danielwilber asked: Given your background as a student and now as an instructor, how important do you feel is the role of formal design education is in the development of a young designer?
Do you feel like a comparable set of skills can be acquired through self-education?
How do you feel about the relationship between getting a design education and dealing with the debt incurred by high tuition?
Do attending a 'prestigious' art school (RISD, SVA, Art Center etc.) for the instructors/facilities is worth the tuition premium as opposed to 'smaller' or public schools?
Thanks for your time, and keep up your work (and writing), it's definitely appreciated.
Let’s number your questions.
1) I don’t think formal education is the be-all, end-all. I have several friends that are incredibly talented and very successful, and they are self-educated. Formal education offers a curriculum and a structure and pace to the learning. It also offers an outside pressure to commit to learning. If that’s something you feel like you need, there it is.
Regardless of how you receive your education, self-education is a necessity. If you go to a school, after you finish you’ll need to continue to learn and teach yourself new skills. I wish some schools would emphasize the cruciality of self-education more frequently. The design industry you work in when you graduate may be completely different than the design industry of when you started school.
2) Yes. But, I feel even with a self-educated designer, having some sort of mentor is necessary for success.
3) That’s a hard question with no tidy solution. Every student is different, every school is different. Some schools offer more value, others less. The debt from education should be considered an investment. But, I’m glad I finished school with as little debt as I did. Having less debt opened up my options and allowed me to take more risks.
4) I can’t comment on this. I’ve never been a student at a prestigious art school. All I know is my experience at my dirt-poor state school. I will say this though: a program is only as good as its instructors, regardless of what school.
