However, disparate and competing public relations scholar/educator communities began melding, certainly by the early 1990s. This melding has by-and-large continued to this today. Leading public relations scholar/educators have realized that public relations’ professional identity and scholarly base extend beyond parochial perspectives that, in the past, had been evident in scholarly associations such as the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the National

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Communication Association. Indeed, public relations scholar/educators from a range of disciplinary perspectives continued to learn from and to appreciate one another’s multiple orientations that have contributed to public relations professional practice and its education. While debates continue about public relations as an academic discipline, together with tensions between theory and practice, as Conrad (2020) concludes for Australian public relations education, the trajectory of public relations education has never actually moved beyond its emphasis on professional training. She rightly asserts that this trajectory will have a profound impact on public relations as academic discipline. Under the conditions of neoliberalism, we have seen more emphasis on the ways in which public relations education could satisfy industry demands for higher education to train human capital, rather than in investing in this training for themselves. Finally, it is important to note that a public relations degree to this day is not a pre-requisite for employment in public relations. In fact, considerably more of those who don’t have formal education in public relations are currently employed in public relations (Wright, 2011).

3. Public Relations Education and Turn Towards Business Related Coursesand Programs

A lack of agreement seems to exist, both currently and in the past, about what public relations professional education should be. The Commission on Public Relations Education has been a steady guide, and, in the context of neoliberalism, that organization might be professing employers’ expectations and demands for public relations education; however, there appear to be debates that include what courses should be taught, whether more emphasis should be on practice or on theory, whether there should be a narrow or broad approach to public relations education, whether students are getting adequate education, and who should be teaching public relations courses, that is, teacher-practitioners or academics (Caudill, Ashdown& Caudill, 1990). We will discuss these debates next.

Caudil et al. (1990) argued that a broader approach is better because public relations practitioners require this broad understanding of communication and society. However, recent trends suggest that public relations education is turning toward a more business-oriented curriculum, whether by moving public relations departments from their traditional home in journalism and mass communications into business schools or by infusing the public relations curriculum with business-oriented courses. Kruckeberg (1998) remarked that public relations education has been well-placed and -served in journalism and communication departments, although such educationshould continue to be taught as a separate professional area. A more recent study by Auger and Cho (2016) found that it is important where the public relations program is housed. Business schools had significantly fewer public relations-related courses in their public relations programs than when public relations programs were housed in liberal arts schools.

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Nevertheless, public relations is clearly moving toward associations with business schools; also, arguments are made that public relations education programs that aren’t part of business schools should include business courses in their curriculum. For example, Claussen (2008) noted that public relations students need a foundation of knowledge in business and economics and that business classes should be required, rather than elective. However, this trend is potentially troubling if it leads public relations away from its communication foundation. Public relations is currently being blended with advertising and marketing, in part because new technologies have blurred the lines among traditional differences such as paid versus earned content. This trend is already happening in the industry (Auletta, 2018). In the context of higher education, we believe that such blending threatens to eliminate public relations as a distinct academic discipline. On the other hand, Hatherell and Bartlett (2006) warn that an overemphasis on maintaining public relations as a distinct discipline in Australia is leaving little room for conversations across disciplines, leading public relations into a narrow and parochial field of study. Certainly, a fine balance is needed; however, regardless of recent alignments with a business curriculum, the majority of educators and practitioners (Sriramesh & Hornaman, 2006) see public relations best placed within journalism and communication departments.

Nevertheless, the push for a more business-infused public relations curriculum is evident in a study by Ragas, Uysal, and Culp (2015), who surveyed senior communication executives. Their respondents agreed that there should be more emphasis on business courses in public relations education. As a result, those authors have identified several options for PR educators: “(1)incorporating more ‘Business 101’ elements into existing required courses, (2) developing new stand-alone courses, such as Business Foundations, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Corporate Governance, and/or (3) encouraging students to take business school classes as electives” (p. 380) They further assert that there should be more emphasis on “Business 101” training in public relations education.

