This semester my Campaigns class is chock-full of students interested in sports. Quite a few
blog posts have talked about
sports PR,
publicity, or
crises, and several of the students have worked or are working with sports team--good positions, too, with the Atlanta Falcons and the UGA
Athletic Department, for example. I find this curious, because UGA does have a sports promotion program, yet the students chose to major in PR.
I’m not complaining, though. If I subtract from 30 students the five who are primarily interested in sports information, my class would consist of 25 students: 24 women... and one guy. And he, by the way, is going to law school next fall.
Think about that for a minute: none of the male students in my class are PR generalists.
A quick search of a Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2005) report showed there are over 190,000 PR specialists and over 43,000 PR managers. Secondary sources indicate that 65% of PR practitioners were female in 1997 and 67% in 2002, so by now we must be up around 70%.
Obviously I'm not the only blogger to have commented on this. Last year Marcel Goldstein speculated on some reasons men don't go into PR, and PR educator Bill Sledzik has gone so far as to advocate scholarships dedicated to men to encourage them to consider PR as a major. From what Bill says, my 1:5 male-to-female student ratio is actually not bad, compared to 1:9 at Kent and in the PRSSA.
But I haven't heard anyone else talking about male students being almost uniformly interested in sports. If my students are any indication, it won’t be long until the only men left in PR are in sports information.
Labels: diversity, sports, students