Challenges of Media Education in India: An Analysis of Student's Expectations and Aspirations in Pursuit of a Professional Career and objective reality

In the last one decade, there have been two significant developments that have led to important consequences in the area of media education in India. These are, first, the liberalization that took place in 1991, and the emergence of the Prasarbharti Bill in India. And second, the liberalization of Education sectorwhich led to the emergence of private institutions in India. With this backdrop, this paper focuses on how the cable culture and growing number of channels have led to media emerging as one of the highest paying jobs in India. This increased requirement of trained manpower to handle the various jobs associated in the media needed formal training. Not withstanding the government institutions and universities which were already imparting training in this field, there emerged astring of private institutions to impart education in media. The emergence of private institutes provides a significant and interesting study of the comparison between (i) the coursepursued in both types of institutions (ii) the profile of the students and an evaluation of their level of satisfaction with the course content. (iii) Based on the analysis of the questionnaire, an attempt to recognize the problems related to media education and suggestions for scope of any improvement.