Do You Have To Go To College To Be A Designer or Developer?
Talking about college yesterday, preparing for my little sister to go to college and listening to a question on FreelanceSwitch got me thinking: does one have to go to college or extended learning to become a successful designer or developer?
Personally I can argue on both sides. On one side, I learned an invaluable amount of information from my mentor and become a much better designer because of it. It even affects the way I code and organize the sites I do. However on the other side, I have a $30,000 student loan bill for a design education and I’m not doing any design work.
College was something I regret mostly because I didn’t take advantage of it. Most people say you go to college for the experience, not for the education, but I think its for both. I missed out on the experience portion, mainly because I never wanted to be there, and I regret that today.
So do you need to go to college to be a successful web developer or designer?
The pros
- You’ll learn the basic fundamentals of design or development, including the history of how they got started. Most self-taught designers/devs are lacking in the fundamentals and it sometimes shows.
- You’ll get real critiques that you can’t always get online. Believe me, the professors are NOT afraid to tell you that your work sucks.
- Depending on the school you go to, you’ll gain valuable contacts that you can use later on to get your first job.
- It gives you the time you need to really learn. You’re not jumping feet first into pleasing clients, so you get to take the time to learn proper design techniques, the why’s of why it’s done and semantics in coding.
- The experience is awesome, the games, the community, everything.
The cons
- Unless you have a scholarship, it can be very expensive.
- Even if you have a full scholarship, it can still be very expensive when you’re young and stupid and spend loans you don’t need on crap (yea that was me.)
- A lot of traditional schools teach outdated methods. (Has anyone heard of the world wide web??). We spent SEVERAL semester long classes on how to properly prepare a print portfolio…..when was the last time anyone has asked for a printed portfolio? I know some pretty large studios with big name clients and none of them ask their hires for anything but an online portfolio.
- It takes time, which you may not have if you’re an older adult looking to go back to college.
- No one cares. Seriously. I’ve never been asked or required to have a degree. Your portfolio always speaks for itself.
So is it right for you?
All in all, I think you should go to school if you can when you’re fresh out of high school. It’s something to fall back on if what you really want to do in life doesn’t pan out (most places will accept a hire with any kind of BA) and it’s a great learning experience that you really can’t get from books or the web.
If you’re older and already accomplished, I wouldn’t do it unless it’s some kind of personal life goal. For example, I was thinking for a while about a year ago that I wanted to go back to school and get a degree in web development. But I realized why – I wanted to go back and “experience” college since all I did the first time was go to class and go home. Definitely not a reason to spend another $30,000 on.
Your thoughts
What are your thoughts on college?
(p.s the photo is of my little sister graduating high school a month ago!)
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
Great points on both sides. I’ve always felt the same way. I didn’t go to college for coding or design, and more or less just a “student” of Google search and finding all those articles and forums to learn.
I’ve known a few people that I’ve worked with that had a degree in design/coding that didn’t know half the amount that I knew. My reasoning for that was that they didn’t have the passion, ambishion, and drive like I do when it comes to it. I get excited when I start a new project, I love reading about different ideas, and I absorb every detail on new specs.
I think it may just depend on the individual and they’re motivation. Just because you have a degree in something, doesn’t mean you’re good at it.
I like this i had this debate with myself several years ago, i think it depends on the person and how they experience life and whether the career has requirements for high levels of education.
I went from college to university and recently finished, i took it as experience, as i was helping the teachers teach web development as a student i was disappointed i went to feed my craving for knowledge and also to gain a degree which is a basic requirement for a web career.
I learnt more from not going to university and self learning from books and websites and talks by people in the field. As long as the sources are good i think higher education isn’t required i think depends on what you want to do and how you go about it. But the experience is worth it depending on the country depends on the educational system.
Personally, I loved college. Sure I could’ve probably taught myself a lot of stuff about web design (which I did), but the group interaction in classes really helped with learning to work in a team environment. Through internships I gained incredible experience and contacts that gave me awesome references when it came time to getting a job. Not to mention, college itself is an experience that I think everyone should have.
As a member of a greek organization, I made lifelong friends, picked up skills I never would of thought I would have, and made some great business connections on the way. Not to mention the fact that I had a hell of a great time
I studied Law at University and had a few jobs in between before getting into web designer. I’m entirely self taught – personally I don’t think that a Design related degree makes any difference, your design education is ongoing and never ends. If you don’t have the drive to keep learning and improving you’ll never be a great designer – regardless of whether you have a formal education or not.
