“Dear Admissions…”

So, some of you will have been following my ‘University Tour’ over the past few months, and may have read some (or all) of my thoughts as I visited each of 6 different University Open Days with my 17 year old daughter.

A bit of background before I start.

My daughter has been a keen textiles bean throughout GCSE and loves being creative. For A-Level she decided to study Textiles, DT (Product Design) and Psychology and has always fancied Fashion or Textiles as her future. We have visited New Designers for the last 3 years, the first two years of which were to Part 1 (the fashion and textiles week) where she looked at everything, and we shortlisted the institutions that took her fancy (longlist in the first year…shortlist in the second). In the second year we visited, she started to doubt whether Fashion or Textiles as a pure subject was her thing as she felt she needed more purpose or problem solving included. To paraphrase her, she said that “fashion feels a bit shallow. I feel like I want to ‘solve’ a problem rather than create a look”.

So I introduced her to Product/Industrial Design which is why she opted to take it alongside Textiles at A-Level and keep both options open.

So, following our second visit to ND, we created a list of Universities that had good representation in both Fashion/Textiles AND Product/Industrial design courses. It was based on her original shortlist and bolstered by my knowledge of what I understood to be the better PD/ID courses. It felt like a good approach to allow her – at each open day – to compare and contrast the two offers (within reason), see the facilities and more importantly, to see if there is scope for overlap as this is where her heart really lies. The intersection between fashion and problem solving. I fully accept there are worthy courses that have robust reputations in either fashion/textiles OR product/industrial design but we focussed on those places that had both as it felt more useful whilst she was still undecided and where there may be more of an overlap opportunity.

At the conclusion of each visit, I shared my top level thoughts (good and bad) in separate posts on LinkedIn to which I have received (understandably and predictably) mixed reactions.

People are free to trawl back through my feed and find the 6 posts in question and can read the specifics and ensuing comments if they wish. They are very specific to the institutions in question, but I thought it might be useful to summarise my thoughts in an article. I fully appreciate that it’s hardly comprehensive as we’ve only visited 6 open days with this specific brief in mind. Having said that, there are aspects that I can reflect on with more University Open days as I did something similar with my eldest daughter 2 years ago, taking in an additional 5 Universities. So 10 in total (one was duplicated). We still hope to visit more, but they are most likely going to be specific courses rather than comparable faculties/departments.

In the interests of not targeting specific institutions, I have commented more broadly on themes I’ve noted without mentioning who were best/worst etc. I’ll leave it for you to dig deeper if you wish. I have mentioned the Universities visited at the end of the article.

For obvious reasons, much of what I have noted is fairly industry specific as I see things both from a parental perspective (and through the eyes of my daughters) as well as an industry ‘insider’ (for want of a better word). It makes for an interesting – and sometimes conflicted – combo.

So here are my thoughts…consider them or ignore them as you see fit. I’ve split the thoughts into more generic ‘Open Day’ stuff and then more specific ‘Design’ stuff.

1. The BIG opening welcome.

Every open day starts with some variation of the same thing…a ‘welcome’ address by the Pro-Chief-Vice-Arch-Dean-Chancellor or somesuch. It often starts with some whimsical crack about the weather, followed by a short video which is exactly like every other University promo video. Lots of diverse students laughing and chatting around a study table or a student union coffee shop or enjoying pizza together somewhere in town. Lots of studying. Lots of laughing. Lots of walking. Some ‘moderate’ drinking. Someone playing volleyball. Etc. Etc.

It then features statistics. Lots of statistics.

We are #10 in the blah blah ranking for this and #5 for that. #11 in the Guardian for most sustainable coffee cups. #4 in the Bath Evening Chronicle rankings for most successful ‘above average height’ finance graduate employment. It feels like there’s a Santa’s sack full of different stats that EVERY Uni can fit to their narrative. So much so that it is all meaningless. I’ve looked up Top 10 lists of PD/ID courses and haven’t recognised handfuls of the institutions on there or if I do, they are in nonsensical order. Apparently (and no disrespect to this institution) but Fife College is the 7th best Industrial Design course in the UK, according to one list. Go figure.

Then ensues some form of excruciating Q&A session with ‘3 current students’ who have “given up their time to be here”. The questions are banal and the answers equally scripted or vacillating. Lots of nervous laughter and some bad jokes about studying versus drinking.

