Need Advice. X-E1 or OMD EM5 as FIRST SERIOUS CAMERA to learn Photography?

If you look at the camera requirements in basic photography classes, they all demand manual controls.  Both the OM-D and the Fuji have that,  its personal preference which layout is better.

If your interests take you to sports or birds in fight, you would be better off looking at a DSLR in the same price range.  I was there at one point, and lost that interest so sold off the Nikon.

If your interests take you to street shooting, I prefer the Fuji.

For Fashion/Glamor, I feel either will work out.  Both are good enough in the studio.

With a very broad brush, I will echo what has been said here before, the Oly is more a generalist due to the LENS selection.    Will fuji ever make a 150-400?  probably not.  Panasonic makes the 100-300 now.

From personal experience, the thing that will make you the best photographer fastest is a university continuing education course, followed by using meetup.com to find like minded folks, then strobist.com, and finally learning from books.

The gear while important, is a low step to clear, the OM-D, Fuji, or just about any canikon will be a fine learning tool.

Dave