College is expensive, and teaching yourself design can be time consuming and often feels like you're driving around without a map. If you're like a lot of my students, maybe you're doing tons of research to figure out which school might be for you, and maybe you feel like you have to choose between a great program with crazy massive costs or a more affordable state school with just an okay program.

And I completely understand that. If you’re like most of my students, you might be afraid to take on a bunch of debt when there’s no real promise of success. You might be worried that you could lose out big somehow no matter what you do.

You don’t want to make the wrong choice and look back after four years with no job prospects that excite you.

And if you get there by racking up a ton of debt, you might end up feeling like you have to take any job you can get your hands on just to get out from under that pressure. It could take you years to get to a place where you feel free to make heart-centered decisions in your career and stop taking jobs out of a sense of obligation so you can pay that student loan bill every month.

Wouldn't you rather set yourself up to be a passionate, excited designer with options and the ability to chase after your dreams, not someone tied to a big ass anchor for what could be the most exciting years of your career?!

The traditional higher education system doesn’t always work that well for creatives. Costs have skyrocketed in our lifetime, and universities and loan companies are making tons of money off of people who think they need degrees but can’t afford it.

Our parents and grandparents might have told us we need to go to college to get a good job, and that’s still true if you want to go into a traditional field and become a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. But graphic design is an untraditional field that requires a specific type of education for entry and success.

And the truth for designers is that your portfolio is the most important thing about you, so even if you take out the loans or pay all that money and spend four years getting through 40 different classes — 20 of which you don’t actually even need to be a designer — while also missing out on income during all that time, if your program doesn’t focus on the right things as you get to the part where you actually build your portfolio and prepare to apply for jobs, you’re still screwed, and you’ve wasted tens of thousands of dollars and four years of your life.

Getting a college degree is no guarantee in this field.

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