Digital Design Education is Broken
Ever since I started blogging in the early the naughties, the emails came in. At first in dribs and drabs, one every few months. However by the end of the decade they were one or two a week. Emails from disgruntled students who had spent up to £9k a year on tuition fees, and even more on living expenses, to find themselves languishing on a course that was woefully out of date.
Their emails were filled with tales of lecturers from engineering, graphic design or HCI departments, co-opted to teach courses they didn’t understand because, well, it’s all just computers really? Tales of 19 year olds effectively becoming teaching assistants on the courses they were paying for, because they knew more than their lecturers. Students walking out halfway through their courses, because they were learning more from their evening gigs than they ever could at school.
It was in this context that Clearleft started our general internship program way back in 2008; to provide the growing ranks of self taught designers and developers the knowledge and experience they needed to succeed in the workplace.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those libertarian Silicon Valley types who believe the role of education is to churn out dutiful employees. Far from it. Instead I want my tax funded education system to produce well rounded members of society…
