I took this program because it was part time, affordable (~$1k per class), and in-person. Now that I’m done (after a long, long year), I can say that I definitely do not recommend taking the UC Berkeley Professional Program in UX Design. It’s split into 7 courses of each stage of the design process. Each course is taught by a different instructor who are not in contact with each other. This leads to teachers having students build small parts of a project or a project that are sorta end-to-end but only good in the one aspect taught in each 10-week course. And then you repeat this 7 times without having a quality end-to-end project in the end. At the very least the instructors should consult with each other and tell their students to focus on 1-2 case studies throughout the program so that students may build on them rather than start from scratch each course. Sure, students can use the knowledge from the courses to build an end-to-end project on their own. However, the program takes a while and is at minimum 6 months to max 2 years to get a certification. Students should actually have at least one well thought-out end-to-end case study by the end of such a long period of time. Instead, I got what felt like one below-average UX boot camp after another rather than an in-depth, high-quality experience that could’ve taken up fewer months.
Most of my 7 instructors were decent teachers and well-meaning, a couple were horrific, but overall the program itself is too poorly managed for any instructor or student to succeed. The head of the UX design department is a visual/graphic designer pretending his expertise qualifies him to lead the UX department (it doesn’t). UX design instructors or students were not a priority to him. It was clear UX was on the back burner when he’d forget to tell UX instructors were classes where moved to or about upcoming student networking events. Instructors aren’t always vetted properly either. For example, I had a visual design instructor whose primary focus was print. This didn’t translate well for UX design, which is digital. I also have heard of poor instructors being fired due to students dropping after the first course. I myself had to drop a course because one instructor ran Youtube tutorials half of the first course and painstakingly explained our homework the second half. Instructors also have about 20 students and this makes it impossible for everyone to get quality feedback, something that is so essential for design. There is no mentorship available either, and I think that is crucial especially for career switchers like myself. Being new to the UX design world is no joke. In the end I got all A’s but hadn’t learned many practical ways to apply my knowledge to UX.
Administrative staff is also not supportive or welcoming to their students. I’ve been rudely hounded by multiple employees for printing more than a few sheets of paper for class-related activities. They literally would watch over my shoulder as I selected PDFs to print. I’ve also been pushed out of paid networking events hosted by the school but was free for students. Those events were poorly run as well as they were overcrowded and no alternate viewing opportunity was available.
Overall, don’t do this program! I’ve had to struggle much more than needed and it’s hard enough to break into UX as it is.