Similarly, Sriramesh and Hornaman (2006), in their study in which they had surveyed 155 public relations educators and practitioners in the United States, found overwhelmingly agreement that a public relations degree should be paired with a minor in business. Furthermore, Xie et al.’s (2018) more recent comparative (United States and China) study of agency executives’ expectations for advertising and public relations education outlined expectations that executives in those two countries had of recent graduates. Among the many expectations that were listed, in addition to a good understanding of business, was that higher education should provide graduates with skills that can address the immediate most-pressing needs of the industry and that provide “real-world experiences” as students exit their 4-year programs. Other than being a well-rounded individual, there was no emphasis or expectation that these graduates should somehow be first-and-foremost ready to be full participants in civil society. Overwhelming emphasis was on the immediate needs of the employers, such as working with cutting-edge technologies, regardless of any unrealistic expectations that higher education should train students for a job market that is constantly changing

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or for technologies that are constantly changing. Understanding business and economics is also emphasized by respondents in the Delphi method study PR2025 from Quadriga University (Adi, 2019, p. 45). Education in strategy is being relegated to the universities, and managerial competence, that is, “understanding of the business priorities, is entrusted to businesses, themselves. However, if we leave the job of explaining business to businesses, themselves, the critique expressed by Adi (2019) points to the problem of stripping away the potential for criticism of business practices. Hatherell and Bartlett (2005), in their discussion of the need to broaden the public relations academic discipline, point to the narrow focus of public relations to serve businesses. They write:

It is difficult to see how, for example, public relations academics can profoundly embrace the radical critiques of the Frankfurt School, and other strands of ‘critical theory’ while the underlying rationale of the discipline remains to legitimate, and serve the interests of, a particular business practice. (p. 4)

While there is clearly a significant push for public relations programs to become associated with or to be a part of the business curriculum, and while there is an equally significant expectation that these programs will train students to become business-savvy employees, Auger and Cho’s (2016) study shows that business skills were not among those top-listed for entry-level and advanced public relations jobs. Indeed, traditional liberal arts skills, such as writing or public speaking, were at the top. They write:

The most frequently sought skills in both entry-level and advanced-level jobs were writing, public speaking/verbal communication, PR strategy and planning, new media, social media, and media relations. Advanced-level positions were more likely to require interpersonal skills, fundraising experience, knowledge of research methods, and familiarity with issues management or crisis communication while entry-level positions were more likely to require visual communication skills. (p. 64)

Importantly, they concluded, through their analysis of various public relations programs in the United States, that those programs, particularly in the liberal arts, offered the variety of courses that are preparing students in these skills (Auger & Cho, 2016). Notably, they also concluded that a gap exists between the curriculum and the rapid development of new technologies. Students felt less-prepared in the area of new technologies and in understanding these technologies. Clearly, in the context of the neoliberal policies that have squeezed universities’ budgets, this expectation that is being placed on institutions of higher education to train students in the latest cutting-edge technologies is utterly unrealistic, indeed ridiculous. Rather than chasing this unattainable neoliberal goal, public relations programs should heed the advice that is expressed in the report of the Commission on Public Relations Education (2017) that emphasized the importance of ethics in public relations education. While social media skills were also listed in the report, much greater emphasis was placed on the relevance of ethics education in public relations. Both understanding ethics and acting ethically for public relations practitioners are some of the most sought-after attributes by employers, but, more importantly, by the public (Rosso, Haugt & Malone, 2020).

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We should also pair such training with education in critical thinking. Both critical thinking and communication skills, as well as debate, which is the ability to partake in public discourse, and the so-called soft skills are much more highly rated by employers than are technical skills (Chikeleze, Johnson & Gibson, 2018). Further, as suggested in PR2025 Delphi method study (Adi, 2019) education is a shared responsibility as well as a continuous and lifelong process. It is unrealistic to expect that universities, themselves, can churn out work-ready people with skills to do mostly technical tasks with little critical thinking required. The study suggests that responsibility is shared among individuals, organizations, employers, and professional organizations. This study found that respondents considered ethics to an individual responsibility, with business being responsible to understand itself; however, Adi (2019) importantly asks, “If the business is telling practitioners what it means to do business, how is PR’s contribution to the societal/common good and the stakeholder orientation going to be fulfilled?” (p. 51). Understanding ethics, as well as societal/common good and how to ethically respond to various situations, including crises that are so much what public relations professionals must be involved these days, is far more important than are social media skills. Without understanding ethics and having the ability to think critically, social media skills might prove disastrous for one’s career in business and in public life (Gallagher, 2018, March 23). As Kim (2019) argues, social media and the emergence of uncivil, dark participation online require educators to teach ethics within the context of virtue education that focuses on cultivating ethically driven character in students so that they are prepared to make decisions that are ethical in both their personal and professional lives. A narrow focus on public relations skills has impeded the success of graduates of these programs. Freberg, Remund, and Keltner-Previs (2013) found a that broader liberal arts education that would include debate and persuasion and a knowledge of discursive negotiations would be vital for public relations practitioners to fulfill, not only in their organizational roles, but also in their societal roles.

