Politicized Art Schools Are Losing Students to the Atelier Movement

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | May 22, 2019 | Michael J. Pearce

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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.

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I have made my living as an illustrator/graphic designer/online animation developer and I am nearing the end of my formal career. On the weekends, I paint landscapes and sell them online. I have made a comfortable living doing this for over 30 years with a family and children. The field of graphic design is wide open with more jobs available than just about anything I know. You don’t even have to have a degree. Just put together a halfway decent portfolio and you are in. If you are good, you will rise quickly in the field.

With purely fine art, it is harder, but if you are good and market yourself aggressively, you can be successful here also.