Sitting in a PR Btech lecture last year, we received the “breaking” news that the Public Relations Faculty of the CPUT was moving from the Business Faculty to the Informatics and Design Faculty. As expected, this shocked many as for all the years of studying PR, we learnt about the strategic aspect PR brings into businesses and how essential it is for us to be a part of top management (I hear my Communication Science lecturer’s voice drilling that into our heads every lecture).
Suddenly the tables turn and we are thought to fit best into Informatics and Design Facutly – quite contradictory don’t you think?
I am all for moving into the next generation of communication, incorporating web 2.0, web 3.0, mobile and all the other fancy things that are being established as “normal” business tools these days, however, shouldn’t the entire Business Faculty be moving this way too and not just the PR department?
The PR industry have worked many years to not be associated with the connotation “PR Poppie” and “Events planner”, yet moving to the Faculty of Informatics and Design can be the start of history repeating itself again.
Yes, we know we are ahead of times by being involved with technology to the level that we are, however, do big corporate companies know this? How are we going to establish ourselves as “top management material” if we are not seen as “fit” for the Business Faculty?
