That might be true of liberal arts, but I don't know about film school. USC's was the first American film school and opened in the 1920s. NYU, Columbia, and Cal

That might be true of liberal arts, but I don't know about film school. USC's was the first American film school and opened in the 1920s. NYU, Columbia, and Cal Arts followed in the 60s. Everything else came later than that. These aren't prestigious past times for the nobility. They're relatively new things. Film degrees don't have much prestige associated with them any way. Schools can certainly try to argue they make a difference, but the vast majority of successful filmmakers don't have film degrees. It's not like you go apply to direct a film and the studio gives a crap about your education. It's completely driven by portfolio and nepotism, and the only possible advantage a school can offer is helping you make that first film to build the portfolio, but if they don't even do that like this guy said, and you have to self-fund your film on top of paying for tuition, well, it's hard to see what value they can even claim to offer. I don't want to dismiss this guy's tweet thread or anything. He definitely seems to be saying Columbia tried to market the program as giving you a better chance, but students have to know becoming any kind of artist at all, filmmaker included, is purely a lottery. There's at most a few hundred people in the world at a time making any real money doing it. Schools can't just pretend that isn't the case. For what it's worth, I think it's a disastrous career choice either way, unless you're relying on nepotism and your parents were famous actors or directors. I had a girlfriend 20 years ago going through Rutgers' MFA program, and she realized some of her dream for a little while, being a working producer for a cartoon studio and even moving to LA for a few years, but burned out eventually from every place she ever worked going out of business and moved back to Jersey and opened a bakery. My best friend from college actually did not study film, but did succeed in becoming a Hollywood writer and even won an Emmy a few years ago. It didn't make any difference. He's even poorer and in more debt than my ex who owns a bakery now. Even "success" in the art world doesn't mean you won't be begging for table scraps for the rest of your life. Hundreds of people work on any given project, but even if a project is wildly successful, wins a ton of awards, and makes a billion dollars, maybe five actors, the director, and possibly the head writer if that isn't also the director, actually see any of that money. The rest goes to the studio.