The latest issue of A List Apart centres around advancing and promoting the field of web. Specifically, the article titled, “Elevate Web Design at the University Level” discusses having web education at the university level.  The author, Leslie Jensen-Inman, mentions the web is a very fast-paced field, and teachers should believe and preach a culture of constant skills-updating. Furthermore, she states that universities have to be less strict about the educational requirements of professors. While I’m not against most of these concepts, I think we’re quite a ways off from that reality. In fact, I feel we’re at least five to ten years from away, and I think that’s just fine.

The transition period.


Arguably, what makes the web so powerful is that it exists at the intersection of all fields of study. Virtually every concentrations, from marketing to anthropology, computer science to fine arts now has to include some aspect of web in their curriculum. But before we start marching over to university provosts’ offices about lowering the requirements to teach web at universities, let’s take a step back and think about that. Firstly, we’re asking universities to lower their standards for some professors and create inequity between faculty members. Secondly, what credibility would there be for a program that was awarding university degrees by professors who didn’t hold one themselves? True, it has to start from somewhere - but the only way I see this happening is if professors, at least, have a degree in something related to the web. Universities are very bureaucratic environments often built on strong historical foundations. New technologies like computer science and nanotechnology have arrived in the past, and degrees were created - but definitely not by people without degrees themselves. No exception will be made for the web, nor should there be.

To say the field is still growing is an understatement.

The web only started being used commercially in the early nineties, and since then we’ve had at least two iterations of it, namely “2.0” and “3.0” (as artifical as those names are). Furthermore, not too long ago, all web duties were performed by a “webmaster”. Today, we have web specializations in visual design, user-experience design, information architecture, web analytics, web marketing, social media, back-end programing, and the list grows yearly. Until these specialties have matured and have been stable for a good five years, we can’t possibly expect a high-profile university to offer meaningful degrees in web. And while there is hope in the organizing bodies of the web (e.g., W3C and the like) in setting standards and best-practices, even they are still immature and hold relatively weak influence. (So weak is this influence that Microsoft still won’t release a sufficiently standards-compliant browser.)  The best approach, in my eyes, is to push for the expansion of other degrees to involve web-specific education. Get marketing professors to teach web marketing, computer scinece professors to teach PHP, etc and not just mention web topics in existing courses. Then when enough web-related courses are created, only then can we explore creating an entire degree. That takes time.

So what do we do in the meantime? It should be treated as a trade.

For a web degree to be useful it has to teach practical skills and techniques, not only theories and corollaries. So as much as web “professionals” would want university-level recognition, I believe that web work, web practical work, for the time-being, is destined to be taught as a trade. In a trade, practical, and up-to-date skills are taught, and students know well in advance that their skills will have to updated, and re-certified from time-to-time. Furthermore, trades are taught often with mentors - something I whole-heartedly promote. And eventually, as the field matures, I can see a more developed curriculum, with theories and research papers being taught in universities.

So until B.Web becomes a reality, I offer web workers this advice:

• Keep up-to-date with all things related to the web.
  I’m not saying to be an expert at everything, but at least read about new developments. This includes design, marketing, and analytics. Never stop learning.


• Join a network of web workers.
  You can’t be everywhere all the times, so having multiple ears out there about news, job openings, and new web courses and presentations will go a long way. If you hear of an event named anything with the word “camp” at the end of it - consider going.


• Don’t over specialize.
  Increase your worth and learn at least two specializations, like visual design and front-end development, or back-end programming and usability, or information architecture and web analytics. Not only does this make you more employable, but also it opens your mind to new opportunities where the two fields meet.


• Work on a site, even if it’s your own.
  Nothing beats practical experience. Build up a body of work. Take cheap contracts if you have to (but never free ones), set yourself tight deadlines, and establish some requirements just outside of your capabilities. Virtually every project will have a component you’re not completely comfortable with, and every project will be due yesterday - get used to it. That’s life in the web.


• Act professionally.
  Take yourself and your work seriously. Don’t call yourself a ninja. Be on time. Return calls. Speak and write maturely. Present yourself professionally. As an industry, if we don’t take ourselves seriously - why should others?


• Did I mention, keep up-to-date?
  Seriously. Moore’s law? It’s held for a while now, and I don’t see it giving up any time soon.