Waterfall Education vs. Agile Education

CAREER

Oct 31

University students make big, long-term plans and set deadlines based on nothing. It’s a stressful thing to decide the rest of your life at nineteen. Most people’s career decisions in university are made without an important piece of the puzzle called…reality.

Universities are “waterfall for education.”

Universities front-load all the learning to the first few decades of your life. You cover a ton of material, hoping to get that piece of paper saying you’re a “Master.”

The problem is that it delays the risk because you don’t get a chance to see if you like doing the job until it’s too late. You've been learning the subject for 2-5 years without ever experiencing what it's like as a job.

In emerging fields like UX design, universities are nothing more than an orientation activity because they can’t keep up with the changes happening.

What happens when something like the iPhone comes out while you're in university? What happens a single app on that phone shakes up an industry like Airbnb did? When you're on a linear education path, you won't be able to adapt to change.

Online courses are more agile.

You take online courses as you need them in much shorter intervals. Between courses, you apply the learnings to real-world contexts.

Rather than guessing what skills you will need in five years, online education allows you to get just-in-time training. You only learn up-to-date things, and you avoid the one-size-fits-all packages of Bachelor's and Master's programs.

How to be agile with your education

To make your education more agile, try these things:

Increase the Learning Rhythm
How often do you learn? Can you find ways to learn more often? Seek short cycles of learning mixed with direct application of the learnings to your life.
Decrease the Size of Learning
Are you overloading yourself with information that you will never remember? Can you reduce the batch size to make the learning stick? Large batches of learning reduce the chances of completion and retention.
Prototype Early and Often
Are you experimenting with the learnings? Are you applying them to real-world contexts between learning cycles? Seek practical unpolished learning by doing rather than untested theoretical learning.

Small learning + consistency = huge results

A good place to start is one six-week course a year. This is a very achievable goal for employed designers. This puts you on a yearly rhythm of learning. Most companies support this goal through the yearly education budget.