The only advantage I can see to having a formal education in design is that it may help you land your first design job.
Great post by the way!
I’m on the fence with this really, I went to college and did web and graphic design, I picked up the basics and aced my modules.
When I actually started as a junior designer I founded a number of holes in my knowledge, and as Andrew said I became a student of Google.
I probably learned more in 6 months using tutorials and W3C Schools than I did in 2 years of college.
Great post overall.. I think that the skills you learn when you are designing and creating websites for yourself will be more valuable than the skills taught to you in a classroom. Also, when I was in College I learned more from my peers than the instructors and that’s not worth $30,000. I can find peers anywhere.
Another note, I don’t necessarily agree with “It’s something to fall back on if what you really want to do in life doesn’t pan out”. I hate the idea that people need to have something to “fall back on” if they can’t do what they want. It’s your life.. if you’re not doing what you want then there is something wrong with you.. Just because you fail at something doesn’t mean you should doom yourself to unhappiness.. Just my thoughts, what do you think?
I didn’t mean falling back to do something you hate, I meant more of, if you decided you didn’t want to do what you went to college for, the BA is great to fall back on. For example, I went to college for design, decided afterwards I no longer wanted to do it, but I can ge a professional job doing something else simply because of the BA (or BFA in my case). If I ever wanted a job ever again that is
Hah yeah I gotcha, I just typically hear people say “Well I really want to do x with my life but I’m getting a degree ya know just in case it doesn’t work out I can always just get a job somewhere” and I just think that’s a bad mentality to have.. no harm in changing your mind though.. I’ve done that like a hundred times
It definitely helps to have someone introduce you to the basic when learning something complete new. I met alot of friends (you could class as contacts) at college so that was always a pro as well.
A great article to think about …
I originally went to school for Business – but realized a few years into my “career” that it was not for me. I’d always had a knack for design, so decided to get a certificate.
I would certainly not be where I am today without the knowledge I picked up from my certificate schooling. HOWEVER, 80% of what I know is from my own research and struggle to learn newer things. With that said, the 20% I learned in school was the foundation.
I don’t believe that you NEED college to succeed in this field, but the experience of going to college can be beneficial (I just don’t want to pay $40,000+ for that experience) and if I would go to college it would be more for networking than learning. I also think colleges and universities move too slow. I got my first web development job 4 months after I started reading books and competed against other developers who actually did have bachelor degrees. Plus, in my mind I always had the mentality that the people who write books today are the same people who teach in great universities across the globe or people who have been in the field longer than I’ve been alive (maybe a tad much there) and own successful companies.
College is a tricky subject. Personally, I don’t think you need to go to college to be a designer or developer, but the experiences from college could help younger designers/developers.
I’m pretty much with you Amber. If you’re older and established under a field, then you don’t need to go to college. You can if you want, but it’s not necessary.
Story of my life…
I had a mix of both paths described here. I literally plunged into knowing the foundations of web design and Illustration at a young age, and when I felt it was time to expand my studies I enrolled in an accredited art school in Denver. Unfortunately art school didn’t foster the hotbed of talent and ambition I had long dreamed of.
Fast forward a year later I dropped out, started freelancing for a web company called Beatport and eventually took on a full time position as an interactive designer. Soon after I was able to land freelance work doing illustration and design for Wacom, BBH NY, HBO, and others. I now work in house for a web media company Geeknet in CA. Looking back it was about %50 hard work and %50 luck.
What it really comes down to is how hard you want to work. If you are good at what you and your portfolio can speak for itself, you will eventually land the right gigs. Unfortunately you will still have to work very hard to land these jobs, and ultimately its about getting your work shown to the right people. Out of all the interviews and in house positions I’ve held at various companies it was always stressed that they selected individuals based on how well a portfolio stands up, not where one graduated from.
Of course this is different for other various fields. However the design and illustration field in general share these ideas.
I’m glad I did go to college to realize I didn’t need it. Unfortunately I had to spend $20,000 to figure that out. (on the bright side I didn’t burn though the full $80,000 for the 4 year program)
College is for experience and necessary for certain careers.
College for me was less for learning more for socializing met some awesome people, went to an awesome college at a good price learned from top professionals (ya, they worked part time teaching at local University same teaching less then quarter of the price). I didn’t go for web design but entertainment business law/music theory nice mix however when my business teacher wasn’t in one day a graphic designer took his place for a certain work project we did that day oddly enough changed my direction completely (the guy was awesome learned most my photoshop tips that day, he worked with huge clients!) I apply everything in my small business today. I am not a full time web designer but I work full time on web development on my small business and at time take clients mostly local but its been though here on the little guys (small business), never seen my town turned into a ghost town its quite scary totally new business environment its not easy worse then most states.
