7 ms·

Don’t go to art school

137 points by darkchyld 13y ago

kryten 13y ago
Do you really need to be taught art? Firstly, it's subjective which means you can't necessarily be taught it and then be graded accordingly. Secondly, it's something which comes with only practice. Cramming it in a set time period in a degree/course utterly fails to consider the individual. Also, none of it is formal or deterministic. Art history perhaps, but that's not art. My grandfather did terribly in art at school and was graded as an utter failure and his teacher told him he was totally hopeless. A few years later, driven by this, he made an absolute fortune selling his work and has illustrated many well known books as well. He's now dead, but in his last will and testament there was "fuck you Mr Brickett", directed at his art teacher :-)
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Do you really need to be taught art? Of course you don't need to be taught art, any more than you need to be taught engineering. There's no reason an aspiring young engineer couldn't just discover Maxwell's equations for himself, and then continue to derive the rest of physical law. It will just take him a little bit longer, is all.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Brilliant iconoclasts are the exception. Less-than-brilliant iconoclasts are generally called "failures", and they are quite common. When I failed high school art (thanks to the mechanics of the International Baccalaureate, it's a long story), I was surprised and upset. But in fairness, I knew very little about the science and craft that supports art. I was an overgrown doodler. My art teacher tried to console me by saying that many of history's greatest artists had failed out of art schools. He was unamused when I brought up a Godwinning counterexample of art school dropouts.
- nnash 13y ago
  Art school is no different than any other academic institutions; you get an assignment sheet with a breakdown of what you're supposed to do and if you don't follow those guidelines you get an F. The hardest part of this for most artists is the artist statement (the concept of the piece) and the defense thereof in critique. This is likely where your granddad struggled.
- dasil003 13y ago
  I knew trumpeter who got kicked out of his funk band because he thought he was Miles Davis. Turns out he was just too lazy to learn the fundamentals and was constantly noodling around instead of learning how to enhance the music he was playing. Art is subjective, that doesn't mean there isn't valuable knowledge to be learnt.
gridmaths 13y ago
absolutely! To the self study program, you might want to add a weekly 2hr Life drawing group, supported by any of the excellent anatomy books by Beverley Hale [ Art Students League ], Bridgeman or even Loomis. http://redbubble.com/people/gord http://redbubble.com/people/gord
codeonfire 13y ago
*unless your parents are rich. People always seem to forget there are those with money to burn devoid of any material challenge. If you have practically infinite money, life is difficult. Art is something that transcends money and can help those more fortunate than all of us cope with not having any challenges in life.
- knowtheory 13y ago
  > If you have practically infinite money, life is difficult. Maybe you meant something other than difficult, maybe you meant "easy" instead. Having enough money to survive on for the rest of your life doesn't mean a life devoid of challenges, but to claim that such a life is difficult is probably a misunderstanding of what difficulty actually is for the vast majority of humans living on the planet. For a lazy analysis also see: Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    My theory of "rich" is that it is measured not in mere dollars, but in the products or services you will pay for without a second thought. For example: I am now nice-dinner rich. I can buy good stuff from a local restaurant and not feel the sting. But I am not business-class-RTW-ticket rich. I can, in theory, afford it, but I have to think about whether I think it's worth the money.
    - knowtheory 13y ago
      Sure. So, when you're deciding between food and rent, that is a different kind of difficulty than whether you have to decide between private and public school for your kids, and all together a different thing compared to whether you have to spend your time flying coach or business class. As a sidebar, I think it's reprehensible that we (Americans) conflate having sufficient capital to guarantee one's basic needs with having sufficient access to capital to do interesting things (say create a startup) and also with having sufficient personal wealth to slake one's desires/whims.
11185d 13y ago
Design student here. I've never been to a US art school, I am on my way to my second year in an Israeli school (Shenkar). Although I do not think it is justified by ANY means that any education costs as much as the author mentioned the RISD program costs ($200K+), I do know that art school for me has been a challenging and amazing experience, and here is why I would recommend it even if you do not want to be a designer, but just want to get your creative bearings rolling for a few years: 1. Assuming that you make it to a competitive program, you will most likely be with high quality people who are hard workers. Its been an absolute pleasure for me to kick it with some of the coolest and most creative people in Israel at my school. 2. Design is an enormous field, and although you can expose yourself to many things on the internet, what some schools are able to bring you (not necessarily all) is experience, expertise, a social life, hands on practice with your friends at school, critique by your teachers and classmates, the ability to see how you fare in contrast to others among many more things. 3. To branch off from that last point, since design is such an enormous field, you might think you want to do one thing, but after talking to so many teachers who are deep in the heart of the field you might switch. I was sure I would study to be a web designer/web dev, but all I want to do now is motion design. 4. This is your time to be creative. Do it within the most creatively inclined framework possible, with as many people who are like-minded as possible. There are not many opportunities for this kind of thing--if you go to design school you can mess around and be creative until you dont feel like it anymore, and then continue doing the real world as you did before. I highly recommend you go to Art School. Just dont spend a ton of money on it, be sure of the reasons you are doing it, and research the environment in which you will be studying for the next four years because you had better like it if youre going to be there for four years.
