Why Universities Can’t Teach Fashion “From the Trenches” (And Why You Really Are Needed)

Fashion education has become more accessible than ever. Universities and fashion schools now offer short online courses in everything from merchandising to sustainability and digital design. On paper, that feels like progress. But ask students who’ve just stepped into jobs, and you’ll hear a very different reality.

They don’t say the education was useless. They say it was incomplete.

They learned theory. They learned principles. But when real work begins, such as decisions with consequences, timelines that don’t wait, systems that break down, they suddenly realise no one taught them how the work actually unfolds in the real world.

And that gap? It’s not a lack of effort. It’s a structural limitation.

Why Formal Fashion Education Struggles to Match Industry Reality

Formal fashion programs serve a broad mission: to educate, standardise and certify large cohorts in defined outcomes. Universities must align with accreditation, assessment standards, and academic frameworks that prioritise consistency. That’s important, but it also constrains how deeply they can embed situational judgement, industry nuance, and problem-solving under pressure into online modules.

Research shows this isn’t unique to fashion. Across design and technical education, curricula are often misaligned with what the job market actually demands, leaving graduates underprepared for the workplace. A recent study analysing fashion design curricula found that schools emphasise some foundational skills but often miss other competencies employers seek, particularly in real-world workflow, industry tools, and soft skills, contributing to gaps between classroom learning and industry requirements. Source

Another review of fashion and creative industries education highlights persistent challenges in aligning educational structures with the sector's dynamic needs and notes that institutions must work harder to remain responsive to workplace demands. Source

This doesn’t mean formal education isn’t valuable; it is. But there are limits to how far theory can carry someone when they step into the messy, fast-paced reality of fashion work.

Fashion Isn’t Modular — It’s Contextual and Messy

In actual fashion roles, problems don’t arrive one at a time. They arrive layered, urgent, and ambiguous, a brief change minutes before launch. A retail space looks nothing like the plan. A CFO wants results yesterday. A supplier misunderstood the spec. A CEO walks in with no warning.

Traditional online courses, designed for clarity, structure, and predictable outcomes, can’t fully simulate that complexity. They can teach what should happen, but rarely show what actually happens when people, pressure and constraints collide.

This is where industry expertise becomes irreplaceable.

A Real Scenario: Meet Emily — The New Visual Merchandiser

Imagine Emily, who's just been hired as a visual merchandiser at a major brand. She has a fashion degree, completed a couple of online fashion courses, and has a solid theoretical grounding. But her first weeks on the floor shook her confidence.

She quickly discovers that:

• Understanding principles doesn’t help much when store politics override them
• Guidelines don’t magically adapt to awkward physical spaces
• Managers expect quick fixes for complex visual problems
• There’s no blueprint for decisions made under commercial pressure

The theory was fine. But when the clock is ticking, theory alone feels powerless. Emily finds herself searching online at 11 pm for real answers that just weren’t in her syllabus.

Then Enter Mark — The Industry Expert With the Real Answers

Now imagine Mark, a seasoned retail merchandiser with over a decade of in-store experience.

Mark has opened flagship windows in multiple markets, resolved last-minute visual breakdowns, adapted guidelines to imperfect realities, worked within brand constraints and commercial imperatives, and trained junior teams under live-store pressure.

Mark knows not just what to do, but why and how under real constraints.

When he teaches someone like Emily, he’s not reciting slides. He’s conveying situational judgement:

• How to prioritise what matters when everything matters
• How to scan a space and make confident calls
• How to communicate with store leadership effectively
• How to troubleshoot visuals when stock, space, and time are misaligned

These are exactly the high-stakes, high-ambiguity skills that employers want, but formal curricula often struggle to deliver in isolation. Supporting research

This is practical intelligence, which is something that only real work can teach.

Why Short Expert-Led Courses Are So Valuable

Mark doesn’t need to replace a degree program. He needs to teach what the degree couldn’t.

A short, targeted course on real-world visual merchandising might cover how to interpret brand guidelines under commercial pressure, adapt to shop floor constraints, diagnose store performance issues, execute effective displays under time limits, and build communicative confidence with stakeholders.

Suddenly, Emily isn’t just recalling theory; instead, she’s thinking like a practitioner.

It’s in-the-trenches reasoning. And that’s why expert-led courses are more than “nice supplements.” They are bridges between classroom learning and workplace performance.

Students Are Actively Seeking This Kind of Learning

Today’s learners aren’t choosing between traditional education and industry experience; they’re choosing both.

A university program gives foundations, history, context, theory, and broad frameworks. But real work requires quick decision-making, context awareness, pattern recognition, and flexible judgment. This is also what employers increasingly look for: not only foundations, but readiness. Supporting research

Industry-expert instructors can offer live scenarios, real mistakes (and how to fix them), pattern recognition tools, and tacit knowledge that theory can’t always articulate.

Why Your Experience Is Essential — And Not Just “Nice to Have”

Many fashion professionals hesitate to teach because their knowledge feels “normal” to them. But what feels normal to you is invisible to beginners.

Apprenticeship-style learning remains relevant because it embeds learners in real practice, not just theory. Educational theory recognises that learning in context builds competence in a way that formal instruction alone often can’t.

Your lessons learned the hard way are precisely the moments students will pay to bypass. Your instincts are patterns students haven’t developed yet, and your judgment is the bridge between knowledge and performance.

And that’s not just valuable. It’s marketable.

The Revenue Math Behind Expert-Led Courses

This isn’t just an argument about pedagogy either. It’s about the opportunity for you.

A short course priced in the £199–£499 range doesn’t need thousands of students to be financially meaningful. A modest number of well-aligned learners each year can create a serious income stream on top of your main work. And unlike traditional teaching gigs, this income is scalable because your expertise is packaged, not time-bound. Read our post called Do the Maths: How Much Could You Really Earn from Your Fashion Course? and use our online calculator to crunch some numbers.

The Future of Fashion Education Isn’t Either/Or

Fashion education doesn’t need to be polarised into “universities vs experts.” It needs collaboration. Universities have strength in breadth and theory. Industry practitioners have strength in context and application. Students want both. Employers want both. And the fashion ecosystem thrives when those perspectives connect.

Thinking About Turning Your Experience Into a Course?

If you'd like help identifying the most valuable part of your experience, shaping it into a focused course, testing demand before building, pricing it strategically, and launching with confidence:

Contact us at We Teach Fashion and ask for Mark or Cheryl.

Remember: Your experience doesn’t just educate, it prepares. That’s what theory alone cannot do.