Last week in the Rosenverse: Design schools in crisis
05/11/2026Last week in the Rosenverse, we hosted a session in which Nathan Shedroff, Hugh Dubberly, and Thomas J. McLeish explored what might replace the design school as we know it, and who gets to define what education means in the future.
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See what you missed below.
How Will Design be Taught When the Schools Shut Down?
“What if learning was always mobile, decentralized, distributed among people and institutions, with new ways to acknowledge learning beyond grades?”
May 8: Design schools are collapsing—literally. When institutions like California College of the Arts close after more than a century, it’s clear our old model of design education can’t survive economic pressure, tech disruption, or outdated ideas about what “training” should be. So what comes next? Nathan Shedroff, Thomas J. McLeish, and Hugh Dubberly will lead an exploration of what might replace the design school as we know it: apprenticeships, corporate academies, AI mentors, decentralized credentialing—and models no one’s tried (yet). It’s not just about how designers will learn, but who gets to define what education means in the future. Watch the recording »
About the speakers:
Nathan Shedroff is the executive director of Seed Vault Ltd, a Singapore-based platform building an independent, trusted bot economy on the blockchain. He manages a cadre of experienced bot enthusiasts and technologists developing new ways to ensure user privacy, shepherd the shift to this new paradigm, create ways for people to profit from their creative work, and save the business sector from its most critical threat ever. He is a design pioneer turned entrepreneur and an international educator, speaker, and consultant. Read more »
Hugh Dubberly was a Creative Director at Apple Computer (1986 – 1994), managing graphic design and corporate identity; he also produced the technology-forecast film “Knowledge Navigator” presaging the Internet and interaction via mobile devices. At Netscape (1995 – 2000), he was Vice President of Design managing groups responsible for the design, engineering, and production of Netscape’s web services. He co-founded Dubberly Design Office (2000), a software, system, and service design consultancy, whose clients have included Amazon, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, J&J, Lilly, Nikon, Samsung, and Visa. Read more »
Thomas J. McLeish is a Lecturer in the Master of Design program at UC Berkeley and at California College of the Arts, where he teaches graduate courses in AI prototyping and emerging design practices. At UC Berkeley, he serves on the Jacobs Institute Executive Committee’s AI working group, shaping how the Institute integrates AI across its design programs. An MIT Media Lab alumnus, he was shaped by Nicholas Negroponte’s vision of responsive, conversational systems and by Gordon Pask’s cybernetic idea that intelligent systems should engage users in dialogue rather than deliver static responses. His reconstruction of Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles—exhibited at the Centre Pompidou and now in the permanent collection at ZKM—extends that lineage into contemporary practice. Read more »
Q&A with our speakers
This Q&A was drawn from the Rosenverse Live session.
Q: Why is design education under pressure to change?
A: Design education is being pressured by changes in technology, work, and knowledge sharing. As communication tools evolve and AI reshapes how people learn and collaborate, the old classroom model may no longer be enough on its own.
Q: What learning models could replace traditional design school?
A: Possible replacements include apprenticeships, corporate academies, decentralized credentialing, and hybrid systems that combine making, theory, and mentorship. The larger point is that design education may become more distributed and less tied to a single institution.
Q: How does AI affect the future of design learning?
A: AI could act as a mentor, a collaborator, and a tool for personalized learning. But it also raises bigger questions about who teaches, who evaluates, and how knowledge gets validated when technology can generate answers quickly.
Q: What is the role of critical thinking in design education?
A: Critical thinking remains essential, but it works best when paired with critical making. In design, thinking and making reinforce one another, so learning should move back and forth in a recursive loop rather than separating theory from practice.
Q: Who gets to define education in the future?
A: That is one of the most important questions. If education moves beyond schools, then employers, communities, platforms, and AI systems may all influence what counts as legitimate learning.
Catch up on last week’s recordings, and mark your calendar for upcoming events.
See you in the Rosenverse!