- jakejake 13y ago
  I firmly believe that any program is exactly what you make of it. For some who take full advantage, art school can lead to great things just as any other school. For others who have no ambition or just want to party and postpone life for 4 years, you'd better live it up. Because the odds greatly favor that you'll be in for tough, disappointing times in your 20's and 30's.
nperson 13y ago
I went to art school in Germany and paid a €200 fee per semester. That's about it. Education at art schools here is still very good and free - as in free thinking. When I read articles like this I'm just super happy that our education system hasn't yet been privatized. In order to learn, you'll need time to study. You'll need time without monetary pressure. My advice is to go to art school and challenge yourself, once in your life you shouldn't really care about money but about making the best work possible.
- knowtheory 13y ago
  Honestly, this is a problem much deeper and more complicated than privatization. In the post-war period the US spent a decent chunk of money via mechanisms like state sponsorship of universities and the GI-bill to ensure that university education was accessible to most Americans. All of that spending took a downward turn somewhere in the 80s & 90s. As a consequence students must bear the vast majority of the cost of their university education starting somewhere in the 00s. Universities began looking elsewhere for other sources of funding (since you can't actually run a university solely on the backs of students), and began reaching out for grants from the US government (NIH and NSF being two major funders). Now that gridlock in the Congress has forced the sequester on all of our federal institutions, we're seeing research dollars take a dive now too. Private schools are part of the problem, but the real problem is that American politics has abdicated its responsibility to educate its people.
  - simonh 13y ago
    > ..but the real problem is that American politics has abdicated its responsibility to educate its people. Er, being a bit hyperbolic there aren't we? It's a double-sided resource crunch. Funding is drying up, yes, but meanwhile costs as academic institutions are ballooning. Administrative costs have rocketed, while other changes such as increasingly generous tenure arrangements sap away resources from the cutting edge of education. It's not unusual for Tenured professors to get a sabbatical every three years, rather than the more traditions one in seven. In 2011, 20 of Harvard's 48 History professors were on sabbatical.
mathnode 13y ago
I went to art school to do Games and Art Design. I dropped out, and 6 years later I am a python/c dev and DBA. I am so very very very thankful of publications such as the following listed at Stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-m...
rdouble 13y ago
The list of resources in this post is great. I'll add in that you can find all the Loomis books on PDF floating around the internet, and certain instructors at the Art Student's League in NY are amazing. On the flip side, continuing ed courses at SVA are AWFUL.
ameister14 13y ago
I find it interesting that he starts of by saying "the traditional approach is failing us" because art school is definitely not the traditional approach. Art is a skill arguably best learned through apprenticeship; to be honest this as a system works better for a lot of things.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  I'm confused. Is the article talking about learning art or learning design? These are very different activities even if they are often collated on the same campuses or in the same buildings.
  - ameister14 13y ago
    He's talking about learning art.
    - dotBen 13y ago
      By using RISD (nb: where "d" stands for design) as an example... :/
      - wahnfrieden 13y ago
        RISD has several departments: http://www.risd.edu/Academics/ http://www.risd.edu/Academics/
Volscio 13y ago
I was expecting this to be another sort of hackernews anti-school rant but it ended up being pretty useful and listed some good alternatives. Having just finished art school myself I do see the value in learning from and being around those who see the world in that way and I don't think most people can cut corners on becoming a "trained" artist. I also wrote a long post on the value of formal education vs. other methods that maybe some people will find useful who are trying to find their way: http://blog.benturner.com/2013/06/08/graduation-from-formal-education/ http://blog.benturner.com/2013/06/08/graduation-from-formal-... Have gone through the Army, public school, private grad schools, online self-learning, so it's been an expensive look (thank you GI Bill, to some degree) at the state of US education.
- keithpeter 13y ago
  Yes, the OA's suggestions under the $10K Art Education heading were interesting. I especially liked the 'create accountability' section urging people to join a community to give and receive feedback on work. I am wondering if there is an opportunity for a local institution here to facilitate face to face networking for local artists? Perhaps mediated via a Web site?
