What is the advice CIPR and PRCA giving young students?

When the last Easter egg wrapper is confined to the bin, a lot of young men and women will be thinking about what 'A' levels they should take from next September. They will begin to make such decision based on a perspective of the career option in six or seven years time.

Now that we know that some stories in our newspapers are already generated by computers and not journalists, Is there a future in journalism?

Indeed, computer understanding of language, as Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi makes quite clear, is getting really good. In some applications is is good enough to 'write' newspaper articles and copy for car ads. This is not to be confused with article writing software designed to scam search engines or even mass book writing. 

If computers write, what will a PR person do?

Writing books and plays is also a job for computers. Some automated book writers have tens of thousands of titles to their name. 

Would one imagine a career in writing in six years time? It has come a long way in the last decade. Will there be careers in writing left in the next decade.

Perhaps the idea of developing relationship management seems pretty cool as a job. The meetings, briefings, receptions, events, parties and a list of friends as big as your LinkedIn connections? Ha! LinkedIn will have traveled a long way in ten years.

What of social media. We know that it moves fast:

(Source: MediaVision) 

It is changing very fast. How do I keep up. What will the PR industry in ten years want of me? Is the future of communication so difficult?

What are the experts telling us will happen?

The YouTube engineers were shocked at the first record broken by Gangnam Style (1 billion views mark). It just goes to show how popular it is and, of course, how powerful YouTube is in terms of media consumption. 

Does this mean that communications has a big future but a very different one to today's TV led thinking?

As a young person should there be some idea as to change and preparedness for change in the communications industries?

There is scope for data driven cultures but will that last as a fashion?

What are the professionals saying?

What is the CIPR and PRCA saying. What is the advice they are giving to young students.....