Opinion piece by Prof. Lida Holtzhausen, director of the School of Communication

Artificial intelligence (AI) can generate content in seconds. Algorithms increasingly determine what people see, believe and engage with. Therefore, organisations no longer control their own communication environments, because employees, consumers, activists, influencers and communities are all potential publishers. Online reputations can be strengthened or destroyed within hours. Data influences communication decisions, while misinformation, privacy, trust, ethics and authenticity have moved from the margins of professional practice to its centre.

We should ask an uncomfortable question: are universities preparing communication students for this new world, or for the communication profession as we once understood it?

This is not an argument for abandoning the communication theory in favour of the latest social media platform. Quite the opposite: the more technologically complex communication becomes, the more critical and theoretical understanding matters. Theory without application risks becoming abstract and application without understanding risks becoming shallow. Communication education needs both.

A communication degree should mean something

Driven by this reality, the North-West University’s (NWU’s) School of Communication is working towards changing our undergraduate qualification from a BA in Communication to a Bachelor of Communication. A qualification name may appear cosmetic. In this case, it is not.

The proposed change forms part of a broader process of curriculum renewal and professional repositioning. It requires a much more fundamental question: what should a communication graduate actually contribute when entering the workplace?

Knowing communication theory remains essential, but knowledge alone is no longer enough.

Beyond mastering core theory, graduates need to analyse complex communication problems, think strategically, engage diverse stakeholders, understand organisations and audiences as interconnected systems, create and evaluate communication across platforms, interpret data, work with emerging technologies and exercise ethical judgement when there is no obvious correct answer.

Academic depth and professional preparation should not compete as they are both meaningful. Our proposed Bachelor of Communication therefore signals what we believe contemporary communication education should become: theoretically grounded, professionally relevant and responsive to change.

Digital communication is no longer a specialisation

This shift is clearly visible in digital communication. For years, universities could treat “digital” as a particular component of communication: a module, elective or specialisation alongside more established areas. That distinction is becoming increasingly difficult to defend. Digital communication is no longer something communication professionals do, it has become the primary environment in which communication happens.

Social media, artificial intelligence, algorithms, analytics, multimedia, online communities and digital content ecosystems influence how messages are created, distributed, encountered and interpreted. They affect visibility, credibility, stakeholder relationships and power. The challenge for universities is not to chase every new technology. If we design curricula around the tools of today, parts of those curricula may be outdated before students graduate.

The more important educational task is therefore to teach students to understand technology critically. They need AI literacy, certainly, but they also need to ask who benefits from AI, what its limitations are, how it affects trust and authenticity, and what ethical responsibilities remain with the human communicator.
A graduate who knows how to operate technology is useful. A graduate who understands when, why and whether it should be used, is far more valuable.

The classroom must become more porous

Communication is an applied discipline, yet we sometimes teach it in environments that remove the uncertainty that defines professional practice. Real communication problems rarely arrive as neat case studies. They involve competing stakeholder interests, organisational politics, budget limitations, reputational risk, ethical tensions and incomplete information. Students need opportunities to encounter that complexity before graduation.

This means creating more porous boundaries between universities, industry and communities. External partners should not merely appear as guest speakers at the end of a semester. They can become genuine participants in learning: presenting authentic challenges, providing professional insight, responding to student proposals and helping students understand the consequences of communication decisions. When this happens, students stop merely simulating professional communication and begin participating in it.

However, partnerships can do more than enrich teaching. A relationship that begins with a student project can develop into research collaboration, postgraduate opportunities and longer-term institutional cooperation. Teaching, research, community engagement and professional practice should reinforce one another rather than operate as separate university activities.

African communication education should not imitate the world

Internationalisation cannot mean that African universities simply import ideas about what communication education should look like. Artificial intelligence, digital platforms, misinformation, trust and stakeholder engagement may be global phenomena, but they do not occur in identical social, economic, cultural and political contexts. African communication realities are not peripheral examples to be added to theories developed elsewhere, they are part of the knowledge required to understand communication in the 21st century.

Universities such as ours therefore need to become more internationally connected while becoming more confident about the knowledge we contribute from our own context.

I believe that the ambition can be expressed simply as locally rooted, nationally relevant and globally connected. That should influence what we research, who we partner with, what students read, which problems they encounter and how we define professional competence.

Alumni should be part of curriculum renewal

Universities also need to recognise that some of their most valuable curriculum intelligence has already left the campus. Our alumni work inside the communication environments we are trying to understand. They encounter new technologies, client expectations, skills gaps, ethical dilemmas and professional pressures before many of these developments appear in textbooks or formal curriculum reviews. That knowledge should flow back into universities.

Alumni can serve as mentors, guest lecturers, industry partners, employers, research collaborators and, importantly, critical friends. Universities should be willing to hear from graduates not only when they praise their education, but when they tell them where it failed to prepare them. Curriculum renewal cannot happen responsibly inside academic walls alone.

We should not change for the sake of change

None of this means universities should chase every industry trend. Higher education has a responsibility to do something that the industry cannot: create the intellectual distance required to question practice rather than simply reproduce it. Our role is not merely to produce graduates who fit seamlessly into the workplace of today but to rather educate professionals capable of improving the workplace of tomorrow.

That requires theoretical knowledge, critical thinking, ethical judgement, technological literacy, professional capability and an understanding of the wider consequences of communication for organisations, communities and society.

The communication profession has already changed. Is communication education willing to change with it.

If we get this right, the communication graduate of the future will not simply know how to create better content, manage another platform or operate the latest technology. They will understand people, organisations, technology and society well enough to make better communication decisions. In a world increasingly characterised by information abundance, technological disruption and declining trust, this may be one of the most important capabilities universities can develop.

Prof. Lida Holtzhausen