Education in the web industry, is it good enough?
Recently through both my experience and after reading an article in the newspaper from the recent new adventures conference I started thinking more about what education does for people who want to get into this industry and where it’s falling short. So is it time the web industry educated educational institutions?
I’ve only recently entered the web industry as a front end developer, before that I was a student at Oxford Brookes University where I studied computer science, which included many subjects, some of which were based around web design. From my education I was taught the basics of PHP and JavaScript and built on my knowledge of HTML and CSS, however since taking on my job after leaving Uni I found myself thrown in a the proverbial deep end!
It’s not good enough is it!
So basically what I’m trying to say is I feel my education didn’t prepare me very well for the real world. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? I went into the industry having not used a CMS, didn’t know much about fonts (didn’t really even know the web fonts properly) and any idea of learning actual design at Uni was left to recommended reading…is that really good enough?
And from speaking to my current employer (and I would like to hear opinions from other companies and industry leaders) a degree is not exactly the first thing on the shopping list of requirements in a job applicant any more.
So what can be done about this? I think the answer is for the web industry to get involved more with education and help to improve the current curriculum to help students who want to learn web design and development, learn it to a point where the businesses will be able to more readily consider them a serious applicant.
What do we do from here then?
There are a few ways that this could be solved, the web industry could work closer with Universities and attempt to improve the curriculum, companies could offer placements for work experience and gap years for students. And what about education outside of Universities and colleges? I know internships are fairly commonplace in our industry but another idea I had thought of was what about a web industry apprenticeships?
Well I’m happy to say that recently that idea has been taken on by someone who spoke at a conference I recently attended, enter Mr Mark Boulton. While sat on twitter sometime last week I noticed a tweet from Mark saying
“Two job opportunities @markboultondsg: Web Designer and Web Design Apprentice:http://t.co/Uj0Ndc7“
and instantly I was intrigued to see what was going on.
Mark posted a link to a blog post a day or so later explaining his reasons for taking on a web design apprentice, saying
“Internships are the norm in our industry. I did it, and it was mostly great. But the thing is; it didn’t pay well and I was only there for a few months.”
and
“An Apprentice is something completely different. It’s a commitment to teach and nurture you over a given period of time.”
All I can say is that I wholeheartedly agree with what Mark is doing and can only wish him the best in doing so. I also hope that this might start off a new way of educating people in the ways of our industry as it’s not only a great way of doing so but also has the potential to happen quickly. Which lets be honest is the best thing about how our industry works!
I think now more than ever it’s important that we look to improve how people come in to our industry as what I’ve seen recently is it maturing and finally starting to be taken more seriously as a profession, we can’t continue to do this with people being poorly educated at the first level. Otherwise we’re going to be heading into that inevitable situation where companies only look for people experience and students are completely unable to get that experience.
I must say I’m rather impressed by this post Adam. You’re definitely right. I would like to say this though…I hope you’re sitting down and be careful not to drop your iPad because I’m about to drop some knowledge.
I think that the issues you faced when you first started with One are the same issues everyone in our fields faces in their first job fresh out of Uni.
All we knew is what we were told was right by our lecturers and anything else we’d managed to pick up from our peers and under our own steam.
But what if the lecturer wasn’t very good?
What if the source you used to learn about css wasn’t a credible one, what if their css was poor, badly constructed and fundamentally flawed?
What if you learnt to program in Delphi and you get a job working with VB.Net?
You’re left to learn, quickly, the new people, you’re new role, the new IDE’s, the new everything! And you have to do all of it having arrived at work at 9AM! which for a recent grad is still very early. It’s a lot for people to cope with. There’s also the issue of finding a job in the first place what with everyone wanting experience which fresh out of uni, you just don’t have, but that’s for another time.
Uni’s teach you the concepts and the “official” way things should be done, beyond the concepts the stuff you get taught is rarely the way things actually happen in the “real world”. The difference between you and I is the fact that I had my placement year. The placement year is something I would recommend to anyone doing a degree almost regardless of what field the degree is in.
On the placement I faced most of the hurdles you had when you got your first job but where I was the company knew I was only part way through my degree and I think this helped them manage their expectations of me as well as reducing the pressure I felt. During my placement at Solution7 (www.Solution7.co.uk) I learnt more about computing then in the whole of my university course, and I was only there for 18 months!
Because of the amount I learnt in such a short amount of time I think the idea of apprenticeships is a fantastic one, though I still think the apprentice should have at least an A-Level in Computing so they know the basic concepts before they start to learn “Industrial Computing”. If it were to happen the companies offering the positions should be regulated by a body of some description so that we don’t end up with a generation of Developers who’ve been taught dodgy techniques and we gradually bring our technological world to an end.
I feel I should stop now as I’ve been rambling a lot and I could have just said “Apprenticeships would be a brilliant idea as people would learn the core processes of ‘industrial computing’ quickly and in real world situations in a way that could never be achieved in a lecture hall or in 1 hour lab sessions”, but then where would the fun have been in that??
Your friend,
Andy – @WelchWay
…..PEACE!
I would disagree. In a degree described as ‘Computer Science’, I would expect the course to be at a much higher level. You should be taught the principles of systems in a way that can be applied to any system.
Courses that get too close to the ‘Real World’ end up teaching students only how to do tasks in a particular language or CMS which leaves them ill-equipped when they get out there and find jobs where a different language is in use. If they’re competent and know the principles they should be able to adapt themselves to a new system quickly.
Thanks for the comment James, and you make a good point, maybe I wasn’t on the correct course if I was going to take up web development as a career, although going into Uni I really had no idea what I wanted to do when I left. And yes, from my time at Uni I was taught the principles of systems and development, I was taught over and over how to do if statements and loops in various languages which seemed to take up a lot of lecture time which could have been maybe focused on other things like introducing more advanced techniques in javascript (or other languages) or introduce things like jQuery?
So taking computer science out of the equation, what would be the options for someone going into Uni to learn Web Design/Development? At a glance towards the beginning of this academic year I saw that there are now a lot of Universities offering web design courses and at a quick look over the course content it looks like they’re certainly starting to do things properly. However as the post was based on my own experience, when I started Uni I don’t think a single web design/development course even crossed my path when I was looking for a course (granted I can’t be 100% certain as that was about 5 years ago now).
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that through my experience, having a lecturer pull up a web page and say “this is a good website, look at the pretty colours” (OK, I’m paraphrasing) wasn’t the best introduction on how to build good websites. What I would like to see happen is for Universities to maybe speak to a professional or have a lecturer with experience in the things they’re going to teach so they can teach it well, as unfortunately I don’t think I had that.