The Elephant in the Room: How Social Class Is Quietly Redefining Design Education

Photo by Mitch on Unsplash

Walk into a design studio class today, and you might sense a quiet, uncomfortable truth, though rarely spoken aloud. The children of privilege are here in growing numbers, reshaping the very landscape of design education. While this may look harmless, even desirable, on the surface, it carries profound consequences for the discipline, the classroom, and the future of creativity itself. This is the elephant in the room. Everyone sees it; few address it.

The Unequal Price of Becoming a Designer

Design education has always been costly, but in recent decades the price has ballooned. Tuition fees in the UK alone average £9,250 per year, and that’s before factoring in the essentials of a design student’s toolkit: laptops, Adobe subscriptions, specialist software, cameras, studio materials, endless printing costs, unpaid internships, and overseas placements.

“For some students, design school is a playground. For others, it’s a financial cliff.”

For those without financial backing, each step is a calculation. Can I afford another print run? Can I take this internship that pays in “experience” but nothing else? For those from wealthy families, these questions simply don’t exist.

Pierre Bourdieu (1986) would call this cultural capital: the inherited privilege that allows certain students to accumulate not just knowledge but networks, confidence, and legitimacy.

Creativity vs. Cushion

We are told that design thrives under constraint. That limitation fuels imagination. Yet, in practice, constraint rooted in poverty suffocates rather than liberates. Students working long hours in cafés or retail to cover rent cannot give their best energy to studio work.

Meanwhile, the children of rich families can afford to play. They can afford multiple iterations, extensive prototyping, international residencies. Their portfolios shine — not necessarily because they are more creative, but because their cushion allows them to take risks without existential consequences.

“Creativity may flourish under constraint, but it suffocates under poverty.”

As design educator Victor Margolin (2015) argued, design is never neutral; it is embedded within social, cultural, and economic structures. When those structures privilege the affluent, the discipline itself becomes skewed.

Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy (1970, 1993) reminds us that education should be a practice of freedom, empowering students to question social structures rather than internalise them. When design education ignores economic inequality, it becomes a tool of reproduction for privilege rather than a space for genuine transformation.

The Risk of Homogenisation

Design thrives on diversity of thought and lived experience. It is, at its best, a dialogue with society. But what happens when classrooms are increasingly dominated by students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds?

“When design schools become elite finishing schools, society loses its most vital voices.”

We risk homogenisation. The perspectives of working-class, migrant, and marginalised students are pushed to the periphery. The very voices design most urgently needs — those capable of challenging the dominant narratives of consumerism, inequality, and exclusion — are silenced or absent altogether.

Freire (1993) emphasised the importance of conscientisation — developing awareness of social, political, and economic contradictions. Without this, design risks producing graduates who are technically skilled but unaware of the inequalities they perpetuate.

John Ruskin, the 19th-century critic and educator, warned that education which fails to address moral and social realities becomes hollow.

The Culture of Silence

Why don’t we talk about this more openly? In part, because design schools are also businesses. Recruiting wealthy students — especially international ones — keeps institutions afloat in the current higher education market.

To question the dominance of privilege in the classroom would be to question the very funding model that sustains these schools. And yet, silence is dangerous.

“The more we ignore the role of wealth in design schools, the more complicit we become in reinforcing inequality.”

Freire would call this the banking model of education — a system where knowledge is deposited into students without critical engagement, reinforcing existing hierarchies rather than challenging them.

Towards a More Equitable Design Education

This is not a call to exclude wealthy students. It is a call to rebalance the field so that design education remains a space open to all.

• Accessible Pathways: Expand scholarships, bursaries, and financial support.
• Reassess Value: Emphasise process and resilience, not just glossy outcomes.
• Open Conversation: Put class and privilege on the table, not under it.
• Community Grounding: Engage students with real-world contexts beyond their bubbles.
• Policy Intervention: Campaign for affordable creative education at national level.
• Critical Pedagogy: Encourage students to question power structures, not just master craft.

The Future of Design Depends on It

The question is not whether wealthy students should study design. It is whether design, as a discipline, can afford to become dominated by privilege. If we allow social class to shape who has access, whose voices are heard, and which projects are possible, the field risks narrowing its own imagination. Design education could become a self-reinforcing echo chamber, producing work that reflects only the experiences, aesthetics, and concerns of the affluent.

If, however, we confront the elephant in the room and actively address these structural inequalities, design education could reclaim its transformative potential. By welcoming students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, encouraging critical reflection on social realities, and supporting experimentation that is not dictated by financial means, design schools can produce practitioners who are both technically skilled and socially aware.

Design can be a force for questioning, challenging, and reshaping society, but only if it is grounded in inclusivity, equity, and critical consciousness.

The future of creativity depends on which path we choose. Will design education become a luxury playground for the privileged, or will it embrace its responsibility to nurture talent, provoke thought, and engage meaningfully with the world? The choice is ours, and the stakes are higher than ever.

Design education must become a practice of freedom, not a quiet rehearsal of privilege. It should empower students to question social hierarchies, challenge dominant narratives, and imagine worlds beyond their immediate experience. Only by confronting inequality head-on can design reclaim its purpose as a transformative, socially engaged discipline, one that cultivates not just skill, but conscience. The future of creativity depends on our willingness to act, speak, and teach with both courage and conviction.

References

• Bourdieu, P. (1986). The Forms of Capital. In Richardson, J. (Ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Greenwood.
• Margolin, V. (2015). World History of Design. Bloomsbury Academic.
• Ruskin, J. (1853). The Stones of Venice. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Oakley, K. (2018). Culture is Bad for You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries. Manchester University Press.
• Banks, M. (2017). Creative Justice: Cultural Industries, Work and Inequality. Rowman & Littlefield International.
• Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum.
• Freire, P. (1993). Education for Critical Consciousness. Continuum.

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