UI/UX design bootcamps have made it easy for career-transitioning adults to become well-paid designers without spending a fortune in a degree. In a way, it is a revolutionary approach to continuing education thanks to the field’s low barrier of entry. However, as we embed ourselves in this industry, we found a lot of secrets that large bootcamps hide from hopeful career transitioners that may potential put their best interests at risk.
This article is based on our years of industry research by talking to students from different bootcamps (their identities are protected for privacy reasons) as part of the process of building our school that combines the best of both worlds of a university-degree program with solid foundational education and the efficiency of bootcamps.
Poorly-Managed Industry Projects
A lot of UI/UX design bootcamps use third-party companies to outsource industry projects that’s advertised as the golden ticket to help students build “real-world projects” that supposedly will land students jobs. While some of these projects can be successful, we discovered several shocking realities of how such projects have been managed.
No Dedicated Project Managers from UI/UX Design Bootcamps
One of the biggest discoveries we found to be shocking is that most of these industry projects have no project managers from the bootcamp’s end. Students and their peers often struggle to form functional teams by themselves while handling client requests. Even with a highly-experienced team, the lack of a manager could cause problems for the project, not to mention a team of new designers in training with no client experience.
Students Receive Poor-Quality Assignments
Due to the lack of project managers, many students end up getting assigned tasks that are not helpful in building a portfolio, such as administrative and organizational tasks that the industry partner should have assigned to its internal employees.
Even in student teams that are managed by the bootcamp, which is rare to begin with, many students still get the short end of the stick because they were put in a team and their preferred task is no longer available after being assigned to others.
Exploitative Income Share Agreements & Floundering Financing Partners
A lot of UI/UX design bootcamps attract students by offering income share agreements (ISA) which promises no payment of tuition until students get a job. This is an attractive offer that is almost too good to be true, and it is.
While on paper, students can indeed claim their tuition back or pay no tuition until they get a job, there are a few big caveats:
- There are strict requirements of what students need to do in order to qualify for “tuition back guarantee”, including taking the first offer they receive, even if the student does not like the offer.
- Income Share Agreements are often exploitative of the student’s future salary – students will be paying a portion of their salary back for years to come. This is especially harmful to the student’s financial well-being if they receive a big raise because all of a sudden, the amount they pay back to the loan will be higher as well.
- Many income share agreement loan servicers have pulled out of the market in recent months due to volatility of the market, leaving schools and students stranded.
Misleading “Job Guarantees”
In addition to attracting students with “zero tuition”upfront, many UI/UX design bootcamps also lead with “job guarantees” in their marketing message, which again sounds too good to be true, and indeed, it is.
Many of these “job guarantees” have lengthy contracts that prevent a lot of students from actually claiming the moneyback guarantee, but of course, students are often not aware unless they read the fine prints very carefully before signing.
When one uses common sense, it’s not hard to see the truth behind “job guarantees” – bootcamps that are large enough have the financial cushion to lose tuition to a few students who may indeed pass through strict requirements to claim their money back while attracting large amount of initial student sign-ups to offset this loss.
The truth is, there is no guarantee in life. We are not guarantee to live another day – why would there be a job guarantee when employers have free will to hire who they see fit?
Poorly-Written Curriculum
While some UI/UX design bootcamps have hired seasoned designers to write their curriculum, many simply scraped existing information online and repackage them into a “curriculum” that students can essentially access for free on their own.
The more we dived deeper into the industry, the more we realized the vast majority of UI/UX design bootcamps are in fact, not founded by designers. They are founded by tech entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity in this field and quickly put something together.
As a result, many bootcamp graduates find themselves at the short end of the stick when it comes to portfolio reviews. Due to lack of foundational training, bootcamp graduates end up with unpolished visual designs with awkward alignments and poor color choices that results in their portfolio being disqualified in the first round.
Under-Delivered Portfolio Training
When we first started Path Unbound, a lot of our students came from UI/UX design bootcamps. We were surprised to find the common pain point of all of these students are – although they completed the full program at these bootcamps, their portfolio is incomplete or sorely lacking in quality. We became the “fixer” of bootcamp failures, unintentionally.
That’s when we started to uncover common problems in portfolio building faced by bootcamp graduates. We found the following themes:
- Bootcamp graduates often come out with cookie-cutter, excessively textbook process-oriented case studies that don’t resemble real-world problem solving
- Industry projects that are touted as “real-world” projects are poorly managed, which results in poor case study qualities
- Students who lack visual design foundation do not receive enough training, which results in unpolished portfolio websites
- Many UI/UX design bootcamps hire general career coaches for career coaching, which doesn’t help beyond surface levels
- Students do not receive individualized career strategy coaching – resulting in massive waste of time and frustration when students mass apply rather than focus on reaching out to companies that they have a real shot with
Limited Learning & Career Paths
Finally, many UI/UX design bootcamps push a singular career path, which is to become a UI/UX designer. In an ideal world, this would be a happy path – every student graduating with a job lined up that pays over six-figures in tech.
In reality, this path isn’t for everyone, but that doesn’t mean they can’t become well-paid designers, on some other paths.
By focusing the curriculum solely on a tech-oriented UI/UX design career path, bootcamps inevitably pigeon-holed students’ future to a path they may not serve them the best. Someone more interested and talented in visual design may want to join a creative agency while others who are more interested in research may become a UX researcher. Without a flexible curriculum and resources to prepare students for diverse options in design careers, a lot of graduates struggle to find the correct path on their own, and some unfortunately give up.
The point of this article is to show the realities of behind-the-scene happenings that a lot of newcomers to the UI/UX design industry do not know. While making educational choices, it is important to consider these factors. On the other hand, while considering a career in UI/UX design, it is also important to understand the reality of the industry and learn to strategically position yourself to have the best chance at finding the right opportunity.