tomphoolery 13y ago
This article seems to come from a place of frustration. My parents are recruiters, and they told me perhaps the best job advice I've ever had. They told me that I should get a degree in something that makes me happy. Granted, I didn't have to pay as much for college as the average kid, they helped me out a lot. But I wasn't devoid of student loans and I didn't have endless money. It ended up that I would become a programmer after I began doing freelance web dev on the side to make extra beer money during college. Since there are few well-paying jobs in the market of singers and other jazz musicians, I started programming full-time. I still believe that, if you can, you should take courses in college that are meaningful to you. You don't need a comp sci degree to be a programmer. The fact that you have a bachelor's (in ANYTHING) qualifies you for the job.
- taternuts 13y ago
  The problem is that most people don't like programming or don't see themselves doing it. Even those who do might not actually like it all that much once they get into it. While it's true you don't need a comp sci degree to be a programmer (I don't have a CS degree either), I think you need to have at least some passion about computers and how things work or trying to make a go of it as a programmer is going to be much harder and miserable. I've always felt lucky that I truly love what I do and enjoy the process of learning more and getting better, and that oh yeah - job security isn't that big of a deal in our field and we get paid pretty well. For these reasons I've tried to get many of my smart friends wondering what they are going to do with their degrees into the field, but to some, the thought of sitting in front of a computer and cutting code all day sounds unbearable to them.
gibbitz 13y ago
I have a $150k art school student loan (mostly for a MFA) that will be paid in full when I turn 65. At that point I will have no retirement savings and will have to continue working until either my children can support me or I die. I work as a front-end developer on a completely self taught skill-set I wish this article existed before I went to graduate school. Had I not been buried under this debt I would likely still be a practicing artist.
- joshdotsmith 13y ago
  Not that this addresses your pain of not being an artist, but have you tried freelancing? I bet if you tried, you could get that debt paid off in 2-3 years. Email me if you want and I can help you think it through.
- ericabiz 13y ago
  As a front-end dev, you should be getting paid pretty well. Here in Austin, front-end devs make $75K/year or more (more if you have extensive Javascript experience.) Living in a city that allows you to live frugally (like Austin) would enable you to pay off your debt in 5-10 years.
keithpeter 13y ago
Just a thought... In the UK, overseas students pay a tuition fee + a bond to cover living expenses (which could be large in London) for a 3 year fine art degree. If a student was interested in acquiring the craft skills and mixing in with other fine art students for three years, then the credentials of the university department matter less. A middle ranking university in UK would charge around £50K over the three years, plus guarantee of income to cover living costs (no cost to UK taxpayer). That income level is something like £13K per year depending on location, so call it £45K total. At current exchange rates that translates into $150K. It strikes me that Italy and Greece might be very economical at present, given some application to the languages. The OA's 'style' seemed to me (as a non expert) to be fairly conservative, drawing based, heavy emphasis on craft, which I gather would match the teaching style in Italy.
brudgers 13y ago
Making the case against Art School in general really needs to have better examples than RSID. Odds are, even if one dismisses the author's advice and enrolls in an art school, RISD will not grant admission. It is not only expensive, it is highly selective. There are many other less expensive academic art programs ranging from community colleges through the land grant institutions and private colleges to enterprises as elite as RISD. None, some, many, or all may provide good cost benefit return to a particular person. As someone trained in an academic studio environment - four years at graduate level for architecture - I strongly disagree with the author's suggestion that an online community can provide the equivalent to a shared studio. Talking to other makers is not a replacement from working alongside them 60 - 80 hours a week. None of this is to suggest that higher education in the US is not grossly exploitive of young people, or that any art school has value for every individual or that an artist cannot further their education on their own.
- bennyg 13y ago
  > As someone trained in an academic studio environment - four years at graduate level for architecture - I strongly disagree with the author's suggestion that an online community can provide the equivalent to a shared studio. Talking to other makers is not a replacement from working alongside them 60 - 80 hours a week. As someone trained in a studio art background, I totally agree. This is also why I don't think online learning will ever truly replace university. People always discount the effect other people have on their personal/professional growth.
  - kansface 13y ago
    I disagree- the university setting only impacts a few degrees which were historically apprenticeships/trades anyway. Art, Music, and even Law Schools would better serve students by leaving expensive universities. Of course, some subset of students will want a university and will be able to afford it; but in the far future, that will be a very small fraction of the current college fairing crowd.
    - bennyg 13y ago
cdcarter 13y ago
