Posted on 05/23/2019 6:11:27 AM PDT by reaganaut1
A series of disasters face art colleges and the art departments of American universities. Their campuses are closing, their freshmen numbers are dwindling, and their graduates are struggling. Getting more students into an art program is a hard sell.
To restore their appeal, art schools would do well to de-politicize their programs and focus on turning students into masters of their field who can then harness creativity for their art and their audience.
Art colleges struggle with the toxic perception that their graduates are qualified for nothing and have been bankrupted by their education. They take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt, only to be employed as burger-flippers clutching a worthless degree in their paint and grease-splattered hands. Their prospects are dismal: A 2018 Bankrate report noted that over 9 percent of them are unemployed, and fine art degrees ranked last of 162 different majors for their employment prospects—more than triple the average. Appallingly, with a 7.7 percent unemployment rate, high school dropouts are more likely to get a job than art majors. Of an estimated 2 million arts graduates, only 10 percent make a living as working artists.
It is difficult to know exactly how many art schools have closed nationally, but they are arm-in-arm with the closure of campuses across the nation. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that 1,200 college campuses have closed in the last five years, displacing 500,000 students. More than 100 for-profit and career colleges and 20 non-profit colleges closed in 2017 and 2018. Worried MFA program heads have secretly reported poor enrollment to artnet News.
In 2015, the entire freshman class of the MFA program at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design dropped out amid turmoil as the university restructured its art programs.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
So art schools go down before diversity degrees, interesting.
The “toxic” perception that their graduates are qualified for nothing and have been bankrupted by their education?
The world needs more of such candid “toxicity”.
This is the second article I’ve seen today on the phenomenon of the destruction of establishment academic art education. The first was on the Remodernization site.
It’s too bad because unlike, say, the art of acting, drawing and painting CAN be taught. It’s techniques are very easy to understand and if you have talent you can progress. I took life study for years and learned a great deal about anatomy. In England, great art schools like the Slade have an apprentice system.
Also, courses in art history will teach you world history on a grand scale. Although memorizing 400 photos of Doric columns was not to my taste.
so it’s not enough to hate Trump to make it as an artist?
Hillary said everyone should have the ability to sit in their parents’ basement and paint with a degree paid for by the government.
Or whatever else they may want to do.
When I was at college, I heard the art students referred to as seeking an “Mrs.” degree; the overwhelming majority of them were female. This characterization was used in hushed tones by my classmates in the engineering school, even forty years ago we knew what political correctness was.
lol, look at the snarky comment left by one of the readers of the article. he laments that a filet of fish at McD’s is sometimes not constructed rightly, and suggests that MFA’s in art might do a better job....
Psy Majors have the same future as Art Majors.
I primarily heard that from Christian based Universities.
Young women would actually tell me their goal was to marry a pastor.
Seriously...that is your life goal?
Sure glad I didn’t date any of them or worse marry one of them.
Only 10% of arts graduates are able to earn a living as working artists?
The economy can only accommodate a certain number of artists. It seems that too many are studying art . There aren’t enough jobs in that field to accommodate the numbers who want to study art.
It’s just how the economy works. I’m sure the same could be found among those who major in philosophy or English or gender studies programs.
Anyone who wants to major in art in college needs to know their job prospects aren’t good.
My oldest brother, may he rest in peace, attended a fine arts school in the sixties, back when you actually had to submit work and had to have a modicum of classic Arts instruction before you were even accepted into a fine arts college program. That is no longer the case, and I think a lot of Fine Arts programs would accept you if you knew how to knit a skullcap.
“...the Maine College of Art claims that its graduates “hybridize a range of conceptual themes and material approaches as they relate to visual culture, the political landscape and to contemporary art practice.”
When I was teaching freshmen in a commuter school this wouldn’t pass as cohesive thought. This is pure smoke and mirrors to say something without moving your lips. Total bull shit!
An arts degree and five bucks will get you a Starbucks.
My Dad used to say, “Son, that and a dime will get you a cup of coffee” when he described something as worthless.
But coffee’s not a dime anymore.
Not sure it is the art degree that prevents employment as much as the quality of their art resembles something a pack of psychotic blind feces chucking monkeys would come up with after smoking crack for 14 straight hours. Plus they actually believe that 100 variations of orange man bad is edgy and original
But, but, but...Obama wanted us to have less employment so we could explore our artistic side and finger paint and stuff.
Art requires some sort of talent, and being able to apply it. If a school isn’t teaching how to be a better artist, then what’s the point?
Diversity students have the expectation of being rewarded for doing nothing. And being able to be monstrous dictators.
A no brainer for those incapable of rational thought.
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