Introduction

Academic programs present themselves to prospective students in many ways; one is through their public website, where a program is typically described using language about the unique nature of the program’s lineage, experience, or aspirations. For example, an academic program may explain on their website that they help students prepare for careers, or that they have faculty that have won awards, or that their program is rooted in decades of tradition. It is reasonable to expect that, at least in some regard, the text on a program’s website reflects the way members of the institution—including faculty—would like the program to be perceived by prospective students.

Typically, colleges have sections or pages devoted to each department or program. A university may have a webpage dedicated to a college (such as the college of fine arts), a department (such as a department of design), and a program (such as BFA in graphic design). At each level, the content becomes more specific, likely with the intent of offering content to a particular type of user with a unique goal (such as a prospective student, looking to understand details about a program they may enroll in). A program page, for example, offers content for people interested in learning about that specific major and credential; the content has been shaped, in part, to communicate about that program and to that audience. The content can be thought of as a set of value promises; this way of thinking considers a degree as a kind of a product, and the promises as assertions of the benefits that a student will gain if they choose to attend the program.

This research study methodically examined those value promises from design schools across 393 undergraduate bachelor’s degree programs in the United States, in order to understand how design schools describe their educational programs to prospective students: how they have chosen to write about their programs, with a particular focus on themes that have been emphasized and prioritized. These themes can be interpreted as representing industry trends or as aspirational differentiators in a competitive market; they may also be indicative of the expectations that students have when they enter academia—for example, if they choose a school in part because the website describes innovation, they will likely expect to experience something related to innovation in their education.

This study identified that program messaging presented a homogeneous picture of value, with claims centered on practical skill development, topic-specific knowledge, and employability. Nearly all programs promised students that they would learn one or more of only fourteen specific design topics. Over half explicitly promised employment or career readiness after graduation. Although graphic, industrial, and interaction design programs differed in the particular topics they emphasized, all three disciplines shared a common emphasis on skills and career preparation. Graphic design programs framed these promises around visual communication. Industrial design programs emphasized human-centered design, innovation, strategy, problem solving, making, and the relationship between design and society. Interaction design programs emphasized technology, user experience, research, and human-centered practice. Relationships between program value promises and institutional characteristics were extremely limited: these findings rarely had any significant relationships to tuition, institution size, or city size.

Understanding these patterns provides insight into how undergraduate design education in the United States collectively describes its purpose and communicates its value to prospective students.

Promising value to a prospective student

A value proposition “describes the benefits customers can expect from your products and services” (Osterwalder, et al., 2014)Osterwalder, A., Pigneur, Y., Bernarda, G. & Smith, A., 2014. Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.; it “explains why the targeted customer should buy your product above all the alternative” (Collis & Rukstad, 2008, p. 3)Collis, D. J. & Rukstad, M. G., 2008. Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?. Harvard Business Review, April.. A value promise is how this value proposition is expressed externally. In the best case, a value promise is an honest (albeit limited) representation of what a customer can expect and provides an accurate view into the qualities the company thinks are most valuable.

On a webpage, the value promise is often at the beginning of a primary landing page. It is typically concise—no more than several paragraphs, and typically under 1000 words—and in a legible font (Rossiter, 2008, p. 140)Rossiter, J. R., 2008. Defining the Necessary Components of Creative, Effective Ads. Journal of Advertising, 37(4), pp. 139-144.. The presence at the start of the page signals its relative importance in the “conversation” between the page author and the reader (Igou, 2003)Igou, E. R. B. H., 2003. Inferring the importance of arguments: Order effects and conversational rules. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 39, pp. 91-99.. Often, this statement takes the form of “Our product offers” or “Our service will.” This value promise indicates the most critical information an organization is trying to communicate, and it acts as a frame for making sense of the content that will follow.

Program webpages should not be interpreted as direct representations of curriculum or educational practice. They are institutional documents produced through collaborative editorial processes involving faculty, administrators, and marketing personnel, and so they represent negotiated public accounts of what an institution wishes an audience (including prospective students) to believe about a program. The presence or absence of particular value promises should therefore be interpreted as a discursive choice, revealing how programs choose to present themselves rather than providing a comprehensive account of the actual educational experience.

