An Evaluation in Public Relations Education: Public Relations Education in Selcuk University Students’ Eyes

Public relations due to its increasing importance is a focus area for organizations’ survival, making a difference, coordinating with their target market and gaining its support in their sector. The key to the success in this area for private or public organzations is to communicate healthy and successfully with the environment. So the organizations’ public relations activities should be run by well educated and experienced people instead of ordinary people. At this point, the necessity of public relations education and its quality become prominent. A good education in public relations area is necessary in order to bring in quality and well equiped people to the sector. Good education contributes to the development of public relations area accordingly communication sector’s development while leading public relations profession to the success. In this study, a general evaluation about public relations education and then a field research are made among Selcuk University Public Relations and Publicity Department students. With this field research, the students’ point of view about public relations education and, the general evaluation about public relations education have been compared with the evaluation of the students. In the end, in what degree they are match up or differentiate with each other is tried to be revelaed. According to the research some general results are reached that the students’ choice the department is voluntarily (%74.3), in the department selection process the decision has been made by themselves (%67.5) and, if they have another chance to choose the department again, they would choose the same department (%48.8). There are some inabilities about internship (%27.5) and, contnection between the education they took and the sector (%17). General thought about the department they study is positive (%51.8) and, %40.3 of all the students think their department has a positive image. In this study, also, there are offered some suggestions to reach success in public relations education as a result of the research results.