Migratory Patterns of Design Students and the Curse of Student Debt
Steven Heller
If you are a design educator—or involved in higher education—student debt is the most serious pedagogical concern since the debate over teaching evolution. Both issues, it so happens, center on freedom. The latter is about whether academic freedom can or should be proscribed. The former begs this question: Can students in the current economic spiral of rising education costs ever be free from debt?
How can college students and graduates take chances that are necessary to challenge the status quo when they are burdened by a system that puts undo stress on their creative potential?
Paying off loans takes many tolls.
In design, progress does not happen from the top down. By the time designers acquire their reputations they have, arguably, taken most of the risks they are going to take. Design demands a high level of craft born of experience, but the paradigm shifts occur when designers are young enough to try and fail when challenging conventions. Where debt hangs as a sword of Damocles over young designers’ heads, freedom to take risks is severely minimized.
The lucky ones will avoid debt altogether. But the ratio of those unencumbered to those with too much encumbrance keeps getting higher. So what is the future of design education in this perilous situation?
I have a theory why American colleges and universities are offering increasingly more spots to international students. The United States has never made it easy for international students to get financial aid, but they come here in droves anyway. Their tenacity to overcome government bureaucracy, financial burden, alien customs, and quirky language must be celebrated. Foreign students may think that the United States is doing them a favor, but they are contributing just as much, if not more, to the design culture they seem to be “invading.”
You may think that the “invading” suggests a negative, but like the “British Invasion,” which brought great English bands to the United States in the 1960s, the waves of foreign students are welcome for various reasons:
1. Design is more global (and homogenous) than ever before and foreign students cannot help but spice up the field with approaches and insights derived from their homelands.
2. Design is becoming more about collaborative networks. Foreign students (like pen-pals of old) invite their counterparts into their worlds. Cross-cultural literacy is as important today as design fluency and this would be impossible if not for the presence of foreign students.
3. Design is becoming decentralized as a profession. Okay, there are still capitols in different parts of the world where innovation is incubated, but it is not solely in New York or Los Angeles or Milan, for that matter. Every major city and some minor ones too have vibrant design communities. Foreign students help spread their respective gospels.
4. Design is becoming a kind of Esperanto. Linguistic boundaries are falling down. Design is a commercial and artistic force in many heretofore “non-design” countries. We have students from all over the Pacific Rim with immense talents. All they need is the experience that comes from networking in New York and the United States. They embrace what they’ve learned here and put it to work in their own countries.
5. Design education is a business, after all, and the addition of foreign students to our national mix is beneficial to the health and well-being of the respective schools. In short, they bring in needed income, which they exchange for all the above benefits.
This invasion is not an occupation per se. Immigration restrictions in the United States state that foreign visitors with student visas cannot work for salary while they are in school. Graduates are allowed to work for one year on an OTP or Optional Practical Training visa, before receiving the highly prized work visa. And to be eligible for a work (H-1B) visa it is necessary to be sponsored by a reputable employer. To those who fear their future livelihood is threatened by “outsiders,” think again. Design is a meritocracy and the government tries hard to maintain a priority system too: first qualified Americans, then qualified aliens (an official word I’ve never been comfortable with).
The influx has various demographic swings. Europeans are less likely to come in force, as their tuitions are considerably less than in the United States South Americans have a bit more presence but not much. For decades, Korean students dominated in many American art and design schools (and liberal arts colleges too). This has tapered off, as the current surge is from mainland China, with the Mideast and Turkey in close pursuit.
The migratory path of design students is fascinating to watch. The participants change every year, dictated by economics and technology. Yet one thing is certain: there are more students coming to the United States than leaving for educational opportunities overseas. The downside is in our greedy university-business-driven economy, tuitions are rising for all students alike. This may ultimately have an adverse effect on migration, but it has not yet made a large dent in the movement from there to here—and once here they point us in new directions.