When a school is trying to attract students to enroll in their degree programs, the website serves as one of the primary presentation spaces for making a value promise. Students have many tools they can turn to when they begin to explore potential design programs to attend; the school’s program website is one of those tools. The claims on the website assert the benefits of enrolling in that particular program, and the assertion represents the things that people involved in the program feel are important to communicate to prospective students. Therefore, the program page offers a consistent data element that can be analyzed, compared, and contrasted from one institution to another. This offers both data related to the broad landscape of value promises being made by academic institutions, as well as more localized points of comparison.

Methodology

This study systematically examined the value promises presented on the webpages of undergraduate graphic design, industrial design, and interaction design degree programs in the United States. The methodology consisted of four steps: (1) identifying and collecting program webpages, (2) extracting and consolidating webpage content into an abbreviated program description, (3) conducting thematic coding of value-promise-related content, and (4) integrating the coded data with institutional characteristics obtained from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) for statistical analysis. Each step is described below.

Source identification

This research was limited to academic programs in the United States that offer bachelor degrees in the fields of graphic design, industrial design, or interaction design. The preliminary data set combined the 318 institutions accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) (National Association of Schools of Art and Design, n.d.)National Association of Schools of Art and Design, n.d. Accredited Institutions Search. www (Accessed 1 June 2026)., the 78 institutions listed in the Industrial Designer’s Society of America (IDSA) Design School Directory (Industrial Designers Society of America, n.d.)Industrial Designers Society of America, n.d. Design School Directory. www (Accessed 1 June 2026)., and the 110 institutions listed in the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) Design Educators Community Program Directory (AIGA, n.d.)AIGA, n.d. Program Directory. www (Accessed 1 June 2026).. After removing duplicate schools, schools outside of the United States, and schools that do not offer bachelor degrees, 311 institutions remained.

This research focused on schools that offer degree programs in graphic design, industrial design, and interaction design; schools without these areas of emphasis were removed. Some schools offered multiple programs, and each program at a school was included. This resulted in a final dataset of 393 programs at 311 institutions. Programs had a variety of different names for these topics (for example, graphic design is referred to as visual design, visual communication design, communication design, and so on), and a liberal approach to inclusion was used.

Data gathering and coding

The main source of data in this study was the text on the program page on the institution’s website. For each program, all text on the program page was captured. Next, an abbreviated program description was extracted. Boilerplate navigation, admissions information, faculty listings, course catalogs, and duplicated institutional text were excluded. The remaining verbatim text of, on average, 916 words—primarily found in a featured or main area of the program page in several paragraphs and in a legible font—served as the unit of analysis.

Next, following Braun and Clarke (2006, 2019)Braun, V. & Clarke, V., 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research In Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77-101.Braun, V. & Clarke, V., 2019. Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), pp. 589-597., reflexive thematic analysis was used to identify and understand patterns and anomalies across the data. First, open-coding was conducted to describe the main topics emphasized in the program description; 391 codes were created. These codes were then grouped based on conceptual similarity, resulting in 47 focused codes. These focused codes, representing individual value promises, were re-applied to the full dataset, identifying the prevalence of these qualities across the data. The focused codes themselves were then themed, resulting in seven thematic categories.

Integration with Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data

After the data was gathered and themed, it was merged with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data (The Institute of Education Sciences, n.d.)The Institute of Education Sciences, n.d. Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). www (Accessed 1 June 2026).. This data source offers further insights into schools; it is a “single, comprehensive system that is built around a series of interrelated survey components designed to collect institution-level data in such areas as enrollment, admissions, program completions, graduation rates and other outcome measures, retention rates, student financial aid, tuition and fees, faculty, staff, library data, and finances.” The integration of the IPEDS data provided a simple way to compare thematic observations across universities based on institutional characteristics, such as the cost of tuition.

Findings

An examination of the 393 academic degree programs presented a homogeneous landscape of design education rhetoric in the United States. Programs were clustered around a constrained set of design topics, skills, and ways of thinking and working. A prospective student who is exploring academic programs at different institutions would find themselves seeing similar value promises, spread across seven themes. These themes are described below, framed as statements that are being explicitly or implicitly made by an academic program to an audience of prospective students. Additionally, themes unique to graphic design, industrial design, and interaction design are described, as are the very few significant relationships that exist between program value promises and institutional characteristics.

