News diploma – Brunel University

Brunel University London has been successfully running accredited NCTJ courses for many years – resulting in legions of students graduating to high-profile media jobs.

Uniquely, we now run our Diploma course over two years for Year 2 students on our undergraduate Journalism programme. This is separate to the degree, and our students have to undergo an interview and test before they are permitted to join the NCTJ scheme and enjoy additional classes at no extra charge. We also run a separate Diploma course over one year for postgraduate students.

Many of our post-graduate students have also successfully signed up to the stand-alone Diploma. Meanwhile, we are now hoping to broaden it out to students from other programmes at the university via the NCTJ Foundation Certificate which we also run.

A key measure of success is that many of our NCTJ students have quickly secured jobs in national and local media, and we find that employers do like to hire Brunel alumni.

The Express Online is one such employer, but our former students are now working in a diverse and impressive array of media jobs.

Brunel, however, does not wish to rest on its laurels and is constantly looking at new ways to innovate and widen out the appeal of our NCTJ programmes – so we can help to train an increasing number of journalists to cope with the demands of the ever-changing media landscape.

NCTJ elective modules offered:

• Shorthand for journalists
•  Data journalism
• Public affairs for journalists
• Media law court reporting
• Videojournalism for digital platforms

Job desinations of recent graduates include:

• BBC
• Daily Star
• Daily Express
• Express Online
• ITV
• TalkSPORT