>Throughout the year, use at least this much money to visit museums in your area. And not just art museums. All museums. This is the most useful piece of advice in the article.
gcv 13y ago
If you're in the Bay Area, the live drawing workshop at UC Berkeley is just $4 and runs Friday nights and Saturday mornings. Best deal in art education I've ever seen.
wging 13y ago
>By their own estimation, the cost of a four year education at RISD is $245,816. >An online debt repayment calculator recommended a salary exceeding $400,000 in order to pay off a RISD education within 10 years. ... If you made $400k and had $250k in debt, why wouldn't you live like you made $100k for a year and then be done with it forever?
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  If you make 400k, you only take home around 240k (in the us, depending on the state you live in it could be less). It would take about two years. Depending on the format of the debt, it can be a better decision to delay paying it off.
- scarecrowbob 13y ago
  Not to quibble, but that kind of misses the point-- I don't know how many artists and designers are earning 400K in the first 10 years out of school.
  - wging 13y ago
    Oh, absolutely. But this seems to indicate the debt repayment math being done to support the author's point is badly off.
evanmoran 13y ago
The issue is not that college or art school offers a worthwhile place of learning. Or that college is not a unique experience. The issue is that the cost is too high for what artists earn. Relevant report on wages: http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2013/majors-that-pay-you-back http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2013/majors-th... Accordingly art majors make $35k coming out of college and top out at $57k. At that salary it is very hard to pay off $100k let alone $200k. In short, there is an upper bound for when going to school becomes a bad financial decision. Perhaps we have found it. Perhaps not, but I think that is the point of the article. For the interested more numbers: Art $34,400; Graphic Design $35,500; Fashion Design $36,300; Art History $36,400; Industrial Design (ID) $43,600. Clearly these are averages and many people make more then this.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  Too bad there isn't median data. I would be pretty surprised if these numbers weren't skewed by a few giants making a ton of money.
evincarofautumn 13y ago
How about this: do go to art school†, and do study programming as well‡. I went to school for design—interactive media, specifically—because I was already experienced enough with programming and wanted to learn something different. Even though I took on some nontrivial debt, ultimately it didn’t matter because programming pays the bills. All you have to do is accept the golden handcuffs for a year or two. And you know what? I gained an immense amount of cross-disciplinary knowledge and experience, and had a lot of fun to boot. There is just as much value in being “an X who can program” as there is being “a programmer who can X”. † though preferably one less expensive than RISD ‡ on your own time, not in a college setting
- regis 13y ago
  I completely agree with you. I went to art school and studied programming in my own time and have found it to be the best way to establish a well-rounded interest set. Art school helped me develop critical thinking skills that could apply to nearly any field. However, from what i've seen many art school graduates do not realize this.
jcl 13y ago
Tangentially, if anyone in the Rhode Island area is keen on RISD but don't think they can afford it, you might consider taking a certificate course there in the continuing education program. The one I took was like 18 months of night classes for less than $5000. Sure, you don't get to stay in a dorm or play hockey with the Nads, but the courses are taught by RISD instructors, and at the end -- as far as RISD is concerned -- you are an alumnus (insofar as you get access to alumni resources and they hit you up for donations each year).
pdog 13y ago
Unless you're a member of the trust fund set or have a full ride scholarship, attending an expensive liberal arts college is not for you. The main people being priced out are the middle class, not the poor or rich.
- rst 13y ago
  The flip side of that is that full rides are more easily available at some very good schools than most people realize; Harvard expects zero financial contribution from any family with total income of $65,000 or less, rising to 10% of income at $150k. (And while $65k ain't much by Silicon Valley standards, US median income was only a bit over $50,000 in 2011.) Harvard's policy: http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&pageid=icb.page246751 http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&pag... Median income: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...
Tichy 13y ago
Not sure how art schools in the US work. A friend of mine who went to art school in Germany used it to build his network, which then enabled him to survive as an artist. For example there were lots of "students of year x" art exhibitions.
manux 13y ago
Alternatively, emigrate from the US to a country where school is (as it should be) affordable, or even free. Canada is just north.
lv001 13y ago
This is a fascinating thread, thank you for starting it. I went to 2 yr art school and my passion for photography ended up guiding me to help artists achieve in their creative career path. I found there's a HUGE disconnect between what's wanted of the artist and what the artist wants in return. I started a company empowering and educating creative entrepreneurs by providing art and business workshops, opportunities, news and resources globally. I'd love to hear ANY and ALL feedback regarding the site: http://artme.me/ http://artme.me/ Please note I'm not trying to sell anyone anything - I'm just trying to solve a fragmented piece of the art industry puzzle to those creatives struggling to do so on their own. Thanks.