The value promises made to prospective students

You will gain knowledge in a limited set of topics and subjects

Program websites made a clear assertion of what topics their students would learn if they enrolled; 91% of programs offered a claim of the design topics students would learn in their programs, and 76% made claims about two or more topics. Just fourteen design topics were present:

The term technology was used broadly by programs and was present on 36% of program pages. Sometimes, it was tied to specific forms of computational advancement; for example, University of Maine’s Human Centered Technology Design program explained that students “investigate artistic and innovative problem-solving approaches using emerging technologies, such as AI, AR, VR, IoT, and autonomous vehicles” (University of Maine, n.d.)University of Maine, n.d. Human Centered Technology Design (B.S.). www (Accessed 5 July 2026).. Other programs, like Arkansas Tech University’s Graphic Design program, used technology to broadly describe a medium for exploration: “This program is committed to providing a core foundation in visual art concepts, skills and processes as well as art through technology and other media” (Arkansas Tech University, n.d.)Arkansas Tech University, n.d. Graphic Design, Bachelor of Fine Arts. www (Accessed 21 June 2026)..

When the liberal arts were described, references were often made implicitly, as with Kansas State University; their program in Visual Communication Design explained that “students are also encouraged to enhance their intellectual, creative, and conceptual problem-solving capabilities through study in areas such as writing, business, art and art history, economics, philosophy, marketing, architecture, ethics, history, and sociology, for example” (Kansas State University, n.d.)Kansas State University Visual Communication Design. www (Accessed 26 June 2026)..

Some programs worked to explain their offering through non-academic language. For example, Bemidji State University’s website explained that “graphic designers create the visual world you see every day. From logos and posters to mobile apps and billboards, graphic design is everywhere. It’s on our screens, in our pantries, bookshelves and closets — and good design is always in demand” (Bemidji State University, n.d.)Bemidji State University, n.d. Graphic Design Emphasis. www (Accessed 4 July 2026)..

You will develop ways of thinking and working

A majority of programs emphasized that students would learn skills, and prospective students were regularly promised that they would leave a program with a tangible, practical, and in-demand set of capabilities for designing. Only 3% of programs emphasized software skills. Many programs did not describe skills by name at all, but only referenced skills as a broad category. 13% of programs described that students would learn to be visionary, either in developing skills that would be in demand in the future or in designing artifacts that would shape the future.

Programs regularly made promises of learning to solve problems, often qualifying the problems as being multifaceted, wicked, or complex: Fredonia’s program explains that “We don’t just teach you to create—we empower you to communicate, to solve complex problems, and to develop a design philosophy that is as unique as your creative fingerprint” (Fredonia, n.d.)Fredonia, n.d. Graphic Design Program at Fredonia. www (Accessed 5 July 2026).. Many terms related to thinking and working were present on pages but were not defined or described. For example, interdisciplinary , transdisciplinary , and multidisciplinary were rarely explained, even though these terms occurred on 19% of program pages. Theory , strategy , and design thinking were only mentioned but not explained.

Innovation , presented on nearly 80 unique program pages, was rarely described, and only by means of example. Appalachian State University’s description of their Industrial Design – Product Design degree exemplifies one broad way innovation claims were made, which was in the context of process: “As a student, you will be challenged to create significant innovation within an area of interest by first studying the situation, along with the user, history, market, social and environmental concerns, manufacturing requirements and related issues - all in order to form a comprehensive understanding before you start to create solutions” (Appalachian State University, n.d.)Appalachian State University, n.d. Industrial Design (BS) - Product Design. www (Accessed 21 June 2026)..

You will make things and develop a creative identity

Programs regularly promised that students would work on real projects (often with real clients), across many different media, and through a creative, hands-on process. Real projects were often qualified with high-profile client sponsor names, as with California State University Long Beach’s explanation that previous students have worked with clients like “Oakley, Xerox, Unisys, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, NCR, Apple, Chrysler, General Motors, Hitachi, Toyota, Kawasaki, InFocus, Compaq and Nike” (California State University Long Beach, n.d.)California State University Long Beach, n.d. Bachelor of Science, Industrial Design. www (Accessed 21 June 2026).. Creativity was often described alongside effusive rhetorical positioning: 10% of programs promised that students would express, unlock, channel, unleash, harness, supercharge, or discover their creativity.

You will graduate with tangible career outcomes

The majority of programs made obvious promises of a job or career. Accompanying the text-based value promises, many programs also included infographics showing percentages of graduates placed in very large, prominent type, as well as testimonial quotes from graduates explaining the speed at which they were able to secure employment. These claims were commonly paired with text about portfolio development: programs asserting that students would find employment were 2.5 times as likely to also promise portfolio preparation. A much smaller number of programs explained that students would graduate ready to continue to graduate school.

