What colleges/universities have excellent, legitimate Web Design programs?

Georgia Tech would be the best one I can think of, I know people that have taken it there and they now have their own sites and are making money doing what they love. It all depends on where you live and what college you want to go to. I’m sure that there are many great colleges all around the world that have a great web design class.

There is little formal education on web development. I’m not aware of a web design degree from any school, even Georgia Tech. Most schools that have a “web design program” are usually non-accredited trade schools like the ones you mentioned, as there is no formalization of web development education. Web development is a branch of software development, which is usually taught in Software Engineering or Computer Science programs.

The more prominent Computer Science universities, like Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offer degrees that come closer to what a web designer might do. Our College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon has an excellent Interaction Design program. Human-Computer Interaction also applies directly to web development.

I don’t know how it works at most schools, but during my undergrad at the University of Michigan, there was no concentration in web development but we could elect to take classes in Web Technology, database design, and some web-oriented programming classes (Python/Perl/Ruby), but little beyond that.

The actual specifics of writing a web application in a programming language like Java or PHP is always left up to you, since it’s largely indifferent from software development and learning simple languages like XHTML and CSS is easy. You can probably find classes that will count for a programming/Computer Science credit that focus more on that kind of thing, but there isn’t a complete “web development” degree program that I’m aware of that would teach you how to program a large web application.

@noyesa

Thanks for the very informative post, my friend!

With all of that said, perhaps it would just be better for me to seek certificates in various areas of web programming/development instead of a formal education. After all, you said there is no specific program in that kind of thing anyway, just various pieces that deal with the same subjects. The certificate path seems like it’d be cheaper and a more direct approach to meeting my goals. I think I will consider specific topics I’d like to learn about and find books on them. Then, when I’ve felt that I’ve learned enough, I’ll take some certification exams. I don’t want to go back to school if I don’t really have to, I already have one degree.

@nashish Sure! If you went back to school for a computer science degree, you’d pay tens of thousands of dollars and four years of your life only to learn that what you know is probably going to be worthless in 5 years, but the concepts are permanent. The importance of self education in this field is really hard to understate.

I do have a degree in computer science, but what I learned about web development I learned on my own. Books are a good place to start. If you really take a liking to programming, there are some great resources online to get a better taste of what computer science is like—MIT OpenCourseWare, for example, is free online recordings of undergraduate (and possibly graduate?) MIT lectures, and not just guest speakers, the actual classes MIT students are taking. They have most of the basic Course VI (Computer Science) courses covered, so you won’t be greeted with a pile of high-horse MIT hullabaloo, but everything up from the ABCs.

@noyesa Are there any certifications that you know are worth getting? I would like something for my resume that would allow employers to see quickly what I’m capable of.

Also, are there any books you could recommend on web development? And I will definitely check out those MIT classes; That is a very interesting prospect!

Have you tried contacting the job offers you have seen and ask them what they would recommend? That might help.

@YARNLADY I have contacted a few places concerning this, but I’m still waiting on my answers. Thanks for the suggestion.