C&CS aims to improve education in the sector

Jonathan Baldwin accuses Creative & Cultural Skills of seeking to downgrade the ‘intellectual’ and ‘academic’ content of design education (DW 1 March). In fact, as will become clear when our industry-led skills plan for design is published next month, our aim is quite the reverse.

We want to increase the capability at the very top of the profession through courses that invest in the incubation of our best design talent.

But we’re also encouraging education to provide much greater choice than the design-only courses that predominate today. We envisage courses focusing on disciplines such as strategy, consumer behaviour, brand development, marketing, business management, account and project management, and more.

Design courses should be on par with those found in the great science universities and business schools. They should be courses that offer our young people the space to experiment and to learn about aspects of design current practitioners have never had the opportunity to even think about.

Realising this ideal will provide the basis for an even better design industry. I’m sure we all agree that it would be far better to have 10 000 students gainfully employed in a diverse and vibrant industry than 5000 disappointed young people who all thought they could become designers.

Tom Bewick, Chief executive, Creative & Cultural Skills, London SE1