Like most things in life I think there’s a reason for the generalization but the details tell many stories.
I held a fairly negative perception of vocational schools for years… but that’s eroded over time as I’ve met more and more people who just didn’t fit into the traditional route – and last year doing a tour of the Academy of Art, SF [for prospective interns & direct hiring] it was shattered. Great students, bright faculty, strong hybrid of concept and real world… Sold.
Unfortunately some people are attracted to institutions for the speed of the program, lack of structure or downright known ease and that’s a whole lot of red flags. But for those who do their homework I do believe there are experiences that teach good skills while allowing someone who has decided to skip the traditional college route, to push ahead.
And of course, what someone learns is likely relative to what they will do. I’ve hired many artists who had friends code their portfolio sites and never claimed otherwise. Specialization will grow and, so long as you know your limits, isn’t a bad thing.
That said, I still am a firm advocate in traditional universities for most people. Life rarely keeps us in one on-going path.
In the UK there are a number of universities, often post-polytechnics, that offer Web Design degrees and more often than not they’re near impossible to hire.
Take the University of the West of England as an example, with their Web Design degree.
The buzzwords are all there, and on paper they could graduate with experience in Ruby on Rails, jQuery and should be able to write solid HTML and CSS. Sadly, in previous jobs I have come across graduates who couldn’t code their way past a first-year Computer Science student, nor could they design better after three years than most of the people who had just joined a Graphic Design degree. I’ve gotten to know graduates from there, and more often than not they can barely get past the interview stage, or end up as cheap code monkeys in offices with bad practices and no care for the web or anyone in the IT industry.
It’s worrying when a Computer Science graduate can land a great role in a Web Design shop when a Web Design student would struggle to even make the interview. It’s also criminal when you think that at the moment graduates have spent over £9,000 of their own money going to places like UWE. It’s a horrible thing to say, but once tuition fees go up if I receive a CV from anyone with a Web Design degree I’d invite them to an interview just to see if they are as stupid as I’d imagine someone to be if they’d spent £27k on a useless degree.
So yeah, if you want to be a Web Designer/Developer, as Ted S has rightly said the more traditional route makes sense. Hell, do a degree in anything (Business, History, Maths, Biology, whatever you’d like!) other than Web Design, as a Web Design degree is often an indication of poor practice or a lack of ability to teach yourself.
I agree that it is unreasonable to generalize (about anything in life).
By coincidence, you mentioned both The Art Institute and Full Sail in your original post.
I have two sons, one graduated from Full Sail (he has just begun as a freelance web developer at age 25 earning more money than I did at age 40) and the other is a graduate of The Art Institute of Washington (he is working for a Government Contractor earning $BIG BUCKS$).
Success, in many areas of life, is not based on the opportunities OFFERED to you but more on HOW YOU TAKE ADVANTAGE of those opportunities.
Lastly, I graduated from a small college way, way back before the Internet existed (actually I worked on the original ARPANet) and have made a successful career without any ‘formal’ schooling in technology.
ParkinT, that’s very awesome and the best to you and your two sons. But those success stories come rare.
I’m going to have to still keep pounding on I have seen more bad then good come from for profit schools. Sure, someone with the drive to learn and do that stuff can go to a school like that and do well. With brutal admissions that want your money, tell you to lie on forms to get financial aid, put you in a world of debt. (You know the story well too, ill-informed kid goes to “Art” school, 4 years later $70,000 in debt working at pizza place)
But like you said yourself, you graduated without any “formal” schooling in technology. Why pay $60,000 to go to a school to learn something that you can fuel yourself at a smaller school for a fraction of the price.
Every kid I know that attends the Art Institute here in Atlanta has all sorts of excuses like so listed above in my original post. (I cant code) - then again the “how you take advantage” ideology applies to ANY school you go to.
ANYONE can sit in a class and just be there, but not learn material. Or you can apply yourself and be the best. Apply myself for $60,000 or apply myself for $1,000? Hmm. I honestly much rather attend a technical college for dirt cheap and apply myself outside of class as well as in class.
As for kids who like the speed of it, go to a technical college. 2 years (and maybe some odd months) and your in and out with your hands on knowledge. Again, at a fraction of the price, and shorter time.
I think most schools that don’t produce competent students in web design have curricula set up to assume that web design is a whole separate entity from other art forms, instead of producing something that is a hybrid of classes as it should be.
Because of statements like this one
It’s worrying when a Computer Science graduate can land a great role in a Web Design shop when a Web Design student would struggle to even make the interview.
