‘Sad day’ as Langara pauses journalism program indefinitely. It really is.
Langara has always had very fine, experienced instructors teaching in its Journalism Credential and Diploma programs. From the Vancouver Sun:
“Journalism schools across the country have seen dropping enrolment and Langara is not alone in that,” [Journalism Department Chair Barry Link] said. “The changes in the industry are part of it, and then the changes in what students want and what they want to do.
“More and more of them will want to be things like YouTube influencers or podcasters, because that’s where they get their information from. It’s entirely online, social media, Tik Tok and so forth. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Technology changes, but the industry has never caught up to that, has never figured out how to make money from that and still do journalism.”
Jen St. Denis interviews Barry Link at length in a Tyee article:
The Tyee: Can you explain what exactly is happening with the program?
Barry Link: The eight-month certificate program was basically pulled about a year ago. The college does what they call a pause, which means basically they put it in mothballs. We still had the diploma, which is a two-year program. But this fall they are pausing intake of new students, which means we won’t be accepting any new students into the diploma program in September. That means we will only have second-year students, and we will teach those out so that they can graduate in the spring of 2027, and then that’s it. And we’re done.
But it’s gone. It’s not going to come back.
Can you tell me why you say that?
Enrolment in the program itself is down; it’s lower than it was 10 years ago. If this had happened 10 years ago, we could see the college saying… “What can we do to fix this? What can we do to turn it around?”
Now, because there’s no money, like, there’s absolutely no money, they’re not willing to do that. They have negative money basically at the moment, and that is the result of the drop in international student enrolment — which has hammered post-secondary education finances. It’s just slaughtered the budgets.
Can you explain to me the role that Langara’s journalism program played in the local journalism industry in B.C.?
I think it’s been fundamental. It’s been around for 60 years, so it’s one of the oldest journalism programs in B.C. It has graduated hundreds of journalists over the years who’ve worked throughout the industry, particularly in newspapers in B.C. And so that pipeline now is gone.