137 points by darkchyld 13y ago

Do you really need to be taught art? Firstly, it's subjective which means you can't necessarily be taught it and then be graded accordingly. Secondly, it's something which comes with only practice. Cramming it in a set time period in a degree/course utterly fails to consider the individual. Also, none of it is formal or deterministic. Art history perhaps, but that's not art. My grandfather did terribly in art at school and was graded as an utter failure and his teacher told him he was totally hopeless. A few years later, driven by this, he made an absolute fortune selling his work and has illustrated many well known books as well. He's now dead, but in his last will and testament there was "fuck you Mr Brickett", directed at his art teacher :-)

sliverstorm 13y ago
Do you really need to be taught art? Of course you don't need to be taught art, any more than you need to be taught engineering. There's no reason an aspiring young engineer couldn't just discover Maxwell's equations for himself, and then continue to derive the rest of physical law. It will just take him a little bit longer, is all.
jacques_chester 13y ago
Brilliant iconoclasts are the exception. Less-than-brilliant iconoclasts are generally called "failures", and they are quite common. When I failed high school art (thanks to the mechanics of the International Baccalaureate, it's a long story), I was surprised and upset. But in fairness, I knew very little about the science and craft that supports art. I was an overgrown doodler. My art teacher tried to console me by saying that many of history's greatest artists had failed out of art schools. He was unamused when I brought up a Godwinning counterexample of art school dropouts.
nnash 13y ago
Art school is no different than any other academic institutions; you get an assignment sheet with a breakdown of what you're supposed to do and if you don't follow those guidelines you get an F. The hardest part of this for most artists is the artist statement (the concept of the piece) and the defense thereof in critique. This is likely where your granddad struggled.
dasil003 13y ago
I knew trumpeter who got kicked out of his funk band because he thought he was Miles Davis. Turns out he was just too lazy to learn the fundamentals and was constantly noodling around instead of learning how to enhance the music he was playing. Art is subjective, that doesn't mean there isn't valuable knowledge to be learnt.

gridmaths 13y ago

absolutely! To the self study program, you might want to add a weekly 2hr Life drawing group, supported by any of the excellent anatomy books by Beverley Hale [ Art Students League ], Bridgeman or even Loomis. http://redbubble.com/people/gord http://redbubble.com/people/gord

codeonfire 13y ago

*unless your parents are rich. People always seem to forget there are those with money to burn devoid of any material challenge. If you have practically infinite money, life is difficult. Art is something that transcends money and can help those more fortunate than all of us cope with not having any challenges in life.

knowtheory 13y ago
> If you have practically infinite money, life is difficult. Maybe you meant something other than difficult, maybe you meant "easy" instead. Having enough money to survive on for the rest of your life doesn't mean a life devoid of challenges, but to claim that such a life is difficult is probably a misunderstanding of what difficulty actually is for the vast majority of humans living on the planet. For a lazy analysis also see: Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  My theory of "rich" is that it is measured not in mere dollars, but in the products or services you will pay for without a second thought. For example: I am now nice-dinner rich. I can buy good stuff from a local restaurant and not feel the sting. But I am not business-class-RTW-ticket rich. I can, in theory, afford it, but I have to think about whether I think it's worth the money.
  - knowtheory 13y ago
    Sure. So, when you're deciding between food and rent, that is a different kind of difficulty than whether you have to decide between private and public school for your kids, and all together a different thing compared to whether you have to spend your time flying coach or business class. As a sidebar, I think it's reprehensible that we (Americans) conflate having sufficient capital to guarantee one's basic needs with having sufficient access to capital to do interesting things (say create a startup) and also with having sufficient personal wealth to slake one's desires/whims.

11185d 13y ago

Design student here. I've never been to a US art school, I am on my way to my second year in an Israeli school (Shenkar). Although I do not think it is justified by ANY means that any education costs as much as the author mentioned the RISD program costs ($200K+), I do know that art school for me has been a challenging and amazing experience, and here is why I would recommend it even if you do not want to be a designer, but just want to get your creative bearings rolling for a few years: 1. Assuming that you make it to a competitive program, you will most likely be with high quality people who are hard workers. Its been an absolute pleasure for me to kick it with some of the coolest and most creative people in Israel at my school. 2. Design is an enormous field, and although you can expose yourself to many things on the internet, what some schools are able to bring you (not necessarily all) is experience, expertise, a social life, hands on practice with your friends at school, critique by your teachers and classmates, the ability to see how you fare in contrast to others among many more things. 3. To branch off from that last point, since design is such an enormous field, you might think you want to do one thing, but after talking to so many teachers who are deep in the heart of the field you might switch. I was sure I would study to be a web designer/web dev, but all I want to do now is motion design. 4. This is your time to be creative. Do it within the most creatively inclined framework possible, with as many people who are like-minded as possible. There are not many opportunities for this kind of thing--if you go to design school you can mess around and be creative until you dont feel like it anymore, and then continue doing the real world as you did before. I highly recommend you go to Art School. Just dont spend a ton of money on it, be sure of the reasons you are doing it, and research the environment in which you will be studying for the next four years because you had better like it if youre going to be there for four years.