4. Who Should be Teaching Public Relations Courses?

Further struggle in public relations education centers around who should beteaching public relations courses. The report of the Commission on Public Relations Education (1999) recommended that those who teach public relations courses should have a Ph.D., arguing that public relations is a research-academic discipline. The report further suggested that, whenever possible, those who teach public relations courses should have some practitioner experience. The professional bond: Public relations education for the 21st Century, which was the report issued by the Commission in 2006, repeats this emphasis; however, research suggests that employers assess that the best-prepared practitioners come from programs that are taught by both Ph.D.s and practitioners (Wright, 2011). Adjunct faculty, on the other hand, should be practitioners with at least baccalaureate degrees, according to the Commission (CPRE, 1999). Because we are witnessing exponential growth in the hiring of adjuncts—another tenet of neoliberalism—in higher education, questions of

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proper qualifications in both the theory and the practice of public relations are surfacing. Troubling trends in public relations education have been poignantly discussed by Wright (2011), including the lack of qualifications of those who teach public relations courses. He writes, “…more and more colleges and universities are teaching public relations; and, not all who do this teaching are fully qualified” (p. 237). Yet another way in which neoliberalism plays out in public relations education is placing revenue over excellence in hiring practices. Wright (2011) observes:

Since public relations is an extremely attractive and revenue-generating academic major some of these universities seem to be more concerned about making financial profits by teaching public relations than they do about adhering to excellence in public relations teaching and research. (p. 245)

For the first time in many years, according to Inside Higher Education (Lederman, 2019, Nov. 27), recent data show that more faculty are being hired as full-time rather than as part-time, even though the number of faculty members being hired overall is shrinking. However, overwhelming trends for many years have prioritized the hiring of part-time, adjunct faculty. For example, Cannon and Waymer (2016) found that basic skills courses are often taught by adjuncts. Adjunct faculty typically have little or no research experience, which makes integration of theories, ideas, and research into the comprehensive public relations curriculum more difficult. In addition, practitioners now compete for tenure-track positions without having doctoral degrees. An associated issue is employers who frequently hire non-public relations majors for public relations positions because of those students’ specialized knowledge, skills, and abilities or because such students perhaps demonstrate characteristics or have had unique backgrounds that are needed within employers’ organizations—calling into question the brand and branding of public relations professional education, itself. Wright (2011) connects a lack of excellence that is embodied by unqualified teachers who are placed to teach public relations courses with employers’ likelihood to hire graduate of business or other liberal arts degree rather than a graduate with public relations degree. He calls this issue an “Elephant in the Room” of PR education in Canada and the USA (Wright, 2011, p. 252). This is troubling when we consider the growing number of public relations programs and graduates. The Public Relations Student Society of America (2017) reported 10,471 members and 351 chapters (however, only 578 of these members have transitioned into PRSA membership after their graduation) (PRSSA Annual Report 2016-2017, 2017).

The reason however, isn’t simply that the faculty who teach public relations lack qualifications; rather, the problem is why they are lacking qualifications and why are institutions of higher education hiring those who lack qualifications? In some ways, Wright (2011, p. 251) answers these questions by calling the support that is typically given to public relations education by their respective institutions, practitioners, and other society stakeholders “woefully bad, at best.” Without significant investment in public relations education and research, little hope exists that public relations will be accepted as a serious academic discipline and that students who are enrolled in these programs will receive the type of education that is required for them to play an

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evolving role in public discourse and the society-at-large. One must ask whether it is true that public relations education, in the context of the neoliberal university, is exploitative of students? We say: yes. Public relations undergraduate education is exploitive to many students, and public relations scholar/educators are morally complicit in—and should be held accountable for—this exploitation. Because the moniker public relations cannot be legally protected as a discrete professionalized occupation in the United States, and thus its professional community cannot be kept exclusive through licensing and regulation, public relations professional practice remains amorphous, if not ill-defined. Public relations’ high levels of professional knowledge, skills, and abilities respond only to the marketplace of employment, making its professional practice exceedingly competitive, but not standardized in its barriers-to-entry through the demonstration of competence through regulatory certification. Such vagaries and lack of standardized demonstration of competence allow academic units and their institutions to set appallingly low barriers to its education (ironically, in contrast to the extremely high barriers-to-entry to public relations professional practice).

Conclusion

Grubb and Lazerson (2005, p. 2) documented the turn of higher education toward vocational training that ultimately, in their opinion, “undermines education’s moral, civic, and intellectual purposes.” We couldn’t agree more. Our own examination of public relations education confirms that this turn is real, although public relations as an academic discipline has always been quite entrenched with the idea of producing a “ready-made” workforce to serve mostly the needs of business. Although a lot has changed throughout the years, with the rise of the neoliberal university, finding an exit out of this vocational maze will be difficult. Higher education, in the larger context of neoliberalism, should also be seen through the lens of other parallel cultural changes that our American society (and other Western societies perhaps as well) are undergoing.

