The hard reality of improving web design and development education in our nation's institutions of higher learning.

A List Apart recently published two advertorials written by two active members of the Web Standards Project. Brighter Horizons for Web Education by Aarron Walter is an advertisement for a curriculum he has helped develop for teaching web standards at the collegiate level and Elevate Web Design at the University Level by Leslie Jensen-Inman is a broad stroke aimed at promoting web education conferences and programs offered by the Web Standards Project. The basic thrust of both articles revolves around how the web community can assist programs such as WASP in changing the fundamental deficiencies of web [design and development] education in our nation’s colleges and universities.

I have zero problem with ALA promoting the Web Standards Project and zero issues with WASP. I do, however, take issue with their decision to publish two articles written by individuals who are personally invested in the program they are promoting without giving an equal voice to alternate points of view. Frankly, neither of the above mentioned articles took great measures to provide analysis that amounted to more than a superficial "happy face" to many of the more pressing issues in academia.

After submitting my article, I was asked by ALA to post my submission as a comment ... Comments are simply not an “equal” voice. Therefore, I have chosen to republish my response to both of these articles on PAL simply because there is as much of a chance my thoughts will be read here as there is on page three of ALA comments.

That said, while I appreciate the high-minded ideals of Aarron Walter’s and Leslie Jensen-Inman’s  efforts to improve web education in our nations schools, the fact is that the multitude problems inherent within our schools are systemic. No one third party effort geared toward improving a specific curriculum will make a difference without first gutting the rotting core of the entire system.

My intent isn't to be a bore, but rather to play devil's advocate to these two well-intentioned arguments.

I have an intimate and long-standing connection to The Art Institute of Atlanta, the school at which Mr. Walter teaches.  As a partial consequence, after each graduation period, I receive dozens of resumes from students who have graduated from every applicable department at The AiA. I have also spent a good deal of my time playing the role of advisor to many AiA students.  Suffice it to say, I have a far more intimate knowledge of the school than I desire.  My sad conclusion is:  It is entirely possible that Mr. Walters is the only qualified teacher in his entire department who has a modicum of recent professional experience. 

In six years, I have seen three AiA student/graduate resumes worthy of a second look.  None of those resumes were submitted by graduates of the AiA’s web design department.  In fact, roughly half of the "web" grads whose queries I receive don't even provide links to online portfolios (by no means is this exclusive to the AiA).  It's one thing to claim that the AiA web department has been teaching web standards since 2002, it's another thing to see it reflected in student work.

This sounds grouchy, and it is, but the AiA is a perfect test-case for the many deficiencies of our educational system.  It is worth pointing out that the AiA is not a university.  The school does offer degrees, but it is a "corporate" college.  In other words, its charter is not to educate so much as it is to earn money for its holding company, investment firm Goldman Sachs. 

Grumbling aside, all of the following points still apply to the general discussion.

Reality Number 1:   Quality of the teacher

For every true-blue teacher who not only has an ingrained passion for his or her chosen discipline but also has a rare and equivalent passion for sharing that knowledge, there are a hundred, maybe a thousand, so-called teachers who are merely talking heads - individuals who very likely wound up in a classroom because they failed in their chosen profession.

Reality Number 2:   Salaries and revenue

Teachers are woefully underpaid.  This is especially poignant at "corporate" schools like AiA where the primary goal is increasing revenue, not improving the quality of their educational products.

Reality Number 3:   Administrative (In)competence

A doctorate degree does not guarantee competence. I have spoken with quite a few AiA faculty members over the years, both full-time and retired, and none of them have ever given a single iota of praise to the school’s administration.  Every single teacher uttered a variation on this theme, “They ask us for our opinions on countless forms, but never ever listen to or implement what we have to say.”

To the best of my knowledge, none of the AiA’s administrative personnel have ever worked in a design industry, none have ever so much as even taught a single class or course of study that the AiA offers in degree programs, and none have a clue about what is happening in today’s job market. 