You will learn within a certain community and context

Nearly a third of all programs emphasized a specific type of community that acted as an integral part of their program, and this was often tied to claims of a unique cultural experience. For example, Pennsylvania Western University explained that “The curriculum is further enhanced through internships and client-based projects, workshops and visiting lecturers, involvement in the graphic design club and the student chapter of AIGA, portfolio reviews, studio tours, museum visits and participation in regional and national competitions” (Pennsylvania Western University, n.d.)Pennsylvania Western University, n.d. Graphic Design. www (Accessed 4 July 2026)..

Nearly 60 programs emphasized that students would have access to physical and digital resources, such as fabrication labs and software.

A small number of programs positioned their geographic location as a unique, valuable quality. The College for Creative Studies explained that their Communication Design & Strategy program is “Inspired by the history and innovation that is Detroit” (College for Creative Studies, n.d.)College for Creative Studies, n.d. Communication Design & Strategy. www (Accessed 26 June 2026)., and Pratt Institute called attention to its location in New York City as a notable part of a college experience (Pratt Institute, n.d.)Pratt Institute, n.d. Communications Design, BFA (Emphasis in Graphic Design). www (Accessed 4 July 2026)..

You will go to a credible program

Some programs worked rhetorically to establish credibility. Alumni placement and faculty accomplishments were used to substantiate the value of a program. Academy of Art University described that “Our professors and alumni have won Emmys, Clios, and D&AD Pencils while working at Apple, Google, Meta, IDEO, Williams Sonoma, and Tolleson Design” (Academy of Art University, n.d.)Academy of Art University, n.d. Graphic Design. www (Accessed 21 June 2026)..

A meaningful quantity of programs worked to establish credibility by referencing their NASAD accreditation or by their rankings from various external bodies.

You will have a program shaped for you

Just 34 programs identified that students would have a personalized or customized program, typically by highlighting the opportunity to freely take electives; for example, Washington University in St Louis explained that “With no formal concentrations to weigh you down, you are free to move fluidly between drawing, typography, graphic design, illustration, book arts, and interaction design (and everywhere in between)” (Washington University in St. Louis, n.d.)Washington University in St. Louis, n.d. Communication Design. www (Accessed 21 June 2026)..

Only 3% of programs made claims related to affordability and convenience, such as the location or the flexibility of program hours, and only one explicitly referenced cost in their value promise: “The Art + Design major at Salem State University offers a surprisingly affordable education in one of most [sic] creative cities in Massachusetts” (Salem State University, n.d.)Salem State University, n.d. Art + Design. www (Accessed 4 July 2026)..

Graphic, industrial, and interaction design value promises

Although graphic design, industrial design, and interaction design degree programs shared many of the same value promises, they differed in the topics and competencies they emphasized most strongly. Across all three areas of study, claims related to employment and skill acquisition were common. Beyond these shared promises, each area emphasized a subset of design topics and ways of working. The topics with the largest range across disciplines are shown below:

Graphic design programs emphasized visual design, communication, and preparation for employment. Alongside claims of learning visual design (62%), programs frequently promised careers (59%), skill acquisition (58%), communication design (46%), working across multiple mediums (43%), and problem solving (41%).

Industrial design programs placed greater emphasis on impacting popular culture (53%), innovation (53%), skill acquisition (51%), technology (49%), human-centeredness (49%), problem solving (46%), and hands-on making (46%). Job placement was highly emphasized (40%).

Interaction design programs were described with a primary emphasis on technology (91%), user experience (71%), human-centered design (56%), research (50%), and skill acquisition (46%). Again, job placement was continually highlighted (38%).

Few statistically significant characteristic-related patterns

When combined with third-party institutional data, few statistically significant relationships emerged. Across tuition, institution size, and urbanization, program value promises remained consistent. The limited number of significant relationships that were identified primarily concerned a small number of focused topics rather than broad thematic differences.

Programs at higher-tuition institutions were more likely to describe innovation and interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary learning. No other major shifts in value promises accompanied increasing tuition.

Institution size exhibited only a few primary relationships to value propositions. As undergraduate enrollment increased, programs became more likely to emphasize research, often alongside human-centered design. Conversely, references to art became less common at larger institutions, even when programs were housed within colleges of art and design or offered as concentrations within larger fine arts programs. References to institutional ideology—such as those shaped by Christian faith—also varied by size, appearing more frequently among smaller institutions.

