A public relations student can learn how to write a communication plan, analyze an audience, and explain communication theory. Then comes the first internship.
Suddenly, the questions are different.
Can the student work with a real client? Can they manage deadlines, collaborate with others, interpret research, create content, and adjust when a campaign does not go as planned?
That gap between knowing and doing sits at the center of a growing challenge for public relations education in Vietnam. As the communication industry expands and becomes more complex, our study examines how universities face increasing pressure to prepare graduates not only to understand PR, but to practice it effectively.
Employers Need More Than Communication Theory
The study asked public relations practitioners and industry employers what graduates actually need when they enter the profession.
The answer was broad.
Professional skills remain essential. Graduates need research abilities, data literacy, content development and storytelling skills, audiovisual production knowledge, and the ability to develop and implement communication plans.
But technical competence is only part of the picture.
Employers also emphasized communication skills, professional ethics, emotional awareness, empathy, cultural sensitivity, and a willingness to continue learning.
This matters because PR work is rarely performed alone. Practitioners must negotiate with colleagues, understand stakeholders, work across departments, manage clients, and respond to situations that do not have textbook solutions.
A technically strong graduate who cannot collaborate, adapt, or communicate professionally may therefore struggle just as much as someone lacking technical knowledge.
The Classroom Cannot Be the Only Place Students Learn PR
One way to close this gap is to move some learning beyond traditional lectures.
The study examined how experiential learning is used across 15 Canadian universities offering public relations or communication programs. Eleven incorporated forms of experiential learning directly into courses.
These activities included workshops, laboratories, internships, community projects, client-based assignments, case studies, simulations, field placements, and interdisciplinary projects.
The principle is straightforward: students learn PR partly by doing PR.
A live project, for example, forces students to deal with uncertainty. A client may change direction. Research may contradict the original idea. Team members may disagree. A message that looked effective in class may fail when tested against a real audience.
Those complications are not interruptions to learning.
They are the learning.
Real Clients Can Turn Assignments Into Professional Training
Traditional assignments often end when the lecturer gives a grade. Real-world projects create a different level of accountability.
Students may work with companies, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, or community groups. They have to understand an actual communication problem and develop something another organization could realistically use.
That changes the question from “What does the lecturer want?” to “What does this organization need?”
It also allows students to practice several skills simultaneously: research, strategic thinking, writing, teamwork, presentation, project management, and evaluation.
Case studies and simulations can provide similar benefits. Students can respond to hypothetical crises, evaluate competing strategies, or make decisions under time pressure without exposing a real organization to risk.
The important point is not simply to make classes more “practical.” Practical activities must connect clearly to what students are expected to learn.
Universities Need to Start With the Skills Graduates Should Have
This is where outcome-based education becomes important.
Instead of beginning with a list of subjects lecturers want to teach, programs first identify what graduates should be capable of doing. Courses, assessments, and learning activities are then designed around those outcomes.
For PR education, this could mean defining measurable capabilities such as conducting communication research, developing strategic content, designing communication plans, presenting recommendations, or working effectively within teams.
The advantage is alignment.
If a program says graduates should be able to conduct research, students need repeated opportunities to collect, analyze, and interpret data. If teamwork is an expected outcome, assessment cannot consist entirely of individual essays.
However, there is also a risk. Outcomes can become overly mechanical if education is reduced to a checklist of competencies.
Universities therefore have to maintain a difficult balance: outcomes should be clear enough to guide learning but broad enough to encourage creativity, judgment, critical thinking, and professional growth.
Internships Matter, but They Are Not Enough
Work placements are one of the most obvious ways to expose students to the profession.
But simply sending students into companies does not guarantee meaningful learning.
The quality of the experience depends on what students actually do, the guidance they receive, and whether they reflect on what they learned.
A student who spends an internship performing repetitive administrative tasks may gain workplace exposure without developing much professional competence.
Universities therefore need stronger relationships with industry partners. Employers can contribute to curriculum discussions, offer guest lectures, mentor students, provide real briefs, and help universities understand how professional expectations are changing.
Students also need structured reflection after these experiences. What happened? Why did it happen? What worked? What failed? What would they do differently next time?
Experience becomes education when students learn to interpret it.
Community Projects Can Teach Something the Corporate World Cannot
PR education does not have to focus only on commercial clients.
Community-based projects can expose students to nonprofit organizations, public-interest campaigns, cultural initiatives, and social issues.
These experiences can broaden students’ understanding of what communication does in society.
Students may have to work with organizations that have small budgets, limited staff, or stakeholders with very different needs. Such environments require creativity, listening, adaptability, and ethical judgment.
They also remind students that public relations is not simply about promoting brands. Communication can influence communities, public understanding, and relationships between institutions and the people they serve.
Vietnam’s PR Programs Face a Moving Target
The communication industry is changing quickly. Digital platforms, data, audiovisual storytelling, and new communication technologies continue to reshape professional roles.
Universities cannot redesign curricula every time a new platform becomes popular.
What they can do is build programs around durable capabilities: research, critical thinking, communication, ethical judgment, collaboration, adaptability, and continuous learning.
Experiential learning can then provide the environment where those capabilities are tested.
The study does not suggest replacing theory with practice. The stronger model connects the two.
Students still need to understand why communication works, how audiences behave, and how organizations operate. But they also need opportunities to discover what happens when those ideas meet real people, real organizations, and real constraints.
That is where PR education moves from the classroom into the community—and where students begin becoming practitioners.
Reference
Ly-Le, T. M., & Dang, K. C. (2025). From classroom to community: Optimizing public relations education in Vietnam. In A. Zhuplev & B. Christiansen (Eds.), Active learning in business education (pp. 347-368). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3373-7523-6.ch011