This glaring fact begs a simple question and one that highlights why change in education will be next to impossible unless significant change occurs with management ... How can a design school whose administration has no connection to the world of design possibly make intelligent decisions about its coursework?  About it’s hiring practices?  About it’s admissions policies?  About the technology and equipment needed to properly teach and train design students? It can’t. Period. 

And, in many ways, this simple fact renders all other arguments moot.

Reality Number 4:   Quality of the student

Admissions policies do not assist in weeding out unprepared students.  AiA, in particular, has an admission policy that can be summed up with this statement, "If they can pay, they can play". Although titled “The Art Institute ...”, no art portfolio is required for admission.

The capacity of a teacher in an institution of higher learning to disseminate relevant information to his/her students is directly proportional to the student's ability to learn the material.  If the students entering a college read at a fifth grade level, it is ludicrous to expect that those same students will be prepared for life in the real world of design and advertising upon graduation.  Even a superhuman teacher can not make up for eighteen years of poor learning. Many of AiA’s students readily admit, “I cannot draw”; such a student has no business in an art school - that’s common sense.

The educational system has to be retooled from the ground up, starting at the elementary level. If universities and colleges truly want to raise the quality of their graduates (and programs), standards for admission must (a) actually exist and (b) be enforced.

Reality Number 5:  Speed of change

Teachers who are good at teaching are a lot of things:  Passionate, intense, curious, dedicated, hard-working, intelligent, inventive, inspiring, etc.  They also spend a lot of time honing their craft and are constantly learning.  My friend did not choose to be a teacher.  Teaching chose her.  Just like art chose me.  No matter how much she learns, she is constantly finding new material for her classes and constantly working to improve her own knowledge. 

It’s safe to say that most disciplines change; therefore, personal development is always possible.  However, taking basic design, or even a crucial ancillary discipline like art history as examples, it is also safe to say that these disciplines are “static”.  By which I mean that change happens, but it happens as result of universal trends or simply as a result of the passage of time. 

Web design and development, on the other hand, changes at a far more rapid pace across multiple languages, platforms, applications, movements, technologies and trends.  It is an impossible task for any individual to keep ahead of the learning curve in this demanding and constantly (explosively) expanding field.

Reality Number 6:  Professional development

Given the impossible task of keeping up with the breakneck speed of change in the field, how can a teacher possibly keep up?  Symposiums, conventions, workshops?  All good ideas.  The AiA requires that full-time teachers engage in 24 hours of professional development each year (most schools mandate 12 hours). 

While I agree that professional development is a must for any improvement in education to succeed, teachers already have to deal with class schedules, preparing coursework, working with students, grading, and all the other administrative tasks that come with the job ... and then they have to deal with absurd policies mandated by schools like the AiA requiring professional development hours while offering their teachers zero compensation and zero time off to improve their skills.  Schools already pay their teachers a pittance to deal with unprepared and uninspired students, the least they could do is compensate teachers for their professional development.

Let's not forget that attending symposiums, conferences, and workshops cost money.  First of all, teachers have to get there, then they have to pay for lodging, transportation and food.  But that's not all: Most of these workshops are expensive.  Really, really expensive.  I only have my own experience to relate to here, but let's assume that Joe Web Design teacher wants to attend an Adobe workshop to brush up on the latest adobe product.  Depending on the program, the cost can range from a few hundred dollars into the thousands.  Want to attend an industry convention?  The HOW design conference costs over a thousand dollars to attend - a bitter pill to swallow even for a working professional who can charge premium rates for his/her services. 

So it's easy to state that "teachers need to attend conferences and workshops", but those of you who promote that idea are part of the problem.  You expect to be paid to speak (or, at least, have your travel expenses paid for), but the fees associated with your participation jack up the cost of ticket prices.  And, frankly, most of you aren't worth the money to hear speak despite your industry "celebrity". 

The message being sent is painfully clear: Don’t enter teaching as a profession unless you are independently wealthy.