Urbanization produced only a small number of differences. Programs in more urban environments were more likely to emphasize human-centered design, business, and sustainability, while references to institutional ideology were more common among rural institutions. Sustainability was driven primarily by industrial design programs, where environmental and societal concerns appeared more frequently than in graphic or interaction design.

Taken together, these findings indicate that institutional characteristics explain relatively little in how undergraduate design programs describe themselves.

Discussion

The results of this study indicate that undergraduate design degree programs in the United States present themselves in surprisingly similar ways. Across programs, the most common value promises concern career preparation, the design topics students will study, and the development of practical skills and competencies. These descriptions present design as a job defined by employability and technical training. Programs consistently emphasize preparation for work in visual communication, product development, interactive systems, and related areas, presenting design primarily as a vocation grounded in a relatively small set of professional domains.

This consistency is notable because it persists across substantial institutional variation. The dataset includes 139 distinct degree titles, tuition ranging from $2,838 to $66,240, and institutions enrolling between 183 and 65,450 undergraduate students. Yet these institutional differences correspond to relatively few differences in the value promised to prospective students. Apart from a very small number of statistically significant relationships involving discipline, tuition, institution size, and urbanization, programs described the purpose and value of a design education in very similar terms.

This suggests that undergraduate design education has developed a relatively stable narrative about what design is and why it should be studied. This convergence has several implications. First, it may indicate that the public view of design education has become comparatively fixed, with programs reproducing a shared understanding of design rather than advancing substantially different visions of the field. Second, the predominance of promises centered on employment, skills, and professional preparation reflects broader changes in higher education, where both popular and scholarly discussion typically frame degrees through return on tuition investment and employability (Chamorro-Premuzic & Frankiewicz, 2019; Psacharopoulos & Patrinos, 2018)Chamorro-Premuzic, T. & Frankiewicz, B., 2019. Does Higher Education Still Prepare People for Jobs?. Harvard Business Review. Psacharopoulos, G. & Patrinos, H. A., 2018. Returns to investment in education: a decennial review of the literature. Education Economics, 26(5), pp. 445-458..

Undergraduate design programs overwhelmingly justify themselves through employment. Nearly sixty percent of programs explicitly promise that students will find employment and be career-ready, and many more emphasize skills, portfolios, and real-world experience as evidence of that career readiness. If employment is the primary value promise presented to prospective students, an important question follows: to what extent do these promises align with the realities of contemporary design practice? The dataset includes 257 graphic design programs alone. Even assuming a conservative graduating class of twenty students per program each year, these programs likely produce more than 5,000 graduates annually, yet the US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that just 5,700 new graphic design jobs will be added between 2024 and 2034 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d.)U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d. Graphic Designers. www (Accessed 20 July 2026)..

A similar question arises for interaction design. More than seventy percent of interaction design programs promise education in user experience, yet the availability of entry-level user experience positions has become increasingly uncertain in recent years (Kolko, 2026)Kolko, J., 2026. Hiring for creativity in a world of UX design systems. New York, Association for Computing Machinery.. If employment continues to function as the dominant value promise for these programs, understanding the relationship between curricular promises and labor-market demand becomes increasingly important.

The purpose of a design education

Although graphic, industrial, and interaction design programs differ in the topics they emphasize, they share a common conception of the purpose of design education. Graphic design programs frame design primarily through the production of visual artifacts. Industrial design programs emphasize human-centered design, innovation, strategy, problem solving, making, and the relationship between design and society. Interaction design programs emphasize technology, user experience, research, and human-centered practice. These disciplinary differences suggest that while programs disagree about the content of design practice necessary to attract students, they largely agree about its educational purpose: preparing students with the skills needed for professional employment. Scholars argue for a broader view of education; for example, Buchanan (2001)Buchanan, R., 2001. Design Research and the New Learning. Design Issues, 17(4), pp. 3-23. argues that design constitutes a distinct form of knowledge whose purpose is to integrate diverse fields of inquiry into practical action rather than simply prepare practitioners for a particular occupation. This shows a substantial divide between the way undergraduate programs promise value and how design scholars understand educational value.

