School of Broadcasting and Communication M.A Review By Amanulla Mahabale

Not many colleges offer such courses and therefore one has to look for niche colleges. When I was checked I saw many Delhi colleges but I wanted to be in Mumbai as one of my friends went to Delhi School of Communication and even, he said, it was better off had I stayed in Mumbai. Mumbai is a hub for advertising business as well as many media houses. Yes, all the nationalised news channels have their head offices in Dehi but all of them do have their auxiliary offices in Mumbai. Anyways moving on to School of Broadcasting and Communication Mumbai, all the things that are compulsorily in journalism or advertising business is editing. SBC taught us all that and it became much simpler to find jobs once you have those skill sets. SBC’s infrastructure is well maintained and structured and has all the modern facilities to train students in broadcasting and printing in journalism. In short, the campus itself is enough to learn all the technicalities of advertising business and hence you can go for it.

A lot of things go in advertising business and for that subjects like promotion planning, advertising theory, and brand communication were taught to us. Well, accountancy is also required and therefore extra classes for advertising accounting management were organized for us. In skill sets, we were taught how to get through consumer behaviors. Our course prepared us directly for managerial profiles. We had to work on case studies to understand the challenges in doing promotions and developing strategies. The latest topics were also included in out subject such as international advertising and media technology. So, academics here were something else because it was about the institute and not just the classrooms of the institute that we learned from. Going to editing labs, and print lab and doing creative things and then taking feedbacks of the experts is how our education was done at SBC.

Honestly speaking, some of the most experienced faculties who were also involved in their advertising jobs were our faculties. In the case of any queries, we knew they are there to help us. They supported us to take up internships and workshops so that we can enhance ourselves by getting much required exposure. All of them were highly resourceful and made the classes quite interactive. The faculties were quite co-operative like if we didn’t feel like coming to the lectures or were stuck with something, they would surely help us out.

Placements in journalism or advertising business are subjective. The college didn’t had any rounds of placements but since they had the tie-ups off-campus interviews and our CVs were sent because we did more ground work than attending the classes. Our work was there to be seen for all and on the basis of that, we were hired as most of us started our work even before the course was completed. The college had enough labs for us to prepare the news or the stories that we made. The college was ok with it even if used the college facilities for our personal use. So, placements were not direct through campus but all the students managed to find themselves good jobs on the basis of our degrees and skills that we were taught at SBC.

The college doesn’t have any hostel as SBC building had no space in its complex to have a hostel. Many outsiders came but some of them had their relatives and some of them got themselves accommodated in nearby PGs or flats as flat and flat mates group in Facebook can help you easily find accommodation in Mumbai if you a student or a working professional.

A building full of well-equipped infrastructure or as good as a media or a publication house building had everything in its armory to ensure we learn all the technicalities of media technology be it print media or broadcasting. From video editing lab to shoot labs, we had them all. The auditorium of the school was great and to relax we had a relax room with long couches and ACs in it. Our classrooms were more mechanized than labs of average colleges because a lens was always on for students who don’t do their job properly. Thus, the infrastructure was modern with all the acumen that can help us learn journalism in the best possible way.

How media people live their life is exactly how I lived our lives. Yes, there was competition and every other person saw the next person as their competition. This enhanced us to better every day and that in a way kept us going. No biasedness as everyone had their chance to be the best because what we did off-campus made our campus life that easier. Every month, we had to do a presentation once on the best stories we worked on during the month. The best one didn’t just received applause from the fellow students but management also used to send those students their wishes and some gifts.