Has anyone taken the Professional Program in UX Design from UC Berkeley Extension?

I’m currently researching programs for UX development and have found that UC Berkeley Extension offers a program in UX, based out of San Francisco. Has anyone taken this program or heard anything about it? I’ve seen only a small handful of reviews for this particular program (which were good) but have also seen many reviews for UC Berkeley Extension that were not exactly favorable.

Program website:

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I have taken 3 classes with UC Berkeley Extension UX Design program and only had 1 good class. I would not recommend it. There is a difference between having instructors who have industry credentials and those who actually know how to teach and are capable of having students understand the information. I blame it on the department for throwing new teachers into a class without ANY prior teaching experience and not giving them the proper instruction tools (they just provide a syllabus, reading list, and videos).

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Hi Mary,

Oh wow, I’ve just completed my 3rd course as well. Which classes did you take and with whom? Who would you recommend taking in the future?

I totally see what you’re saying. I’ve heard some stories of terrible instructors but have been lucky myself. I’ve learned to ask everyone I can about who they’ve taken and what their experiences are so that I hopefully don’t end up with a bad teacher, but you never know.

I’m personally not a fan of the mostly lecture format that these courses take, as the work itself needs to be hands on, but I understand the constraints and for the most part the teachers have tried to fit in class activities to address this.

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Ugh, that sounds like an unfortunate experience! Sorry to hear it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and welcome on board. :slight_smile:

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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.

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I have to agree very strongly with Adrian_Ye. Their review is very well put together and documenting my experience exactly. I’ve completed now five courses over 9 months and the work I’m creating is still quite elementary and lacks any kind of cohesion. There’s nothing that I’ve made that is portfolio worthy. The only thing I can add to Adrian’s points is that the curriculum has not changed at all in 2023 so all of the courses were made before COVID and before WFH and figma took over. The UI design course never mentions figma at all. I’ve also had a horrible time communicating with the administrators. They are extremely rude and unhelpful. I currently have and incorrect course grade sitting on my transcript that will not count towards completion of the program due to a professor error. The administrators could not care less and have done nothing but deny my appeal based on their inability to reach the professor for 6 months. It’s worth mentioning that this program is exclusively online now, meaning any in-person benefits you may have received are gone. And the administration is even more brazen in their willingness to completely ignore students.

I think the only course that it’s worth taking a look at a la carte is the UX research top buy professor Seperson. The professor’s great and the course’s project scope is not end to end. You design, execute and report on a single research project, which is really helpful to actually get a little deeper than the absolute fundamentals of the topic.

At this point I feel like I’ve completed 4.5 introduction to UX courses that could have been a single course completed in a few weeks, but have taken me 9 months and cost my $5,500. It’s now up to me to develop every single UX skill to a working level outside of this program. And to take on some personal projects or volunteering to attempt to have something portfolio worthy.

I know that

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