With rising tuition fees and the growing cost of textbooks, many prospective web design students wonder if there is really any value in earning a web design degree. While a degree is a qualification that is required in many different fields and professional settings, that is not true in all professions. In some professional worlds, more focus is placed on talent than on the candidate’s educational history that only shows that they passed an acceptable number of courses to earn their degree over an extended period of time.
While a degree can be valuable in some settings, it is important to know if you will earn a return before you apply for admission or pay a high dollar value per unit. If there are other routes that you can go down that will not dig you into debt, you should know about them. Read on, and find out if earning a degree is going to really help you earn a reputation in web design.
You Do Not Need Just a Formal Education to Work in Design
In some careers, employers and licensing agencies will not even consider hiring you until you have an accredited bachelor’s degree, master’s or even doctorate. This is not true in the world of web design. In fact, there are so many different examples of self-taught designers who have made a name for themselves by showing off their design talents without needing an expensive degree on their resume. Instead of letting their resume and their educational experience speak, they let their portfolio speak to them. While this is true, taking the right program can help you develop your talents even more than you thought they could be.
What is A Looming Issue With Web Design Degrees Today?
When several experienced designers were asked whether or not a degree is valuable by Netmag, many answered no for a long list of reasons. These expert designers have seen the field flourish and become a higher demand than ever projected, and with the continuous growth in the field, they find that college courses are never really up-to-date. They can teach the basics, but courses are constantly behind the times and cannot adequately prepare someone for the industry after graduation.
What is Being Done to Address Issues With Current Web Design Curriculum?
Luckily, for those who do want to get an adequate formal education, there are new curriculum standards in the making that will address current problems. The Web Standards Project is pushing to make the InterACT curriculum a standard in this discipline. This will create open course structures that will ultimately created by practitioners and professors who are experts in web design and who see a need for new concepts to be taught in the community. It has become a much more practical option that will soon gain ground.
You will need to really assess the cost of degrees and what they will do for you when you graduate to assess the personalized value to you. It may be helpful to know that about 38% of professionals have less than a four-year degree and can make up to $30 per hour. These individuals have found that a 12-week web development and their eye for design was all that they needed. Use information on demand and education and then you can decide to earn a web design degree.
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