An acquaintance of mine recently started a MFA program at NY Film School. He's going to end up spending about six figures finishing the program, if he sees it

An acquaintance of mine recently started a MFA program at NY Film School. He's going to end up spending about six figures finishing the program, if he sees it through. I want to tell him it's a waste of money, but that's not my place - partly because he's an acquaintance and not a friend, and partly because it's just not polite. But it's such a waste - and what's worse is he should know it. We worked together in post production for years. He's lived in Los Angeles even longer. If you want to be a filmmaker, the most assured path is to make films. Be a production assistant for 2 years. Yes it will suck - you'll be getting the director's car washed and fetching his coffee for under $200 day rate. But you'll make the necessary social connections, have experience on set (a near absolute necessity for any better jobs in the field), and know the actual ins-and-outs of film production, which is a fairly specialized niche. The other option is to make some indie films on your own dime, and jump from there. The really successful people do both. James Cameron got his big start doing shit-work on small films, and got noticed when he made maggots writhe on a horror film shoot by putting a 12v battery across them. Harrison Ford got his big break being a charming carpenter on set. But this acquaintance is paying tens of thousands of dollars per year for someone else to tell him to make indie films, and for the criticism and critique from other people making the same stupid decision. Youtube will tell you why your indie film sucks for free, and you'll have a bigger audience to draw from. On one hand it's frustrating, but on the other, I don't really like the guy, so mostly I'm alright just minding my own business. It does kinda suck that there's a whole industry around ripping these people off though. Good movies are cool. Making them is cool. You don't need a high end education to do it. There's a lot of parallels to programming cool (not CS-heavy) things like games or innovative apps. Or making pop music. You just have to do it.