Then a vacuous thank you and a crowd crush as hundreds of people attempt to exit two different doors and leg it to the subject sessions half a mile away in about 6 minutes.

In truth we stopped going to these as they were all identical and pointless.

We learned nothing. We were convinced of nothing.

2. Ask me a question…

University open days are awash with helpful undergraduate students who are all forced to wear indentikit coloured t-shirts and hold ‘ask me a question’ flags or boards. All incredibly useful when you are running late, a little lost and don’t know one end of the campus from another.

However, I think our current research (i.e. embarrassing Dad asking questions) suggests that approximately 75% of these students don’t know a single thing about what’s going on….bless their cottons. Most frantically start checking their phones for answers (don’t worry…I can do that), or asking someone in a different coloured t-shirt (clearly a ‘team leader’) the same question.

We visited one University where we had to ask at least 15 different ‘helpers’ where the student union was until someone actually knew. Turns out they had staffed the open day with students who didn’t actually attend that campus! I have no issue with the individuals…fair play to them for standing around all day with a rictus smile, but it might be useful if they were briefed just a little…maybe?

3. ‘Getting here’ information.

This varied massively. From the initial ‘sign up to our open day’ to ‘where to find the XXX department’, each University had its epic fails. I am convinced these days are shortlisting exercises for the Crystal Maze or Squid Game as it often becomes a frantic dash here or a clueless wander there.

I would suggest that every University provide ‘the open day’ experience as a first semester project for ‘experience’ or ‘service’ designers. Most of the touchpoints are impossible to find let alone navigate and in some case the campus maps were wrong or out of date. In some cases I ended up in an infernal mobeus loop of website links attempting to find the right information. Some send you to a 30 page Issuu online flipbook prospectus which is useless on a phone.

Also, the whole registration exercise seems to be more relevant to the University sending endless spam emails over the forthcoming weeks and months than helping the attendant visitors. In our latter visits, we skipped the registration process and headed straight to the course talks. It doesn’t benefit us at all.

4. Timings.

Which leads me neatly into timings.

When I took my eldest around different Universities, she was clear about the course she wanted to study so we simply headed for the relevant department and the appropriate course talk and department tour.

But my youngest daughter has made things more complex. She isn’t certain about the course she wants to study so we attend hoping to see a number of different courses in order to compare and contrast. However, bar very few, all course talks tend to happen at exactly the same time, which then throws you into making an immediate ‘on the spot’ decision as to which course is more important. Not easy when that is the primary purpose of your visit in the first place.

In most cases, we listened to the full course overview and studio tour from one course and then legged it to the other department/faculty/course/building in a frantic attempt to get as much of an overview of the other course as possible – mainly by sneaking around, asking questions or hijacking a member of staff who had hoped to get away! It’s certainly made it tricky to make a balanced comparison between two competing but comparable disciplines…particularly if you are 17 years old and clueless about your future.

Which leads me into…

5. The lack of overlap.

This is the biggest thing I’ve noticed and the biggest opportunity I think there might be for Universities to recruit more students into creative courses. Admittedly it will probably make things a little more complex from an administrative point of view, but I think the benefits outweigh the negatives.

My daughter is expected to make a decision between fashion/textiles OR product/industrial design. But her head lies between the two. We’ve had lots of conversations with tutors who say ‘of course the students can utilise the facilities in the other department’, but that’s not the same as feeding off the tutors and being taught modules that resonate with you and what you want to become.

There is inherently a huge amount of overlap in creative courses. The need to research, spot trends, unearth insights or findings, ideate, prototype, evaluate and develop. These are common across fashion, textiles, graphics, automotive, interiors, product and digital. For sure the subject and materials are very different and sometime the tools used differ, but the core competencies remain very similar.

You are seeing it in industry. Industrial designers riding high in the automotive industry. Fashion designers doing great stuff in the product design industry. Game designers kicking ass in the service industry. If you are genuinely creative and want to solve problems, then as long as you get some time to familiarise yourself with the substrates, materials, language and tools, you can apply what you’ve learned elsewhere to this problem.

We sort of do it in a bitesize way with foundation years. Students are allowed to try multiple modules across different disciplines throughout a year to see what tickles their fancy.