Lukianoff and Haidt (2015), in their article, “The Coddling of the American Mind”, and in their subsequent (2018) book under the same title, provide a chilling analysis of the ongoing cultural changes that parallel the penetration of the neoliberal ideologies in every aspect of American life, perhaps some of which are a direct result of neoliberalism. They discuss issues of “safetyism” as an idea in which students are fragile and must be shielded from the dangerous university and potentially harmful ideas. The concept is also linked to ideas such as “cancel culture”, a new type of ostracism, or “woke culture”, which is about being socially conscious of racial and other types of injustices. The movements to criticize “woke culture”, violence on campuses that is caused because students want to be shielded from ideas that don’t fit into their polarized views and feel exposure to these ideas will harm them, are part of what Lukianoff and Haidt (2015) call the culture of “safetyism”, which includes such

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things as political polarization, purification of faculty, and unprecedented growth of bureaucracy.

The culture of “safetyism” appears intrinsically linked to the continuous attack on neoliberal politics and policy and on institutions of higher-education, with students, themselves, often being actors pushing for the culture of “safetyism” as a result of being indoctrinated through the education and media systems. Auger and Cho (2016) have argued that an added difficulty is the cost of higher education that has been placed on the consumer as another tenet of neoliberalism. It is increasingly difficult to convince people to pay a huge bill for education that doesn’t seem to lead to professional employment. Just as neoliberalism has intended, higher education is seemingly left with no choice. Once more, higher education has been both accepting of and complacent with these changes, having made a choice that has made the most business sense to these institutions.

However, that choice has come at a high cost for democracy and for society-at-large. In public relations, specifically, we are troubled by trends in which academic units and their institutions, often greedy for enrollment, do not sufficiently dissuade students who have little likelihood for professional success in this extremely competitive market. Indeed, public relations education commonly becomes a default major to significant numbers of students who may have tried and have failed in other majors and who are attracted to communication academic units, wrongly assuming communication is an easy “feel good” major. They then peruse the available options within the communication discipline; of course, public relations stands out as an attractive choice because it has an identifiable professional outcome. These students then self-select into public relations education programs, ostensibly with the outcome of a glamorous, high-paying career. Thus, public relations education programs often become the bucket at the bottom of a giant funnel that gathers students who may have failed in other majors, who choose communication as a default major, who then identify public relations as an attractive sub-discipline of communication, and who thereby enroll in that program of study. Still others, perhaps failing as marketing majors, wrongly see public relations as “the business degree without the math.”

This is a prime example of the way in which corporate interests and needs appear to dominate higher education. These needs have distorted the system of higher education from the model that was premised on Dewey’s ideal of educating individuals for active social participation, that is, individuals who can participate in critical public discourse in a democratic societies, to a system in which “…rigorous content knowledge, democratic schooling, and social justice have been distorted and appropriated by the corporate goals of education” (Baltodano, p. 487). Today’s expectation is that higher education, and its public relations education programs, must serve a corporatist and functionalist agenda by offering a practical skills-based curriculum that will carve out ready-made-go professionals who can perform tactical and technological skills that are presently needed by the industry to keep the cost of training individuals on the job low or completely eliminated. All of this, however, does not guarantee that these graduates will find professional employment in public

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relations. There seems to be little to no accountability. The expectation is that institutions of higher education should educate public relations and communications students to meet industry needs that, however, change by the day; in turn, employers seem to lack accountability for why they choose not to hire public relations graduates, even when higher education is so loyally catering to their needs. This model, as a whole, is not only detrimental to future public relations and communications professionals, but it is also ultimately detrimental to public relations as academic discipline and to society-at-large.

Higher education’s complacency with this neoliberal vision of the world puts higher education’s workforce, that is, its faculty, in an impossible position to run against the tide of the ever-growing number and complexities of needed skills that are fueled by the consolidation of technological developments and the communications industry. In this neoliberal vision of society, industry’s needs are synonymous with society’s needs, higher education is synonymous with “on-the-job training, and higher education, rather than being “the real world, must create opportunities for students that simulates “the real world” in the way that is envisioned by corporate leaders. The problem is, of course, that this world is elitist, exclusionary, exploitative, and unrepresentative of society. As had been mentioned previously, Conrad (2020) argues that Australian higher education is increasingly vocational because of the expectations that public relations education should fulfill industry needs, which signals that this isn’t just a U.S. issue; rather, it’s becoming a global issue. Fitch and L’Etang (2020, August) found that a focus on employability is overwhelming in the Australian PR curriculum and the curriculum itself “…tends to address industry expectations around practice and skills in order to develop students as future communication practitioners” (p. 711).

