Opinions About Interior Design Education

According to our survey, interior design practitioners including both employers and employees agree that the current interior design education in Hong Kong is inadequate.  This, in turn, lowers the performance and professional standards of the industry.  They think that there is an inadequate supply of interior design educational programs in the market. Many employers feel that they cannot judge a potential employee’s competence simply by looking at his or her academic qualifications, and most people require extensive on-the-job training before they are ready to take up positions of responsibility in their jobs.

On average, only 48% of practitioners feel that their education is useful to their current interior design job. Degree holders are more likely to think that their education is relevant to their jobs, with 69% of respondent who consider their studies to be useful, while only 48% of associate degree/higher diploma or certificate holders think so, and only 29% of respondents with only secondary school education or below think that their education is relevant to their jobs.

On the employer’s side, only 21% prefer employing interior designers who are university graduates, even less than those who prefer employing secondary school graduates (22%), while most employers (56%) prefer employing associate degree/ diploma/ higher diploma/ certificate holders. To employers, academic qualification is no assurance of ability or competence. In hiring potential employees, they value personality traits such as intelligence, “trainability” and capacity for teamwork more so than academic qualifications.

Practitioners and employers think that many kinds of skills and knowledge are missing from interior design education in Hong Kong. Such knowledge include hand-drawing, knowledge on building materials, communication skills, laws & regulations. On the plus side, computer software skills are considered quite adequate. These views are very similar to those obtained in the education survey.