Background
The course started around June 2024 and lasted about six months. It was held at the Workforce Development Agency in Taichung. It's free, but you have to pass a selection process that includes a written exam and an interview. You can find past exam papers online. Besides questions related to the field, the written exam also includes middle-school-level Chinese, logic, and math questions. In the interview, you give a short self-introduction and explain why you applied, and the atmosphere was very relaxed. The whole process takes about half a day. About a week later, the list of accepted applicants is announced. I noticed that very few people applied this time: there were 30 spots, and only around 40 applicants. Compared with popular courses like plumbing and electrical work or baking, it was clearly far less popular, which made me feel uneasy (is this industry really okay?). Fortunately, the learning went fairly smoothly in the end, and I successfully changed careers.
Can You Drop Out If You Change Your Mind?
Yes. At the start, the instructors repeatedly tell you, "If you really feel this isn't for you, speak up during the first week." If you drop out within the first week, you can leave with no penalty, and the agency will contact someone on the waiting list to fill the spot. But after the first week, you'll be asked to pay compensation based on how much of the course you've already attended. The later you drop out, the more public resources you've used, and the more you'll have to pay, so keep this in mind.
Course Content
The course starts with the basics of HTML and CSS, and once you're more comfortable, it moves on to JavaScript, jQuery, Vue, and Bootstrap. It also covers Photoshop and Illustrator for multimedia, Figma for design, PHP as the back-end language, and server tools like XAMPP (to run Apache and MySQL) and IIS. There's even a class dedicated to the exam for the Level C Web Design Technician certificate. Some classes use ancient, 20-year-old software like PhotoImpact and Dreamweaver. With old technologies, you might still need to understand them to maintain legacy projects. But I couldn't find any reason to spend time learning 20-year-old software, and the classmate next to me was furious about what a waste of time it was. Overall, the course covers a very broad range: you learn everything from early design sketches and image editing to front-end layout coding and back-end setup, and each instructor assigns their own final project. The technology may be old, but the fundamentals are solid. If you study seriously, by the end you'll be fully capable of building a full-stack website on your own (though it'll only be functional; reaching commercial release quality requires considering a lot more).
Campus Life
In the first class, the instructor chooses a class leader and an academic officer, and cleaning areas are assigned by drawing lots. Everyone cleans before class every day, either in the classroom or in an outdoor area, and indoor duty is a bit easier. Once a month there's an optional PE class, with a sports field and courts for basketball, volleyball, tennis, and badminton. You can go out and exercise if you want, or stay in the classroom and study on your own. Occasionally there are events or extracurricular talks you can sign up for. Outside professionals are invited to speak on topics like career planning and job hunting, and some of the content was quite good. Every time you attend, you get a meal and a stamp on your point card, and if you collect enough stamps before the end of the term, you can exchange them for small gifts. I think I got some storage items and a crossbody bag with the agency's logo. There are also daily duty students, who order lunch, unlock and lock the classroom before and after class, and wipe the whiteboard. Sometimes the baking class brought us the bread they made for practice, enough to fill a large plastic bread crate, and we'd all share it. Whatever we couldn't finish was left to the duty students to deal with (throw it out as food waste or take it home).
Are There Any Subsidies?
Besides free tuition, the government also provides monthly subsidies to students who meet certain conditions or have certain status, such as specific disadvantaged groups, people who lost their jobs involuntarily, military personnel, civil servants, teachers, and young people under a certain age. As long as you have the relevant documents ready, you can receive the subsidy every month. I was one of the few people who didn't qualify for any subsidy (not even the youth subsidy, since I'm too old). I remember when the instructor was collecting the subsidy paperwork, they kept asking me, "Are you sure you don't qualify for anything? Want to take another look?" It made me feel kind of foolish. During regular classes, I could vaguely sense that some of the older students were there more to make friends, with learning as a secondary goal. They were all very kind people.
Is the Course Useful?
Yes, but it only touches on a little of everything without going deep, and it takes six months. You still have to learn the technologies commonly used in the industry and more advanced topics on your own. For example, the instructor taught Vue via CDN. The course doesn't cover development tools like React/Next, Vue/Nuxt, or Vite. It teaches PHP, but only by writing SQL statements directly in the page for operations and rendering, and submitting data with traditional forms. It doesn't cover how to write APIs, how to call APIs with fetch, MVC architecture, or back-end frameworks like Laravel. Version control isn't mentioned at all, so you'll have to learn Git/GitHub yourself. But that's understandable. With just six months, using free public resources, and teaching students with widely varying skill levels, being able to produce something presentable is already something to be thankful for.
The Level C Web Design Technician Certificate?
I was pretty happy the day I passed. But in reality, it's a certificate nobody cares about. It's useless for job hunting, and the practical exam covers technologies and designs you won't find on modern websites. If you're taking a course at the agency, at some point the instructor will ask who wants to take the exam and register everyone together. The fee is around NT$1,000. The exam is then scheduled for a day on a weekend or holiday. If you qualify for the government subsidy for the exam fee, you might as well give it a try, since it's free anyway. If you don't, think carefully about whether to take it, since the fee isn't cheap. Taking it at this point does have one advantage: the people taking the exam that day will mostly be your classmates, and the exam is held at the agency, so you won't feel nervous at all.
Would I Recommend the Agency's Courses?
If your only goal is to learn how to build websites, online resources are more than enough, and there's no need to spend six months. Whether it's YouTube tutorials, learning resources you find on Google, or asking AI questions to really understand the underlying logic, then trying it out hands-on to confirm it. These days, the barrier to learning is already very low. On the other hand, if you're like me and have the time or financial room, and you want an official record of your training (though finishing an agency course isn't very demanding), or if you already qualify for subsidies and want to make new friends at the agency, learn at a relaxed pace, and collect a subsidy along the way, it's worth a try. Whichever path you choose, you'll eventually face interviews and the challenge of "How do I prove I have these skills?" That's a whole other hurdle.
Is It Hard to Change Careers?
I haven't done a rigorous count of the whole class. As far as I know, only 3 people successfully changed careers, all of them among the top students (including me). Out of a class of 30, that's about 10%. In my case, since I'm not young and the agency isn't a particularly prestigious institution, even with "top of the class" on my résumé, honestly, it was hard to even get interviews. In the end, a small company that was more willing to take a chance on newcomers gave me an opportunity, and I finally got hired. I only heard about the other two indirectly, so I don't know the details of their situations. But their companies are probably larger than mine, with stronger technical skills. If I get a chance to learn more, I'll share it.