Andy Budd on the State of Web Design Education // Dec 2, 12:31 PM

What really struck me was the response from those aged 19 and younger, 75% of whom felt education had little or no value. The statistics would seem to indicate that the education system is failing people at the point of their lives when it matters the most.

and

Just because you’re a digital designer doesn’t mean everything has to be digital, so we need people who can sketch out concepts, articulate their reasoning and defend their decisions both written and verbally.

Here’s the link.

Probably, many parallels could be drawn between the U.S. and U.K. in this regard. I feel that many departments in the U.S., however, have not lost the focus on teaching the core design skills and educating well rounded designers. At least good ones have not. But it is rare that a contemporary design student connects what they can learn on their own about the web to the core skills and principles being taught in the classroom. Picking up latest tricks from Web Designer Depot must seem like more fun!

The shortage of design educators with capacity to do professional-grade web design is evident but also is the shortage of web professionals qualified to teach. Can you blame the institutions for relying on the former? The web has hardly been around for 20 years. Discussions like these are an indication that this gap about to start getting bridged, I think.

UPDATE:

The follow-up:

What we need to do is encourage more practitioners into design education and encourage more design educators to continue their practice.

Amen to that.

Comment

Commenting is closed for this article.