Australian media professionals suggest that training and development are made available on a piecemeal basis.
Since the 1990s, Australia has offered journalism degrees at all but two of its 39 tertiary institutions (Koivisto & Thomas, 2008: 95). The educational level of Australian journalists has changed significantly over this period. Whereas in 1992 only 35 per cent of journalists held a degree, the figure was 80 percent in 2010 (Josephi, 2011), and Hanusch (2016) found similar results six years later. Interestingly, the percentage of those who held an undergraduate degree in journalism had hardly changed, from 33 to 35 per cent, which shows the industry is happy to employ people with degrees other than journalism (see Josephi, 2011). However, many journalists hold a post-graduate degree in journalism. Internships are still being offered by the major media companies, but their numbers had already decreased in 2011 as a casualty of expenditure cuts, and there is no sign of recovery in the last decade. Investigative journalism is a subject or topic in some university journalism courses (Josephi & Richards, 2011).
