Bursting the Academic Bubble

The thing about design education no one tells you about.

By Jacob Dommer

I have a love-hate relationship with academia. The longer I stay here, the more respect I have for the network of professors and the dedicated resources at our disposal. Never again will I find myself in another community of lifelong learners genuinely interested in supporting each other’s personal development. At the same time, the more involved I become on campus, the less patience I have for academia’s hypocrisy in the face of change – a stubborn allegiance to upholding outdated modes of learning under the guise of academic exploration.

This time of year, the students at the College of Design are entering the second half of the spring semester. That means gearing up for another marathon of all-nighters, vague expectations, and improvisational presentations. Now approaching graduation, students are seething with disillusionment as they reckon with the gross disconnect between academia and the “real world.”

Rumor has it, if you listen close enough, you can hear the ghosts of generations of design students that came before us, murmuring in the courtyard of Rapson Hall after dark, still mourning the unkept promise of a work-life balance.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, design programs, particularly architecture, are infamous for functioning more like a doctoral residency – an around-the-clock work ethic with a flair for arts and crafts. It’s not uncommon for us to stay up for 48 hours cramming for a design review, sleep under our studio desk, and burn through hundreds of dollars on cardboard, paper, and glue (not included in tuition).

Any hopes we had freshman year of having a life outside of school have since been reduced to comedic punch lines shared amongst the graduating class.

The secret to our resilience? A compulsive affection for caffeine, a sadistic romance for perfection, and an ego groomed for a lifestyle of imbalance and external validation. A professor-pleasing mix between Friedrich Nietzsche’s Superman complex and the starving artist syndrome.

After 4 years of binging YouTube tutorials and pandering to the design tastes of professors, our GPA is finally nearing its shelf life. The constant state of burnout felt at school is treated as just another cost of admission to a successful career in design. What many don’t realize is that many of the skills and design standards enforced at school don't directly align with the expectations of the workforce.

An undergraduate degree may never be able to prepare students for the nuances of succeeding as a design professional in a world that is rapidly shifting. However, design activities dedicated to "learning how to learn" or "pushing the [academic] dialogue" are not valid excuses to deprive students of the tools needed to survive a career as volatile as design. It’s teaching practices like these that cause an imbalance of expertise in the industry and a barrier to entry for students with a broader diversity of design interests.

Looking through the lens of architectural academia, the ability to understand building code, navigate the business of design, or produce construction-ready drawings are treated as rote tasks best reserved for on-the-job learning. The problem is that these seemingly “trivial” tasks make up most of what architects actually do in the field. This technical gap is quickly felt in the field as imposter syndrome creeps in with every task. As a result, the industry has become accustomed to a self-perpetuating culture of design martyrdom and uncompensated work for the sake of learning.

Like many other design programs, we’re taught to overlook the reality of our design decisions for the sake of investigating “big ideas,” each loaded with abstract theory-mongering and pretension design jargon overcrowded with a mouthful of syllables. Although the creative, research-driven eye candy embodies many of the qualities of design that initially got us into this field, it fails to accurately represent what the job of a designer actually becomes after graduation.

It’s time we level the learning field and ground our design education in reality.

Considering most design students don’t intend on pursuing a career in academia, I start to wonder who the curriculum is designed to serve — the students or the professors?