Why can’t we do it with degree courses or degree apprenticeships? Students maybe do a common ‘creative thinking’ or ‘design principles’ first year, module or semester (they can use whatever materials they wish or lean into specific disciplines if they are passionate about it) and then allow them to pick and choose curated modules and ‘building blocks’ across 2 more years to create the course they feel best represents their passion and direction. You would then get product designers who love textiles and digital, or game designers who can understand industrial design, interior designers who know loads about silhouette and fabric or design engineers who are experts in 3D knitting. That strikes me as a much more adaptable and relevant approach for the plethora of future careers that don’t seem to fit into neat little boxes. It would also mean you could be taught by a proper expert in one module rather than a course leader having to manage multiple module all under one teaching programme. I also have my opinions on the emphasis on the somewhat outdated single ‘major project’ in the final year…but I’ll leave that for another day.

We’ve seen (and are excited by) one particular course that seems to be striking a lovely balance between fashion, technology and product but this is once again a single standalone course that has to appeal directly to students wishing to take it. It still fits into the University ‘mould’. It required ‘validation’.

I am well aware that the beaurocracy of University course development and approval/validation is a minefield and an anathema to flexibility. I once asked why a course was still called Product Design and the answer was that it took too long to change it within the University approval system!

Sounds like the tail wagging the dog to me.

6. PD doesn’t know what to say.

By far the biggest disappointment to me throughout our Open Day tour has been to hear the course talks about Industrial and Product design. Apart from maybe one (possibly two at a stretch) of the six we attended, they were all lacking any energy, clarity or passion at all.

Which as someone working within the industry, felt like a gut punch.

I fully appreciate that industrial and product design are complex things to describe and explain. Even amongst ourselves, most industry peers find it tricky to explain what it is in a bitesize and succinct way without sounding a little smug. If someone asks me in a social situation what I do, I tend to revert to ‘creative engineer’ as it kills the conversation and we can move on to dissecting Love Island or Traitors.

But I’ve never felt so discouraged and disheartened by something as when I sat in the audience listening to course leaders or lecturers attempt to describe the course content or what you will become. It genuinely feels like no-one seems to know how to describe it anymore. And these are reputable courses I’m talking about.

You have about 30 minutes to engage and excite a bunch of 17 year olds to study something they probably know very little about and haven’t much of a clue about what job prospects they can expect. You really don’t need to describe the minutae of ‘experience design’ or card modelling. You need to tap into the ability to change the world, help people, make stuff, disrupt, invent, collaborate, create and solve. Tell them WHY you are teaching them stuff about empathy, manufacturing, ergonomy, aesthetics and business, not just the tools they are using or pictures of dismantled toasters.

Get them excited at the potential for them to affect change and make a difference.

BE excited. SOUND excited. SHOW exciting things.

Don’t just talk to them about some irrelevant past experience you have in designing some obscure metal 3D printed filter or a weird ‘exhibition installation’ or a car interior 25 years ago. They don’t give a shit. It just looks like old men flexing. It’s sad and boring. Oh yes…and don’t bloody lie about it. You’ll get found out.

Talk to them about brands they recognise and relate to. Talk to them about stuff that they think is interesting and relevant.

It’s not surprising that numbers are falling. Based on much of what I’ve seen and heard I’m surprised the numbers are there at all.

And I say all of this as someone who wants the industry to survive and thrive. I’m sure there are many great lecturers and some brilliant course talks, but based on the direct evidence put before me on the open days, I am incredibly disappointed and concerned.*

These talks have directly affected my daughter’s view of industrial and product design to the extent that she is no longer excited by it at all. Quite the opposite. It sounds boring to her. And based on much of what we’ve seen, I don’t disagree.

What a shame.

*There were some exceptions but broadly speaking the majority were dull and uninspiring.

7. Facilities.

It is clear that Universities are pumping lots of money into incredible buildings and workshops for the students to use. Some of them are jaw droppingly good. Some are spangly and new and haven’t been fully taken advantage of yet. Others are a bit more sprawling and disconnected as University buildings are adapted and repurposed to offer bigger workshop spaces. Some are a bit ‘rabbit warren esque’ as they have attempted to fit them within inner city constraints. But there’s no doubt that all the Unis we visited understand the need for good ‘building’ spaces to support students as they create and test. It makes a mockery of the facilities we had as students.

I have been particularly impressed with the textiles and fashion facilities throughout our visits. I appreciate that a sea of sewing machines and cutting tables is easier to accommodate than CNC milling machines and welding benches, but nevertheless, the spaces feel collaborative and professional. There are certainly no excuses for lack of access to kit and it’s also encouraging to hear how many Universities are providing ‘loan’ top notch laptops and iPads to students who need them or who can’t afford them.