jakejake 13y ago
I firmly believe that any program is exactly what you make of it. For some who take full advantage, art school can lead to great things just as any other school. For others who have no ambition or just want to party and postpone life for 4 years, you'd better live it up. Because the odds greatly favor that you'll be in for tough, disappointing times in your 20's and 30's.

nperson 13y ago

I went to art school in Germany and paid a €200 fee per semester. That's about it. Education at art schools here is still very good and free - as in free thinking. When I read articles like this I'm just super happy that our education system hasn't yet been privatized. In order to learn, you'll need time to study. You'll need time without monetary pressure. My advice is to go to art school and challenge yourself, once in your life you shouldn't really care about money but about making the best work possible.

knowtheory 13y ago
Honestly, this is a problem much deeper and more complicated than privatization. In the post-war period the US spent a decent chunk of money via mechanisms like state sponsorship of universities and the GI-bill to ensure that university education was accessible to most Americans. All of that spending took a downward turn somewhere in the 80s & 90s. As a consequence students must bear the vast majority of the cost of their university education starting somewhere in the 00s. Universities began looking elsewhere for other sources of funding (since you can't actually run a university solely on the backs of students), and began reaching out for grants from the US government (NIH and NSF being two major funders). Now that gridlock in the Congress has forced the sequester on all of our federal institutions, we're seeing research dollars take a dive now too. Private schools are part of the problem, but the real problem is that American politics has abdicated its responsibility to educate its people.
- simonh 13y ago
  > ..but the real problem is that American politics has abdicated its responsibility to educate its people. Er, being a bit hyperbolic there aren't we? It's a double-sided resource crunch. Funding is drying up, yes, but meanwhile costs as academic institutions are ballooning. Administrative costs have rocketed, while other changes such as increasingly generous tenure arrangements sap away resources from the cutting edge of education. It's not unusual for Tenured professors to get a sabbatical every three years, rather than the more traditions one in seven. In 2011, 20 of Harvard's 48 History professors were on sabbatical.

mathnode 13y ago

I went to art school to do Games and Art Design. I dropped out, and 6 years later I am a python/c dev and DBA. I am so very very very thankful of publications such as the following listed at Stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-m...

rdouble 13y ago

The list of resources in this post is great. I'll add in that you can find all the Loomis books on PDF floating around the internet, and certain instructors at the Art Student's League in NY are amazing. On the flip side, continuing ed courses at SVA are AWFUL.

ameister14 13y ago

I find it interesting that he starts of by saying "the traditional approach is failing us" because art school is definitely not the traditional approach. Art is a skill arguably best learned through apprenticeship; to be honest this as a system works better for a lot of things.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
I'm confused. Is the article talking about learning art or learning design? These are very different activities even if they are often collated on the same campuses or in the same buildings.
- ameister14 13y ago
  He's talking about learning art.
  - dotBen 13y ago
    By using RISD (nb: where "d" stands for design) as an example... :/
    - wahnfrieden 13y ago
      RISD has several departments: http://www.risd.edu/Academics/ http://www.risd.edu/Academics/

Volscio 13y ago

I was expecting this to be another sort of hackernews anti-school rant but it ended up being pretty useful and listed some good alternatives. Having just finished art school myself I do see the value in learning from and being around those who see the world in that way and I don't think most people can cut corners on becoming a "trained" artist. I also wrote a long post on the value of formal education vs. other methods that maybe some people will find useful who are trying to find their way: http://blog.benturner.com/2013/06/08/graduation-from-formal-education/ http://blog.benturner.com/2013/06/08/graduation-from-formal-... Have gone through the Army, public school, private grad schools, online self-learning, so it's been an expensive look (thank you GI Bill, to some degree) at the state of US education.

keithpeter 13y ago
Yes, the OA's suggestions under the $10K Art Education heading were interesting. I especially liked the 'create accountability' section urging people to join a community to give and receive feedback on work. I am wondering if there is an opportunity for a local institution here to facilitate face to face networking for local artists? Perhaps mediated via a Web site?

