Does a UX or UI designer need a college degree?

Question

IT education

I read and read habra and came across several messages, posts, which say that a UI / UX designer needs a higher education to work. It’s just that UX is a wildly interesting area for me, but I didn’t plan and don’t plan to get a tower, so I earn money on IT, but I want to finish studying English to an acceptable level and get a remote job as the above-mentioned specialist. Maybe I missed the moment when employers started demanding VO? How many vacancies I have not seen, both in the bourgeoisie and in Runet - more than half require work experience, or a good portfolio, or both.
I ask for a detailed answer, it’s just that I really wasn’t fond of anything for so long, but here it’s a little broken off, what do you think - will there be a demand for the presence of VO in the field of web / ui / ux design in the future (or in another area, I’m talking about the very fact of having VO) ?
Can I relax and continue to study or already collect documents and give money for admission?

Answer 1

Briefly not necessary , but below why, what you need and what to do.
traditional model of universal education from school-secondary school-high school was designed for a different society. On the industrial and was born under Bismarck. There, a person was an appendage of the machine and he had to be taught to work on this machine. As well as the pension system and the health care system. But the last two are not here.
Ideally, this system produces a kind of average level of mass education, which is suitable for craftsmen / engineers who maintain machines with a small component of creative labor.
Until now, many programmers are taught to write something in a notebook, referring to the fact that you remember it better this way. And the joke is that you need to learn better, and there is nothing to learn in modern universities, since programs have not kept pace with progress for a very long time.
Programmers have always been taught out of hand in the last 20 years, since there are no ready-made personnel after the university. The explanation is simple - all the brains went into business, in universities, either losers or enthusiasts. The latter are few and they do not make the weather.
Over the past three years, I have recruited a lot of enough young people. There is only one recipe: in Moscow, Moscow State University VMK, Fiztekh is the first filter. Not found there, look further. And these two faculties are not because of ready-made knowledge, since there students are engaged in the same garbage as elsewhere, but these faculties are like a litmus test for a worthwhile material for an employer for employees without work experience. No one in the Russian Federation produces ready-made specialists.
Slightly better situation in the world. But not at the expense of universities, but at the expense of corporations that organize their employee training centers on the basis of universities, in fact, allocating their employees to teach and look after talents.
The current model of Russian education is pure fiction. Googled, for example, how many departments of ufology we have. Shiz in its purest form.
The fact that the traditional school model has failed all over the world is already a generally recognized fact - the school of children basically cripples (leveling everyone under the below-average template). The university model has merged for the 3rd world exactly, for the 1st world with a large share of questions.
3) What instead?
Now non-degree skills are beginning to be valued abroad on a par with average universities for entry-level IT workers. For the non-initial, only experience already plays a role.
For 2016 I have done over 30 interviews. Education for me is rather a limiting filter: for example, it is better without a higher education than with economics or the humanities :).
In the field of UX, in general, normal higher education is impossible, since the sphere is new. Just look at the logic of the current development of educational services: most of them don’t even write books, but immediately turn new techniques/knowledge/learning models into seminars or webinars. Since writing a book takes six months or a year, and during this time it becomes obsolete by current standards.
The current unsatisfied need of the modern economy is creativity in various forms (including technical creativity), and this is absent in the university by definition.
The new format of higher education is something like Hogwarts = with a large share of customization of education for each student, the practical and creative side of the process and a mentor / friend instead of a traditional teacher. But so far no one in the world has implemented this model.
So far, of the new forms that work in real life, the greatest success is on the side of corporate universities, where education is strictly professionally oriented, that is, it is tied to reality, practice and is connected with the pressing problems of large economic entities. In Russia, you can find it in some places, in Western corporations it is more difficult to find where it is not.
If you need a crust, then buy it in the transition, anyway, no one checks in Russia, except for state offices / military and other bodies. But there is nothing to catch.
There are also many remote formats. I, as a representative of the employer, would appreciate the remote format more, by the way, as it means crazy working capacity. Well, any remote foreign is more valuable than the best Russian.
Well, do not be shy to storm paid and free courses. A million sites.
We have also begun to seriously look at the activity in professional communities in IT specialties for candidates.

Answer 2

Higher education in the post-Soviet space is utter nonsense. Much faster and better you will learn by yourself, if you want to.
Do not listen or read nonsense.

Answer 3

Of course, nonsense, on Habrahabr you will not be written like that, you should be interested in employers.