Not only has my process grown, but I am constantly humbled to see what my classmates have designed with the exact same prompt. I’m constantly learning from my classmates and not just learning from my professors. We have learned to give honest and necessary feedback during critiques that improve our designs dramatically over its live before a final design is reached. The resources at the college are infinitely greater than I could have had at home teaching myself. We have screen printing, a letter press, a design library that puts my three or four web books to shame. The University provides opportunities to experiment in what you want to do in design as well–like a daily newspaper, university-college-club level graphic designers, contests, etc–that aren’t found teaching yourself on the computer.

Building connections with professors, students, and grad students is one of the large benefits. As are learning from them. So be it if I am the product of a college driven system of society. I see more benefits of pursuing a degree in Design than not and I know that I couldn’t have gotten to where I am today without my professors, classmates, and my university. Design is an interdependent and collaborative world, college is a very good opportunity to begin in it.

*Also, you get really nice student prices on the Adobe software, computers, etc. Pulling the student card is usually always beneficial.

Clearly, your statement about teaching yourself is the dominant piece of knowledge here. You and you alone are responsible for your education, so never expect to be spoon-fed anywhere.

That said, having teachers point you in the right directions (not always with the right knowledge unfortunately) is a great way to find starting points for educating yourself and your individual strengths and weaknesses. If you’re lucky, you get teachers that take an active interest in your career and give you a head start. Still, never once should you believe that somebody else is responsible for your education.

Mentors can be found outside of schools as well. If you are lucky enough to somehow end up working for one, you may not need a college education at all. I never found one, so I’m going the safe route.

Theoretically you can stick it solo from start to finish, but there is one big problem: Who will provide you with honest and professional feedback about your work? Remember that you must design for somebody else, not cater to your own personal taste. Friends and family are not a good source of constructive criticism either, as they will most likely pull their punches. I have seen a lot of wannabe-authors being ripped off by unethical publishers because they never managed to find somebody to tell them their work sucks. If ever you meet that great critic who tells you why you suck and how to improve, keep him.

I’m currently a first year design student majoring in Web Design and New Media. I’m glad to hear that others believe college is a good investment.

Some of my fears of attending college is that I may not be learning the skills and knowledge I really want to be learning.

I enjoy the aspects of Web Design but I’m more interested in UX design (wireframes, information architecture, personas, usability testing, etc), which is the field I really want to get into and not much the visual design such as gradients, drop shadows, etc (which I’m doing now in school). I’m an avid reader of design blogs and tutorials but most of my books are on subjects of IA, Usability, Navigation, etc.

I’ve looked into majors such as Human Computer Interaction but those majors require you to either minor or at least take programming classes, which I don’t enjoy, except html and css.

I think though that my current school is fine for now. But I don’t know if after I land a job as a web designer, I can transition out of the visual aspects and more into user experience.

Thanks for the article. Stuff like this is really helpful for students such as myself.