Professional development
It is essential to have a degree in the field in order to work as a journalist, what makes all students that want a future job in a journalism-related position to enroll in a bachelor degree. However, the complex situation of journalism and, in general, economy in the country has made it hard for many graduated journalists to find a job as journalists, which has compelled many journalism graduates to emigrate; the professional perspectives abroad are better than those inside the country but the possible professional paths are similar and, although journalism is still the main professional alternative after a journalistic degree, there are different fields that are followed by these graduates. Audiovisual artistic professions related with cinema, documentaries or the big telenovelas market are also common.
Journalistic degrees are called comunicación social (social communication), giving an idea of the broader perspective of these careers. This makes graduated students also ready for a profession in the communication teams of companies: corporate or internal communication, marketing or public relations and external communication. This connects with one of the main alternatives, as many people lead their careers towards advertising, as there are almost no official university studies about this topic. Recently, and due to the strong component of digital and online communication, as well as social networks in those studies, a new path for students of this degrees are computer- and Internet-related jobs such as webmaster, community manager, consultor, etc. Finally, there has been an increase in the number of journalistic graduates becoming teachers or professors not only in their own communication and information fields, but also in topics such as linguistics or drafting, as they are important elements of the job or the studies of a journalist. Most of these jobs, just like those in the field of journalism, are usually badly or underpaid. This applies to most sectors, but is particularly true in this one.
Being this the professional development, some of the most important subjects are related with audiovisual content or with marketing and corporate communication. However, students of journalism degrees prefer a career in traditional media rather than in online journalism or other communication-related positions (Arcila et al, 2016).