I still have my suspicions though, that many students don’t use these workshops as much as the course talks suggest they do. Given that most ID work is generated in CAD and built using 3DP, and that most final year students have to live offsite, my hunch is that a great deal of work is done in bedrooms and kitchens.

8. Placements.

This has been a ‘wasp in my chops’ at every open day, and something I feel incredibly frustrated by.

I’ll cover it in two parts; Fashion Design and Industrial Design.

The fashion industry is rotten. Like, proper rotten. It is still acceptable to suggest that students have to self fund their entire 3rd year on placement as businesses – broadly speaking – do not pay the students, and if they do it is a paltry £20 per day for lunch. These are profit making businesses like Victoria Beckham, Julien Macdonald, Asos, River Island, Paul Smith…amongst others I fleetingly spotted on a passing presentation slide. I spoke to one student at New Designers last year who had been offered a placement in Belgium and had to fund herself entirely – no salary, no moving expenses, no allowance!

And yet, the Universities still promote placements as something students should do (although if you dig a little it seems only a small percentage of them actually do the placement year, and if they do, it’s rarely a full year), plainly acknowledge that they don’t get paid, flagrantly promote the ‘sexy’ brands on a powerpoint slide as ‘industry links’ and turn a blind eye to it all. It feels so wrong and yet it feels like an unwritten acceptance across the industry. It is one of the primary reasons that I have misgivings about my daughter studying a pure ‘fashion’ course.

In the defence of a few courses, they do state that they actively support students getting paid on placement, but that typically means they most likely have to work for businesses like Adidas or Puma rather than a dedicated fashion house. Not that there is anything wrong with the sportwear brands (I actually think they are doing the more interesting stuff) but it is small change. It’s no wonder that most people who ‘make it’ in fashion are well financed young women** who happen to live in London….and something the tutors admitted to in conversation.

**A bit of a coarse generalisation but it serves a point.

Industrial design on the other hand has rid itself of the curse of ‘free internships’ many many years ago – thankfully. It is widely accepted that placement students get a fair wage and treated much like a junior designer wherever they land and typically work for the full year or sometimes do two 6 month placements (or thereabouts). Some do 6 months studying abroad…that sort of thing.

Most courses also have decent and robust industry links who might sponsor ‘live briefs’ or work with course leaders to review project outcomes. It is one of the things that many PD/ID courses seem to be doing relatively well.

Having said that, whilst most courses will promote the 4 year ‘sandwich’ courses as the most ‘industry favourable’, they are not as helpful as they might suggest when it comes to helping students find a placement, despite what they tell you in the presentations. Yes, many Universities have ‘placement co-ordinators’ or somesuch, but from my experience within industry, there isn’t as much support for the students as we would be led to believe. Words like ‘encourage’ and ‘support’ are used a lot. Read between the lines and you realise that the University doesn’t have quite as many solid industrial links as they would like and I’ve known far too many students be left in limbo when it comes to advice on timings, applications and opportunities.

I would always advise students that they will have to do most of the legwork. Don’t expect the Uni to do it for you and you won’t be disappointed.

That’ll do for now. There are a few other things I would have liked to discuss but I’ve already gone on too long. My overall take out from all of this, is that courses are finding themselves stuck on a predictable hamster wheel, encumbered by bureaucracy, following age old paradigms, struggling to patchwork the course content with ‘new’ industry relevant modules here and there and slowly losing their way.

There are some exceptions. Some welcome changes to established courses to bring them kicking and screaming into the modern era, or brand new courses that are filling the gaps beautifully. But these are outliers and they shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be this hard to find courses that feel relevant and energetic, that inspire young minds to change the world.

I am aware that much of the blame does not like with the course tutors and leaders. They are advocating change but the system won’t let them. Or if they do, they have to do it through treacle, upside down whilst wearing a straightjacket. I get it.

But there is stuff that can be done right now, within the established construct, that can elevate these creative courses above where they currently reside.

Rant over.

Universities visited in 2024…

De Montfort, Nottingham Trent, Sheffield Hallam, Falmouth, Loughborough, Northumbria.

Universities visited in 2022…

Oxford, Exeter, Durham, Loughborough, Bristol.