Twenty-plus years ago, when I founded 5W, the talent pipeline for PR firms was simple. Hire a smart college graduate from any of about 30 communications programs, train them on the job for two years, promote them, repeat.
That model is breaking, and most universities have not caught up to the new reality. That is the short version of why my team and I just published a 36-page research report — free, no email gate, no sign-up — on the state of PR and marketing education in the United States.
The report is at 5wpr.com/research/pr-marketing-education. It covers the 10 Tier 1 undergraduate programs, salary data for 11 U.S. cities, current Bureau of Labor Statistics employment figures, and a school-by-school grade of how each program is integrating AI. There are nine illustrated charts. There is no marketing language anywhere in it. We tried to make it the most useful single document a PR student could pick up in 2026.
Three reasons we published it
One. Students deserve better information than they are currently getting. Most college-ranking content is generic. It compares programs on metrics that are easy to measure and irrelevant to what actually matters for a PR career. Where do graduates end up? Which programs hire from where? What does the curriculum actually cover? Most of those answers are buried somewhere or hidden behind paywalls.
Two. The industry needs better-prepared graduates. We hire PR graduates every year. The gap between what schools teach and what the industry needs has widened in the last 36 months in ways that should worry anyone who cares about the future of this profession. AI integration is part of it. Vertical specialization is part of it. Entrepreneurial drive is part of it. The students who arrive prepared for those things succeed quickly. The students who don’t, struggle. We are trying to put better information in the hands of the people who can actually do something about that — students, parents, professors, deans.
Three. Free is the right business model for content like this. We could have put it behind an email gate. Most agencies would. We chose not to because we want it to spread. Free distribution — combined with thorough research, named recommendations, and clean data visualization — is the strategy. If a high school senior in Ohio reads this report and decides to apply to the University of Missouri because of what they read here, that is a win. If a working professional in Atlanta uses the salary map to negotiate their next role, that is a win. If a PR program chair takes our AI-curriculum critique seriously and updates their syllabus, that is the biggest win.
What we are not doing
We are not selling the report. We are not collecting emails to download it. We are not asking for anything in return. The HTML version of the report sits at a free URL anyone can read in a browser. The PDF downloads without a form. The charts can be copied and used with attribution.
If you find it useful, share it with one person who would benefit. That is the only ask.
We published this because we wish someone had published it for us 30 years ago. The next generation of PR leaders walks into the industry from somewhere. We are trying to make sure they walk in better prepared than we did.
Read it: 5wpr.com/research/pr-marketing-education.
— Ronn Torossian is founder and chairman of 5W Public Relations.
