Planning for a Career in Public Broadcasting
When you're growing up, you start making larger and larger decisions for yourself. First, you will usually have things pretty much planned out by your parents and school. But then, you can start to form what your life is going to be and can begin pointing yourself in the right direction. One of the first major decisions a person is able to make in their lifetime is what they are going to do after high school. Some people plan to start out working in industry and will work their way up to being the boss while others want to get a few degrees right away. Those who are interested in the broadcasting industry tend to fall into two groups as well: some are heading towards a job with a radio or TV station that serves an audience for profit while others are intrigued by the idea of a not-for-profit broadcast entity with a focus on providing a community service. One of the options that many people look into, particularly for the latter role, is community college.
If you're looking into a community college then you will likely be part of a two-year program rather than one of the four-year degrees that are offered by private research colleges. There you might learn the basics of engineering, for example, so that you will be able to work for or run a company in manufacturing but you will not necessarily learn the engineering practices that one would need to design groundbreaking new models of these items. One of the ways that many people look at community college programs is that they are essentially more hands on.
One of the main benefits to being a part of a community college program is that you're going to be getting specialized training in your chosen field in a small class where you will get lots of personal attention. When you're learning to be a dental assistant, for example, you will just be taking courses that are directly relevant to your future career and no extras. If you were in a general science program at a private college then you might find that you're learning a much broader spectrum of information, some of which you will not use in your eventual career, though it will contribute to your education and your personal growth. And you could have as many as four hundred people in your lecture classes. You will generally not find more than twenty people in a community college class learning about real estate training or the hospitality industry.
Because the programs are more focused and specialized, you will find that those who graduate from some community college programs have a greater success rate of getting a job than those who went to a four-year program at a private research college. You should consider all of this when you're deciding if community college might be the right choice for your post secondary education leading to a career in broadcasting. There are a number of programs available for prospective students in Canada:
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