tomphoolery 13y ago

This article seems to come from a place of frustration. My parents are recruiters, and they told me perhaps the best job advice I've ever had. They told me that I should get a degree in something that makes me happy. Granted, I didn't have to pay as much for college as the average kid, they helped me out a lot. But I wasn't devoid of student loans and I didn't have endless money. It ended up that I would become a programmer after I began doing freelance web dev on the side to make extra beer money during college. Since there are few well-paying jobs in the market of singers and other jazz musicians, I started programming full-time. I still believe that, if you can, you should take courses in college that are meaningful to you. You don't need a comp sci degree to be a programmer. The fact that you have a bachelor's (in ANYTHING) qualifies you for the job.

taternuts 13y ago
The problem is that most people don't like programming or don't see themselves doing it. Even those who do might not actually like it all that much once they get into it. While it's true you don't need a comp sci degree to be a programmer (I don't have a CS degree either), I think you need to have at least some passion about computers and how things work or trying to make a go of it as a programmer is going to be much harder and miserable. I've always felt lucky that I truly love what I do and enjoy the process of learning more and getting better, and that oh yeah - job security isn't that big of a deal in our field and we get paid pretty well. For these reasons I've tried to get many of my smart friends wondering what they are going to do with their degrees into the field, but to some, the thought of sitting in front of a computer and cutting code all day sounds unbearable to them.

gibbitz 13y ago

I have a $150k art school student loan (mostly for a MFA) that will be paid in full when I turn 65. At that point I will have no retirement savings and will have to continue working until either my children can support me or I die. I work as a front-end developer on a completely self taught skill-set I wish this article existed before I went to graduate school. Had I not been buried under this debt I would likely still be a practicing artist.

joshdotsmith 13y ago
Not that this addresses your pain of not being an artist, but have you tried freelancing? I bet if you tried, you could get that debt paid off in 2-3 years. Email me if you want and I can help you think it through.
ericabiz 13y ago
As a front-end dev, you should be getting paid pretty well. Here in Austin, front-end devs make $75K/year or more (more if you have extensive Javascript experience.) Living in a city that allows you to live frugally (like Austin) would enable you to pay off your debt in 5-10 years.

keithpeter 13y ago

Just a thought... In the UK, overseas students pay a tuition fee + a bond to cover living expenses (which could be large in London) for a 3 year fine art degree. If a student was interested in acquiring the craft skills and mixing in with other fine art students for three years, then the credentials of the university department matter less. A middle ranking university in UK would charge around £50K over the three years, plus guarantee of income to cover living costs (no cost to UK taxpayer). That income level is something like £13K per year depending on location, so call it £45K total. At current exchange rates that translates into $150K. It strikes me that Italy and Greece might be very economical at present, given some application to the languages. The OA's 'style' seemed to me (as a non expert) to be fairly conservative, drawing based, heavy emphasis on craft, which I gather would match the teaching style in Italy.

brudgers 13y ago

Making the case against Art School in general really needs to have better examples than RSID. Odds are, even if one dismisses the author's advice and enrolls in an art school, RISD will not grant admission. It is not only expensive, it is highly selective. There are many other less expensive academic art programs ranging from community colleges through the land grant institutions and private colleges to enterprises as elite as RISD. None, some, many, or all may provide good cost benefit return to a particular person. As someone trained in an academic studio environment - four years at graduate level for architecture - I strongly disagree with the author's suggestion that an online community can provide the equivalent to a shared studio. Talking to other makers is not a replacement from working alongside them 60 - 80 hours a week. None of this is to suggest that higher education in the US is not grossly exploitive of young people, or that any art school has value for every individual or that an artist cannot further their education on their own.

bennyg 13y ago
> As someone trained in an academic studio environment - four years at graduate level for architecture - I strongly disagree with the author's suggestion that an online community can provide the equivalent to a shared studio. Talking to other makers is not a replacement from working alongside them 60 - 80 hours a week. As someone trained in a studio art background, I totally agree. This is also why I don't think online learning will ever truly replace university. People always discount the effect other people have on their personal/professional growth.
- kansface 13y ago
  I disagree- the university setting only impacts a few degrees which were historically apprenticeships/trades anyway. Art, Music, and even Law Schools would better serve students by leaving expensive universities. Of course, some subset of students will want a university and will be able to afford it; but in the far future, that will be a very small fraction of the current college fairing crowd.
  - bennyg 13y ago

cdcarter 13y ago

>Throughout the year, use at least this much money to visit museums in your area. And not just art museums. All museums. This is the most useful piece of advice in the article.