Yet across nearly every dimension of the dataset, undergraduate design programs frame education primarily as vocational preparation. Several absences reinforce this interpretation. References to the liberal arts appear in only a small minority of program language. Likewise, social responsibility appears in only approximately one-fifth of program pages, and mentions of sustainability are concentrated largely within industrial design and remain uncommon overall. Few programs promise knowledge beyond immediate professional application. Topics such as economics, government, public policy, history, philosophy, or civic engagement are largely absent from descriptions of value, even though these subjects profoundly shape the contexts within which designers work. These findings provide empirical support for Meyer and Norman’s (2020)Meyer, M. W. & Norman, D., 2020. Changing Design Education. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 6(1), pp. 13-49. critique that design schools remain primarily focused on craft, media, and professional practice while giving insufficient attention to the social, economic, political, behavioral, and ecological contexts in which design occurs. They argue that design education must draw more extensively from established fields such as psychology, anthropology, political science, business, ethics, and the behavioral sciences. This research data suggests that realizing this argument, at least as it pertains to the promises programs make to prospective students, may face material challenges.

Exploring anomalies

The relative uniformity of program messaging makes the few exceptions particularly interesting. Although this study focused on undergraduate graphic, industrial, and interaction design programs, a small number of Design Studies degrees were identified during data collection. These programs were retained because they met the study’s primary inclusion criteria while representing a substantially different conception of design education. Rather than emphasizing immediate professional competency, they present design as an interdisciplinary field for understanding complex social, cultural, ethical, and technological systems. For example, University of Wisconsin–Madison’s BS in Design, Innovation, and Society describes that “students learn how to leverage the influential role of design through a deeper understanding of social issues, ethical considerations, global perspectives, diverse cultures, sustainability challenges, and value systems. This knowledge is applied to help address complex issues and to envision possibilities for enhancing human life through design” (University of Wisconsin-Madison, n.d.)University of Wisconsin-Madison, n.d. Design, Innovation, and Society, BS. www (Accessed 5 July 2026).. Similarly, West Virginia University’s Design Studies program explains that it is formally linked to “sustainability, journalism, preservation, event planning, business, electronic media, and a host of other professions.” (West Virginia University, n.d.)West Virginia University, n.d. Design Studies, BS. www (Accessed 21 June 2026)..

These few programs demonstrate that undergraduate design education is capable of presenting substantially different visions of what design is and why it should be studied. Yet their rarity reinforces the central finding of this study: despite considerable institutional diversity and scholarly claims of design as a broad knowledge-based discipline, most programs communicate a consistent understanding of design education as preparation for a specific type of skill-based professional practice, spread across a small number of topics.

Conclusion

This study examined the value promises made by 393 undergraduate graphic design, industrial design, and interaction design bachelor’s degree programs in the United States. Across these programs, a consistent narrative emerged. Design education was presented primarily through promises of employment, practical skill acquisition, and discipline-specific knowledge. Although the three subjects differed in the topics they emphasized, they shared a common vocational framing of the purpose of design education. Value promises were largely the same, irrespective of institutional characteristics such as tuition, enrollment, and urbanization.

These findings suggest that undergraduate design education has developed a uniform presentation of its purpose, and most programs communicate similar expectations about what students will learn, why they should study design, and the jobs for which they are being prepared. This consistency contrasts with scholarly views of design as a broad, interdisciplinary field concerned with complex social, cultural, political, and technological systems.

The findings also demonstrate the value of examining program websites as institutional artifacts. Although these texts do not describe curriculum, they reveal how programs collectively choose to present themselves to prospective students. Future work should examine whether these public value promises actually align with curriculum, classroom practice, graduate outcomes, and students' own expectations of design education.

Limitations and data access

This study was limited in scope in a number of ways. The data sources, the focus on bachelor’s degrees, the selection of graphic design, industrial design, and interaction design programs, and most notably, the selection of only US-based programs constrained the applicability of the results. Further study is recommended to explore the unique ways the excluded qualities mirror or differ from the findings presented in this study.

Program pages serve multiple audiences, with prospective students being only one of the groups that will visit the page. Content may have been optimized to attract or inform prospective corporate sponsors, journalists, or the media, and parents and caregivers; in fact, messaging on the websites related to careers may well be intended to be consumed by those who are paying for education, which is not necessarily those who are experiencing the education itself. Given this assumption, additional research is recommended to understand the nature of the influence these other stakeholders have in crafting messages.

The dataset for this research is available online.

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