Of course, contradictions are at play. While industry also expects higher education to produce critically thinking problem-solvers, the curriculum, itself, must focus on teaching less theory, philosophy, sociology, and history and more of Silicon Valley’s latest technological advancements. Fitch and L’Etang (2020), in their deep look into higher education’s superficial focus on history in public relations education, argue that “education has been central to debates about professionalism and professionalization” (p. 706); however, that history has been either absent from the curriculum or has been subsumed to a set of facts to promote corporate ideologies by mythologizing certain representatives of the profession, particularly at the time during which public relations was aspiring to be recognized as a profession. The curriculum, itself, excludes different types of public relations practices and “activities such as unpaid voluntary and charity work or activism that challenges societal arrangements or promotes social justice” (p. 704). They call for historicizing the public relations curriculum to allow educators and students to take a much “broader historical approach” because it is of utmost importance that “(students) understand their responsibilities as future communication practitioners, as individuals in society and as representatives of sponsoring interests” (p. 712). In other words, they argue for understanding public relations as a much wider set of communication practices than

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only a set of skills directed towards industry needs and for understanding public relations practitioners’ role as much broader than that of corporate bards. Rather, the academy desperately needs educators who will prepare practitioners to be agents of change who strive to support marginalized and oppressed voices in the interest of society-at-large.

For that, we need a paradigmatic shift in public relations education and in higher education-at-large. That paradigmatic shift, based on our thorough examination of literature, would argue for public relations as an academic discipline that includes qualified faculty members in both theory and in practice who can teach foundational liberal arts courses, emphasizing: a comprehensive and inclusive historical examination of public relations and the historical method; a thorough study of ethics in theory and in experiential learning; a continuing focus on excellence in writing and in oral expression; a focus on studies of discourse, debate, and deliberation in theory and practice; and the study of sociology, social justice, and critical social theory. This paradigmatic shift, as we see it, has two main drivers: (a) rapid technological innovation (and media innovation), and (b) integration between PR and marketing/advertising. During the pandemic and, we expect, post-pandemic realities will see a heavy reliance on online educational tools that present both an opportunity and a threat to higher-education (and PR education in particular). Threats include declining academic rigor and the lack of situational learning. Opportunities, on the other hand, include the potential for new ways of collaborative learning, open education resources (OERs), and the potential to expand access to education through emerging technologies.

Our recommendations for the future of public relations education are based on re-building bridges between theory and practice in the higher education curriculum, rather than on championing practice-based learning to educate future public relations practitioners. A true return on investment (ROI), to use a neoliberal term, for public relations education should encompass: a) education for competency and active participation in civic life and for diverse societies (we draw here on the value-based education approach by Azionya, Oksiutycz, and Benecke {2019}); b) emphasizing the value of liberal arts education (analytical, critical, written, oral, and quantitative reasoning skills are acquired through a robust liberal arts education. Although applied knowledge is important, employer studies tell us that employers are looking for candidates with broad skills/abilities); c) making connections between theory- and discipline-based skills in the classroom and in experiential learning settings (based on Richards and Marshall’s (2019) approach that emphasizes theory-based learning with industry certificates and partnerships), to which we add that these partnerships must be expanded beyond industries toward civil-society groups and organizations if we want public relations practitioners to fully understand society and the common good as ultimate stakeholders.

Without those foundations, we believe public relations as an academic discipline will cease to exist and the practice, itself, might be driven by those who are trained to only work for specialized private interests. L’Etang (2013) argues that public relations

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has moved away from a functionalist focus to include more social and critical theory in its curriculum and that it is a discipline in transformation; however, recent trends emphasizing digital and social media skills in today’s environment and the incredibly detrimental ways in which social media are being used to undermine democracy are worrisome without the presence of a more comprehensive study of ethics, social theory, and critical theory. To envision public and communications practitioners as critical participants in expanding public discourses on important issues of our times, rather than as skillful users of social media for partisan, partial private interests, we need to first educate public relations students with a curriculum that is less-focused on fulfilling immediate industry needs and on training future employees; rather, educators must create individuals capable of thinking critically about the role that the practice of public relations and communications plays in shaping our societies and our common futures.

Funding and Acknowledgements

No funding was provided for this article.

Authors’ contribution Authors contributed to this article in equal mode.

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