A challenge!

The other night I went on a bit of a rant on Twitter. Sorry for that. But I really do believe in what I was saying. Formal education in the web industry is not always amazing, I’ve experienced it, it’s far from perfect. But that doesn’t mean it should be so badly criticised so generally as it has been. There are people working on amazing courses and delivering education that is current and constantly kept up to date.

I read a lot of comments from people saying that formal education is poor and not worth bothering with. However I don’t hear them taking that as an opportunity to help and do something about it. So I would like to offer a challenge, to anyone who agrees with the comments that formal education in the web industry is poor, then I say do something about it and help improve it!

From my experience Universities and Colleges are grateful when people in the industry are willing to get involved and lecture or run seminars. But they don’t know who is willing unless you tell them, so contact a local college or university and offer your help and see what you can do. There’s also the option of taking on placement students as sandwich courses are becoming more and more popular, help the students by giving them a head start in the industry. Also if writing is more your thing, think about getting involved in the W3C Web Education Community Group who are currently working on a new curriculum for web education.