NUI Galway (NUIG) has refunded students studying journalism for their course at a cost of over €100,000 to the college.
The undergraduate journalism students raised concerns about the quality of their course, citing the lack of placements made available to them and poor communication from the co-ordinators.
The Irish Times reported that around 30 to 40 undergraduate students took their complaint to the college’s complaints board, where it was found that the failings of the course “negatively impacted on the educational experience of students”.
The board added that there had been a “significant lack of leadership” in the administration of the course. A new director has since been appointed to take over the journalism course and NUIG said in a statement that it would review the quality of its journalism programmes.
“The ambitions of the relaunched programme are to produce graduates with up to date skills and specialisations suited to the contemporary world of journalism”, NUIG said in the statement.
Third and fourth-year students raised concerns about the programme, which will be re-organised into a joint honours course in September. A new master’s course in journalism will also launch in September, focusing on social media, analytics and data journalism.
A master’s in sports journalism is also planned to launch in 2019.