Basically Self Taught.
Ha, reasons like I stated in the paragraph is why you go to college!
IMHO, college is pretty useless. Ultimately, it’s just another way to get a person into debt. Once most people are out of college they’re pretty overwhelmed with the amount of debt they’re in and are on a never ending search for a job. The problem is that what they learned over the course of 4-5 years is irrelevant. I’ve taken upper division system administration classes only to facepalm at what was being taught. “RIGHT CLICK CLICK PROPERTIES DURR HURRR HURRRR”. And so begins the life of a corporate slave…
The whole thing about our field is that the best way to learn something is to actually DO IT. Working has taught me more than college because when you’re presented with a problem, you have to find a way to fix it. A combination of will power, Google, a few good books, and tutorial websites can offer a lot more than a college education.
I honestly think college is NOT for people who are interested in a web development career. It’s a dynamic field that’s always changing, and needs to be kept up to date. Math and physics are set in stone, which is why college works so well for the sciences, but not for something like web design.
Just my 2 cents.
I would agree that hands on experience is more valuable than lessons in a classroom. The problem with that is you have to be experienced enough to be able to take on real problems.
When freelancing at Beatport, I learned more in 3 months than I did in the entire 2 semesters at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. Part of what I had learned I ultimately had skipped out on while choosing to drop out, but the other 3/4ths of what I learned were from real working professionals that had way more talent than most instructors I had during the time I was attending school.
I consider my time at Beatport and learning under Dave Soderberg to have ben more or less a classroom in which I didn’t have to pay for, but was being paid to show up and complete assignments.
see http://www.davesoderberg.com
Personally I feel as though college is a necessary experience. I recently graduated from a University with a 4 year degree in Informatics and wouldn’t trade it back.
Admittedly what I gained in my classes focused on design was not always the most relevant or up to date information. However, I do believe the real value was gained in my education as a whole. Classes like philosophy, higher level math classes, speaking and writing classes, and other general education courses round you out as a person.
The networking, communication, and professional skills I gained in college have helped me tremendously and I think that is where the real value comes from.
Also the networking aspect that Amber brought up in the article is a huge factor as well. I made friends with some great people who will be valuable friends and resources for the rest of my life.
You point to something very important, when you are a self made coder, designer or whatever, you just learn what you think you need, in my former job no one but me knows a thing about trigonometrics needed when you are designing a label for a conical package, in college specially in a educational sytem like the salvadorian you learn many thing you think you will never use (all college students must be aproved in 40 courses to obtain a degree and at least 16 to be a technician), but at the end all they are put to use, in my case the little economics and accounting from college had helped me in my freelancing carrer.
Great article Amber, as always
Strange how things change according to country though : in South Africa, it is required by any company hiring you that you have at least
a) a University/College Degree in IT
b) 2+ years experience (minimum)
c) damn good references
Having done my Masters Degree in IT (Technical Applications stream), I was going to go the whole network-the-world route, but then actually fell straight back into coding which I had been doing from high school. Can’t remember the specifics why, but I did, and honestly, it was the better choice. I work for myself, have awesome hours, incredible amounts of work :S BUT, truth be told, I did learn quite a bit at college, and the experience was worth it.
So, end of the day, I would say do the college route if you have the finances and time available to you
Otherwise, get into the game early, learn as much as possible as quickly as possible, build contacts and if it requires, do small courses later on that you can show to clients and go “see, I am qualified and certified, I know what I am doing” + have a portfolio to proof it 
I think the problem lies with the schools. Some schools will often offer programs and degrees that are so behind the times and are so poorly taught that they should be removed all together. Rather than giving students the basic tools to succeed, they actually set them back.
I’ve heard the argument that, design school especially, needs to extend past the 4 year mark. And while that does mean more $$ to dish out, that hopefully means that when you finally do enter the workforce you are actually prepared with the basic tools, processes, techniques and real life work experience (aka internships).
The flip-side to this is that it also lies in the individual. I went to a school for design that had an extremely under developed program. But I spent a lot of time talking to teachers and learning on my own outside school that by the time I started to work I wasn’t too far behind. I actually managed to land a job pretty quickly and have a slowly growing list of clients that I work with outside of my 9-to-5.
