I don't think the discussion is about young people doing or not doing something with themselves, or even about university. I think it's simply about people claiming to be something they aren't. I have seen reputable local companies offer website design, usually printers, and their work is horrendous; the designs are crap and the code is out-dated. This is coming from a professional business with a physical shop-front, staff, everything that a 16 year old who just got Photoshop doesn't have - and yet I've seen better work from 16 year olds.
It's about people who are willing to take short cuts, who are willing to jeopardise their clients businesses or organisations and give the industry a bad reputation by providing shoddy services. There's no problem starting at 14, 16, 20 or even 30. It's about how much time after that, which you put in to learning about your chosen subject, whether that's design or anything else, regardless of if it's at university or on your own.
It's going to get a lot worse because as time progresses technical jobs get easier with the advancement of technology and society. These days you can have a website running in about 5 minutes with these low quality, free web builders. You couldn't do that when I was 16. How much content is there available now from websites; free patterns, designs, templates, this and that. Again, none of that was available to me when I started.
More importantly the problem not only lies with inexperienced and unqualified (regardless of age) self proclaimed professionals, but with companies that don't apply due diligence to their purchasing decisions. If you're happy to pay £20 for a logo from someone who you have found after a quick Google search, haven't vetted their credibility or made any effort to determine whether or not they are capable of what they claim, then expect to get burned sooner or later. People, generally speaking, choose the least difficult and least complicated path when faced with a decision. You've got to expect that people are going to do the same when it comes to making money.
A lot of people see this is a bad thing though, that there are so many people out there offering bogus services without any real knowledge on the subject. I see this as an opportunity for those who know how to promote their services and run their business properly to differentiate, with proof, their own services from people less qualified. Let's not forget that as many people as there are providing low quality services, there are just as many, if not more people/companies out there looking to provide low quality jobs.
Let them take the crap jobs which we don't want to do. I am very happy to let them baby sit the clients who don't understand the difference between vector and raster, don't want to know the difference but do want to demand to know why you made the 200x200 image, they supplied, low quality when they stretched it to 500x654. Let them charge £5 an hour for what is essentially a job worth £20 an hour and another £20 an hour for educating and putting up with unreasonable clients.
I'd much rather spend my time working with professional companies who understand that time is a requirement of good design and that it is not something to rushed and understand that the designer knows more about design than they do
