Positioning Industrial Design Education within Higher Education: How to face increasingly challenging market forces?

Abstract

This paper discusses how Industrial Design Education should be adapted to pressing future challenges of higher education with respect to promoting high quality mentorship and scholarship, as well as being more economically self-sufficient through stronger collaborative engagements with industry. The four (4) following trends will be presented on how prospective design programs are to be developed: (1) Mass-education and rationalisation, (2) Links between education and research, (3) Globalisation and internationalisation, and (4) Collaboration with industry and research commercialisation.

Given the challenges of market forces within academia, a consensus within the design education community should be established in order to expose students more to “active learning” and to vice-versa commute from generic to specialist and from abstract to concrete modes of working. Comprehensive and collaborative studio projects should be implemented as platforms, where social, interdisciplinary and inquiry-based learning can be developed in line with selected design themes, processes and methods.