It would be more sensible for a Web Design program to have classes involving traditional graphic design mixed with basic Computer Science classes, with unique ones involving relevant topics like user interface design, social impact of media, etc.
Web Design is an industry that was built upon and borrows from more mature industries. Yet schools are reinventing the wheel completely by making up new classes instead of recycling existing classes (thus reducing costs in creating new academic material) and grouping them in a fashion that is logical for this other trade. Perhaps only about 25% of the classes should be specifically web design-related, which makes use of the prerequisite knowledge learned in other classes.
Unfortunately many “students” go to school looking for a very immediate training and pick the option that looks the most “relevant” over those that are broader.
In a sense, traditional universities are much more like what you’re talking about than vocational schools, although something in the middle may certainly exist… If you learn the best principles of design and web you’re a great doer but chances are your job will require communication as well; without a broader writing background you’re at a disadvantage. Fast forward to a client in the bio-space. It’s doubtful a gen ed class will give you any sort of deep knowledge but when you’re uncertain of the basic concepts it’s a handicap to work on the site.
That’s not to say a tighter focus is a bad idea but rather that students should be willing to put a little time in to be educated in what they want to do, what’s behind their profession [i.e. design theory, print, etc] and the world at large so they can push ahead in it.
Sadly, learning about World War 1 does not make you a historian, and learning just about how to build a website today doesn’t make you an effective Web Designer or Developer down the line when things change.
The university I graduated from ran a CS degree alongside around 15 other IT related degrees, including Web Design, Integrated Systems, Games Technology, etc. The CS degree was often one of the least popular degrees and was severely watered-down, despite it having by far the best employment prospects.
As Ted S has correctly stated, students are so scared by employment prospects, or through a lack of passion for any university subject (i.e. going to university because it’s what everyone else does) that they’ll take a trade subject. After all, surely a Web Design degree will make you a better Designer than someone taking Design, right?
Deep down, if you find out what you need to learn and work hard then you’ll do well, regardless of your degree (or lack of). This is the rule for everything, and it is especially true of Web Development. It is my view that choosing a trade subject makes you somewhat complacent when you hit the real world, because despite taking a trade subject the real world has already moved on. At least those who have studied a traditional degree have had to move with it in order to get their foot in the door.
I agree with the idea, although I’d go one further and say that design should be ONE class out of the entire three of four years in university, preferably the year before the final year. If you want to get into Web Design then you should have to take an accelerated class in design for the web, if you want to get into Web Development you should have to take an accelerated class in development for the web (use any language you want), focusing on key skills in software engineering for the web (source control, server management, understanding the DOM and the theory behind CSS, the difference between good and bad HTML, etc).
This one course would be extremely difficult, but would let students know what they’ll be getting themselves into, and will give them enough knowledge to learn their job in junior roles outside of university. Students would also benefit from a proper university experience, rather than one worrying about building your employability.
I don’t see how a for profit school that is placing its students in design jobs at these high profile silicon valley companies could possibly be a joke? AAU is obviously a much better for-profit than the Institutes but still?
If you want a top end school in UX, IxD, UI, AI, Web Design and Web Development, hit up the BS in Interaction Design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Probably the best Art School in the country. Definitely the only Art School I’ve ever seen offering a Bachelors of Science. I graduated from UCLA with a degree in Biochemistry and Computer Science. The UC’s are a total joke. Waste of my time. Didn’t teach me a thing about working in the real world. Then I went through Art Center and they worked me to exhaustion (average 2 hrs/night of sleep…never partied…rarely socialized) but I came out of that school a pro. Invincible. If you can make it through Art Center, everything else in life is retardedly easy.
Frankly, unless you want to go into Medicine, Law or Academia, you’re wasting your time at a 4 year man. I walked out of Art Center and right into a job with a starting salary of $110k. Paid off my 200K debt in 3 years eating cans of tuna and spam. Now I’m slinging 250K working as a private IxD consultant for movie sets. Dream job. I would do this job for free.
Don’t bash what you’ve never experienced. If you’re lucky enough to get accepted at a top Art School, go. Even a for-profit like the Academy of Arts appears to be great for future employment(see link above). Skip these 4 years jokes. They teach you nothing. You’re better off picking up a trade like plumbing and making six figs by the time you’re 21.
If you go with a four year(that’s not Stanford, Harvard, Yale etc…) you’ll be stuck slaving for Google with a starting salary of 50k.