Reality Number 7:  Abolish the Master's Requirement

This is a nice thought and one I wholeheartedly agree with, but it's a fantasy.  There is a single word that will prevent this from ever happening:  Accreditation.

School programs need to be accredited in order for the dean to hand a graduate a diploma after a student successfully completes his course of study.  The mandate for accreditation is handled on a state-by-state and/or region-by-region basis and is governed by numerous regional educational organizations and various state agencies.  Schools are required to meet specific criteria established by these oversight organizations for various courses of study all of which set concrete benchmarks that must to be met before an applicant for an education position will be considered for hire.

The issue here has nothing to do with the quality of the applicant but, rather, with the financial implications implicit in accreditation. 

Another single word:  Loans.  Schools without accreditation can't offer government loans to students.  Without loans, schools can't stay in business because their target demographic can't pay current extortionate tuition rates. 

The cycle is vicious but all too real.

Reality Number 8:  Preparing for the industry

Most of us who have been, or claim to have been, in the industry for over ten years have one huge thing in common:  We all got started around the time the internet as we know it was invented.  We have watched the technology grow and explode. We have been around long enough to learn what our strengths and weaknesses are and, consequently, where to apply our skills.  Our careers have been an ever-changing, on-going learning process filled with successes and failures.  All of us understand one thing implicitly:  We can't know everything about our trade. 

It has taken me nearly fourteen years of exceptionally hard work to get where I am today.  So why do we expect recent graduates to know enough to be able to hit the ground running?

One might answer, we pay them to know.  OK.  But here is the stupidity with this unrealistic expectation ...  We look to students to fill job openings because they are cheap labor.  Period.  Yet I routinely see job openings with requirements FOR ONE POSITION that include everything from "HTML and CSS to Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash to PHP, MySQL, Action Scripting, streaming video, and Javascript.  Must be good at communication, a strong designer, team-player (and can sing karaoke)".  

No one, and I mean no one, can do all of these things.  Let alone do them well.  Precious few people have the skills and talent to bridge the gap between the creative and technical sides of our profession. And those individuals who do have such a rare ability know very well where their skills begin and end.

So why then would we expect this from an untested graduate? 

All of us have another very critical thing in common:  We learned on the job.  We made a commitment to better ourselves and improve our skills and habits through hard work and a never-ending crusade to learn.  At some point along the way, we were lucky enough to find ourselves in at least one work environment that fostered that growth.

Reality Number 9:  Conclusion - An employer’s responsibility

It goes without saying that our educational system needs to be improved at every level.  Schools need to begin offering courses that apply to our ever-changing job reality.

It is, however, simply not enough to tell a teacher to attend a workshop or for a school to mandate professional development.  I, personally, could do more than I already do to help the design community at large, but real change won’t occur until more of our colleagues step up to the plate and accept responsibility for the betterment of our industry.

Instead of looking for the perfect applicant, employers should be looking for the most promising student-professional.  Employers simply can not expect a noob to be able to walk into a high-paced office and suddenly become a professional designer, web developer, or team-player.  Employers need to be looking for talent they can nurture.  Employers need to understand that they too are an important, if not the most important, cog in the wheel in terms of advancing the web.  That responsibility begins with the understanding that new hires need to be moulded to fit in with their particular machine.  Employers need to provide an environment that fosters learning and provides time for new hires to get themselves up to speed. Employers need to impress upon their team that part of their responsibility to the company is to help train ‘the new guy’.  That is what teamwork is all about.

Why can't a busy agency set aside an hour a week for a team professional development session? They have plenty of time for weekly happy-hour gatherings.

Graduates in web design are unprepared because a university can never possibly teach a student to comprehend the complexities of the real business world. The best teachers can do is attempt to prepare a student for the general reality of the work environment.  Most schools are even failing at this ...  which is why efforts such as the Web Standards Project are important.  It is, however, only a very small piece in a much bigger and infinitely more complicated puzzle.