Ask HN: How to kickstart an UI/UX design career?

Hi everyone, my girlfriend is trying to become a UI/UX designer. However, it seems to be an incredibly uphill road, she is studying from nearly two years now, completed many courses on Udemy, and "UI / UX Design Specialization" from CalArts on Coursera. She tried several websites to find clients, like PeoplePerHours, Freelancer, and similar. However, she got no client at all. She was able to find only one client on Facebook, and just because the client also wanted a developer and I was able to do the dev part.

She is working on a pet project after the other to increase the number of things to show on her portfolio.

She applied for several jobs, but she got rejected because "too junior".

We are based in London, and universities are too expensive to be an option.

Any recommendation, on how to start climbing? And stop being a student for eternity?