The needs of industry have become far more specialized, especially in the digital media realm. If you look around a digital agency such as Hello, you dont see web designers, you see a host of highly specialized individuals working on niche areas of expertise. Industry wants graduates that can slot into those niches straight off the educational production line, which is understandable.

However, from an educational perspective there simply isn’t enough demand to justify entire courses geared solely towards those particular niches. Sure, the industry is growing, but how many usability experts or jQuery gurus can we actually absorb per year?

“however, most people who are serious about getting into this industry will have to walk the path of self-learning as everyone I know and work with has.” Absolutely! It confuses me that you can make this statement and then ask why design education isnt training niche-ready individuals.

Look around your own studio, how many of the jQuery gurus or even the creative directors actually learned their trade in design schools? This isn’t because design schools are entirely ignorant, it’s because training for such transient and niche skill areas isn’t feasible.

Even if institutions did dedicate the full 3 years of the average diploma/ degree program to web design or development you would still have the same problem.

Industry professionals also forget that education is not only about giving someone the design skill and technical knowledge to do a particular job. A lot of hard work has to go into basic design literacy and basic headspace development to get a student from matric to vaguely employable in a design context. Hence many design programs invest heavily in basic visual design, seeing it as a basis on which to build something.

Students also don’t know when they leave matric that “I want to be a php developer”. If institutions did have twenty students a year breaking down their doors begging for a comprehensive backend development program, institutions would be happy to oblige.

The digital media is always going to be a frontier industry and I think there has to be recognition that while design education can lay a basis and nurture the talent, the “real” vocational training has to happen on the job. This is why juniors get paid peanuts surely?