gcv 13y ago

If you're in the Bay Area, the live drawing workshop at UC Berkeley is just $4 and runs Friday nights and Saturday mornings. Best deal in art education I've ever seen.

wging 13y ago

>By their own estimation, the cost of a four year education at RISD is $245,816. >An online debt repayment calculator recommended a salary exceeding $400,000 in order to pay off a RISD education within 10 years. ... If you made $400k and had $250k in debt, why wouldn't you live like you made $100k for a year and then be done with it forever?

jamesaguilar 13y ago
If you make 400k, you only take home around 240k (in the us, depending on the state you live in it could be less). It would take about two years. Depending on the format of the debt, it can be a better decision to delay paying it off.
scarecrowbob 13y ago
Not to quibble, but that kind of misses the point-- I don't know how many artists and designers are earning 400K in the first 10 years out of school.
- wging 13y ago
  Oh, absolutely. But this seems to indicate the debt repayment math being done to support the author's point is badly off.

evanmoran 13y ago

The issue is not that college or art school offers a worthwhile place of learning. Or that college is not a unique experience. The issue is that the cost is too high for what artists earn. Relevant report on wages: http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2013/majors-that-pay-you-back http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2013/majors-th... Accordingly art majors make $35k coming out of college and top out at $57k. At that salary it is very hard to pay off $100k let alone $200k. In short, there is an upper bound for when going to school becomes a bad financial decision. Perhaps we have found it. Perhaps not, but I think that is the point of the article. For the interested more numbers: Art $34,400; Graphic Design $35,500; Fashion Design $36,300; Art History $36,400; Industrial Design (ID) $43,600. Clearly these are averages and many people make more then this.

w1ntermute 13y ago
Too bad there isn't median data. I would be pretty surprised if these numbers weren't skewed by a few giants making a ton of money.

evincarofautumn 13y ago

How about this: do go to art school†, and do study programming as well‡. I went to school for design—interactive media, specifically—because I was already experienced enough with programming and wanted to learn something different. Even though I took on some nontrivial debt, ultimately it didn’t matter because programming pays the bills. All you have to do is accept the golden handcuffs for a year or two. And you know what? I gained an immense amount of cross-disciplinary knowledge and experience, and had a lot of fun to boot. There is just as much value in being “an X who can program” as there is being “a programmer who can X”. † though preferably one less expensive than RISD ‡ on your own time, not in a college setting

regis 13y ago
I completely agree with you. I went to art school and studied programming in my own time and have found it to be the best way to establish a well-rounded interest set. Art school helped me develop critical thinking skills that could apply to nearly any field. However, from what i've seen many art school graduates do not realize this.

jcl 13y ago

Tangentially, if anyone in the Rhode Island area is keen on RISD but don't think they can afford it, you might consider taking a certificate course there in the continuing education program. The one I took was like 18 months of night classes for less than $5000. Sure, you don't get to stay in a dorm or play hockey with the Nads, but the courses are taught by RISD instructors, and at the end -- as far as RISD is concerned -- you are an alumnus (insofar as you get access to alumni resources and they hit you up for donations each year).

pdog 13y ago

Unless you're a member of the trust fund set or have a full ride scholarship, attending an expensive liberal arts college is not for you. The main people being priced out are the middle class, not the poor or rich.

rst 13y ago
The flip side of that is that full rides are more easily available at some very good schools than most people realize; Harvard expects zero financial contribution from any family with total income of $65,000 or less, rising to 10% of income at $150k. (And while $65k ain't much by Silicon Valley standards, US median income was only a bit over $50,000 in 2011.) Harvard's policy: http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&pageid=icb.page246751 http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&pag... Median income: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

Tichy 13y ago

Not sure how art schools in the US work. A friend of mine who went to art school in Germany used it to build his network, which then enabled him to survive as an artist. For example there were lots of "students of year x" art exhibitions.

manux 13y ago

Alternatively, emigrate from the US to a country where school is (as it should be) affordable, or even free. Canada is just north.

lv001 13y ago

This is a fascinating thread, thank you for starting it. I went to 2 yr art school and my passion for photography ended up guiding me to help artists achieve in their creative career path. I found there's a HUGE disconnect between what's wanted of the artist and what the artist wants in return. I started a company empowering and educating creative entrepreneurs by providing art and business workshops, opportunities, news and resources globally. I'd love to hear ANY and ALL feedback regarding the site: http://artme.me/ http://artme.me/ Please note I'm not trying to sell anyone anything - I'm just trying to solve a fragmented piece of the art industry puzzle to those creatives struggling to do so on their own. Thanks.