I’m a bit on the fence with this one as well. I went to a university for a year right out of high school, and enrolled in the EE program because I loved tinkering with electronics in high school. A year later, and I was back at home, working in a retail job, because I saw that what I was learning wasn’t where I wanted to go, and I didn’t have $10,000+ a year to spend on having fun.
A couple of years, and a couple of other schools(each about a year) later(and still no paper for my troubles) – and I have a development job with a small firm.
I wasn’t asked about my education when I began working here. I began with a freelance contracted assignment through an old friend and mentor.
In my experience things have boiled down like this: it was who I knew that opened the door, it was hard work and dedication that solidified the fact that I belong at this position. Not to mention that I began my “real” career in development less than a month after I “should” have graduated had I done the traditional 4 year program. Granted the first year was very rough for numerous reasons, I am in a better position now than many of my friends I met in college who graduated.
But I’d be a complete liar if I said that I regretted going to university for that year…. best (who am I kidding…. only) $10,000 vacation I ever took
As Forrest Gump said “life is like a box of chocolat….” and so on, in my case I wento yo de university and studied Chemical Enginnering (a bit away from design) in 1997 find a job in a design studio (I need money to pay the college) there I started scaning and fixing images in photoshop and doing layout edition on Page Maker, them I was trainned to do interactive PDF on Acrobat, that was a seasonal job, then I was hired part time doing some html work updating info on pages, all my experience and knowledge comes from my work there, many times I found my older work mates graduated from college as designer had some difficulties with some things because what they have learned is very outdated, meny times they don’t know how to prepare the files to send it to the printing provider, in the other hand there was a couple of very creative and skilled designer and web coder on the team one of them impress me when he code php/html mixed page on the windows notepad, he doesn’t need nothing like dreamweaver and he has learned it on college, so with 10+ years of experience I started as freelance designer and now I had as clients some old friends from college, and some of my old work mates works with me. At this point I have a fair amount of clients and 99% returning ones.
The college can give you the ground knowledge but as a friend said to me that is on books too, and a book is cheaper than a college semester, life makes you bend or broke your plans and some times for good, I live in El Salvador and as a self taught designer I earn 5 times what my friend chemical engineers earn a month. here the college is relativelly cheap, by now I ending my second degree as Pure Chemist, tha chemistry is something I had loved since I was a kid my teachers say I’m a good chemist but design is safer and for me a more joyfull way to earn a living, and like other fellows freelancers said google is a teacher for all of us, and we must be very thankfull to the people that shares his knowledge and gives us the tools to make a living and to the people like Amber that get us together to share our lives and expriences with our community.
For me, a non-right brained person, college gave me perspective from the artsie types that I would never have thought of. I also got to rub elbows with people who were much better programmers than me.
My goal in college was to become a web designer/programmer. At my school, that meant a degree in Graphic Design and a degree in Web Development.
I literally had no clue where to start or what to do, so school was the best way to go.
I don’t think college is a question/option. Nothing can really put a value on a classical education. The amount of overall knowledge, different perspectives, responsibility, discipline, and other things one has to endure through 4+ years of college can really shape a person to be studious by nature. It can really help a person to develop a more open mind. Studying abroad, exchange programs, and even just meeting people who moved to the campus from all around the world is also a great way to expose yourself to more culture. A person who takes college seriously and embraces things they encounter can shed a great deal of naivety and gain a lot of social skills.
And thanks to financial aid and scholarships for being a 4.0 student, I was able to graduate with very little loan debt. And I acquired most of that stuff while in college, not before. It’s really a matter of trying really hard. The only impediment may be psychology, which isn’t 110% immutable. And, unlike monetary or business success where trying hard only goes so far, and sociological/economic/extraneous factors can greatly impede, doing good in school really is only a matter of effort. I’ve seen some of the most disinterested, failing, lackadaisical students pass some of the hardest classes once they swallowed their pride and got tutors, sacrificed some social activities, avoided distractions, or joined study groups.
As for it going to waste if you change fields, there is still a great deal of gen ed one receives regardless of their major. In my opinion, you shouldn’t jump into a major from the get-go and see it through anyway. People shouldn’t be afraid of changing majors and experimenting. But this isn’t high-school. This is college! It’s a big part of the rest of your life. Don’t rush it. Enjoy it and find yourself. You can say I too studied something I’m not readily pursuing. I studied Information Systems, which is basically a blend of business, programming and systems analysis. Every job I’ve held since graduating, both for companies and freelance, have all been as a web developer. But I learned a lot about business, designing systems both physical and informational, programming, and computers in general. It’s helped a lot.
