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WV is among the bottom 5 poorest states in the US, with West Virginia University critical for providing affordable in-state college education. WVU is urgently d

by driggs 3y ago

WV is among the bottom 5 poorest states in the US, with West Virginia University critical for providing affordable in-state college education. WVU is urgently dealing with a $45-million budget shortfall. I know two graduates of the Puppetry program, and neither of them work professionally in any puppetry-related career. They may as well have graduated with any liberal arts degree. The Puppetry major gave them a way to prove their "quirkiness" in college. Here's the course requirements for the BFA in Puppetry: http://catalog.wvu.edu/undergraduate/collegeofcreativearts/divisionoftheatreanddance/theatre/bfa_theatre__puppetry__creative_dramatics/#majortext http://catalog.wvu.edu/undergraduate/collegeofcreativearts/d... It looks like there are two puppetry-specific courses, with the vast majority of courses coming from the more general Theatre program with Liberal Arts core. I don't know what the Puppetry BFA costs the university, but it's always been a joke to WVU students, and doesn't seem to serve West Virginia residents in a meaningful way. (Source: WVU grad and local, who received an affordable in-state CS/Engineering degree, and now works in and supports WV's tiny but growing tech industry)

leviathant 3y ago
I think the local culture or lack thereof is an important factor to point out. It's got to be incredibly challenging to encourage creative young liberal artists to move to West Virginia for any period of time. "The real estate is cheap" only gets you so far - speaking generally, puppetry jobs are in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta to some extent, and... abroad.
ChainOfFools 3y ago
Like most of these humanities programs that are ridiculed as being superfluous, the name of the program only describes about 20 or 30% of the coursework involved. The rest of it is going to be a fairly standard trip through most of the usual lower division classes required for any four-year, plus a number of courses that are not related to the core subject but from which the core subject, say in this case puppetry, becomes a kind of base camp from which your exploration of other more practical and/or conventional subjects (i.e. psychology or marketing or foreign relarions) is conducted. These people aren't literally learning how to build puppets and put on shows everyday for 4 years.

by driggs 3y ago

leviathant 3y ago

I think the local culture or lack thereof is an important factor to point out. It's got to be incredibly challenging to encourage creative young liberal artists to move to West Virginia for any period of time. "The real estate is cheap" only gets you so far - speaking generally, puppetry jobs are in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta to some extent, and... abroad.

ChainOfFools 3y ago

Like most of these humanities programs that are ridiculed as being superfluous, the name of the program only describes about 20 or 30% of the coursework involved. The rest of it is going to be a fairly standard trip through most of the usual lower division classes required for any four-year, plus a number of courses that are not related to the core subject but from which the core subject, say in this case puppetry, becomes a kind of base camp from which your exploration of other more practical and/or conventional subjects (i.e. psychology or marketing or foreign relarions) is conducted. These people aren't literally learning how to build puppets and put on shows everyday for 4 years.