Analysing public relations education through international standards

Public Relations Review 39 (2013) 612–614

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Public Relations Review

Research in brief

Analysing public relations education through international

standards: The Portuguese case

Gisela Gonc¸ alves a,∗, Susana de Carvalho Spínola b, Celma Padamo b

a Communication and Arts Department, University of Beira Interior, Rua Marquês d’Avila e Bolama, 6200-001 Covilhã, Portugal b Instituto Superior de Novas Profissões, Portugal

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 26 October 2012

Received in revised form 31 July 2013

Accepted 31 July 2013

Keywords:

Public relations education

Undergraduate studies

Graduate studies

Portugal

a b s t r a c t

By using international reports on PR education as a benchmark we analyse the status of PR

higher education in Portugal. Despite differences among the study programs, the findings

reveal that the standard five courses recommendation by the Commission on Public Rela￾tions Education (CPRE) are a part of Portuguese undergraduate curriculum. This includes

12 of the 14 content field guidelines needed to achieve the ideal master’s program. Data

shows, however, the difficulty of positioning public relations in Portugal as an autonomous

field within Communication Sciences.

© 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The Portuguese higher education system has public and private universities with 1st (BA), 2nd (Master) and 3rd degree

cycles (PhD). Formal public relations (PR) education in Portugal emerged in the 1960s but the boom is in the late 1980s

with the multiplication of courses in Journalism and Communication Sciences. Nevertheless, there are few studies focusing

specifically on Portuguese PR education (Gonc¸ alves, 2009). This study fills a research gap by examining the status quo of the

contemporary educational environment and by identifying its unique characteristics through international studies.

The Professional Bond framework, issued by the CPRE (2006), the EduProject (Cotton et al., 2009) developed by EUPRERA,

and the Global Education Project generated by the Global Alliance (Tench & Deflagbe, 2008; Toth & Aldoory, 2010) were

studied and compared for the analysis. The following research questions were posed:

RQ1. What is the profile of Portuguese BA and Master’s degrees in public relations found on the Web?

RQ2. To what extent do the Portuguese BA programs in PR reflect the five-course standard recommendation of The

Professional Bond?

RQ3. To what extent do the 14 content areas recommendation (The Professional Bond) apply or not to Portuguese Master’s

degrees in PR?

The complete study can be requested from the authors.

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +351 275 319 700; fax: +351 275 319 888.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (G. Gonc¸ alves), [email protected] (S.d.C. Spínola), [email protected] (C. Padamo).

URL: http://www.ubi.pt/ (G. Gonc¸ alves).

0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.07.020