How are you defining college here? 2-year technical degree? 2-year portfolio/finishing school? 4-year degree? M.A? M.F.A.?
I think the answer is, to be a great designer, in the classic sense, yes you need some kind of “training”, though I don’t see why a mentorship or internship couldn’t get you as much mileage in many cases as a 4-year degree. It really depends on the school too. If I were doing it all over again, I would seriously research it, and find the best school on the planet to attend, and I mean the one that would really position me, I don’t care if it was in Basel, or Pasadena, or New York, or Chicago, or Milan. Because Amber, some schools out there have reputations that really, REALLY precede them. Their grads go straight in to internships and jobs at places like Pentegram, and they choose which location they want.
I agree. I would’ve killed to go to some of the schools. If I had the insane amount of moo-lah required
I think we are missing the point, if you can go to school go! as I said I am finishing my second carrer on school, the point is “do you have to go to school to be be a designer/developer?” if you found yourself in the situation that doing it put the bread on the table do it, next year I will attend some classes in a design school to fill up the blanks of my knowledge of design. but by now non formal design education (google, smash mag, freelance folder, etc.) had been a big help for me and some others and is because this is about creativity and logic thinking I know some people that will never aquire creativity in a classroom, and I also can say that many other carrers cannot be self learned because you need many resources that you do not have and nobody will hire you without a college degree, for example nobody will let you manipulate a “Gas chromatographer with an acopled mass spectrometer”, or a “thermal differential analizer” without being a Analitical Chemist (as I said before, I’m a chemist).
Well i think that going to college may be helpful for those you are starting from zero. For me was different because when i started college i akready knew the basic knowledge and techniques, so it got boring for me, anyway, i think that these days, you can learn anything you want, (God bless Internet!). All the things I know about computers, software, hardware, etc. Is thanks to Internet, so in my case, the pros for going to college are: get contacts, feedback from other people, and that document that helps to get the job.
Hi Amber,
I too, can see both sides of your argument. However, I am currently in school for Graphic Design and find that the time to learn these programs and get a feel for the field before saying I’m an expert, is invaluable.
I have looked online for jobs in my field and found that many of them require a Bachelor’s degree and at least 1yr experience in the field as well. Of course, this is in addition to having an amazing portfolio.
This field is competetive enough that a degree may just give me the edge that someone else may not have, and I think clients will take me more seriously too.
Thanks for a great blog post!
~Janee
I don’t think college is a question/option. Nothing can really put a value on a classical education. The amount of overall knowledge, different perspectives, responsibility, discipline, and other things one has to endure through 4+ years of college can really shape a person to be studious by nature. It can really help a person to develop a more open mind. Studying abroad, exchange programs, and even just meeting people who moved to the campus from all around the world is also a great way to expose yourself to more culture. A person who takes college seriously and embraces things they encounter can shed a great deal of naivety and gain a lot of social skills.
And thanks to financial aid and scholarships for being a 4.0 student, I was able to graduate with very little loan debt. And I acquired most of that stuff while in college, not before. It’s really a matter of trying really hard. The only impediment may be psychology, which isn’t 110% immutable. And, unlike monetary or business success where trying hard only goes so far, and sociological/economic/extraneous factors can greatly impede, doing good in school really is only a matter of effort. I’ve seen some of the most disinterested, failing, lackadaisical students pass some of the hardest classes once they swallowed their pride and got tutors, sacrificed some social activities, avoided distractions, or joined study groups.
As for it going to waste if you change fields, there is still a great deal of gen ed one receives regardless of their major. In my opinion, you shouldn’t jump into a major from the get-go and see it through anyway. People shouldn’t be afraid of changing majors and experimenting. But this isn’t high-school. This is college! It’s a big part of the rest of your life. Don’t rush it. Enjoy it and find yourself. You can say I too studied something I’m not readily pursuing. I studied Information Systems, which is basically a blend of business, programming and systems analysis. Every job I’ve held since graduating, both for companies and freelance, have all been as a web developer. But I learned a lot about business, designing systems both physical and informational, programming, and computers in general. It’s helped a lot.
when i was young i was good at creating, coloring and designing, i don’t know where to start to become a designer.
what college do u have to go to learn about “designing”.
and where can i learn it from?
please reply i don’t know what to do with my life
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