Ranade Institute

Ranade Industrial and Economic Institute is situated at Fergusson College Road, Pune. It was built in 1910. It contains the University of Pune's Department of Communication and Journalism the Department of Foreign Languages.

History of the Department

The origin of the Department of Communication and Journalism can be traced to an endowment of Rs.10,000/- made by Shri. K. A. Kolhatkar and accepted by the University of Pune in 1956 for instituting the “Sandeshkar Kolhatkar Scholarship” for Marathi Journalism. A two-year, part-time diploma course in Journalism was inducted on 5th February 1964. The course was divided into junior and senior year of study, requiring the students to appear for five papers (carrying 100 marks each) at the end of each year. The classes were held in the evening.

The course was made a one-year full-time degree course from July 1973. The department became a full-fledged regular department of the University in 1976. Following the international and national trend, nomenclature of the Department was changed in 1983 from “Department of Journalism” to “Department of Communication and Journalism”. The name of the degree awarded was also changed from B.J. to B.C.J.

A short-term part-time certificate course was instituted in 1979 in co-operation with the Pune Shramik Patrakar Sangh. It was upgraded to a Diploma in Journalism (Marathi Medium) course in 1986. The department has introduced a part time post graduate Diploma in Journalism with English as medium of instruction from academic year 2003-04. Detailed information about these Diploma courses is available in separate booklets.

One-year Master of Communication and Journalism (MCJ) was introduced from the academic year 1993-94.

The department introduced credit-point based semester system with effect from academic year 2001-02.

The department changed the nomenclature of its Master’s programme to Master of Arts (Mass Communication and Journalism) and revised its syllabus from academic year 2003-04.