
Don’t go to art school - darkchyld
https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/138c5efd45e9
======
brudgers
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.

~~~
achughes
Absolutely. Unlike computer science topics art does not transfer well onto the
internet. While one could learn a number of techniques for drawing and
painting online, none of these make students into better artists, only better
drawers or painters. Being technically better than your peers has some merit,
but will not get you very far in the artistic community if the meaning of a
piece is not conveyed well.

I think the primary mistake that the author makes is boiling art down into a
collection of techniques. With this view they can easily argue that each of
these techniques can be easily learned and replicated through online
education. No reasonable artist would go to RISD and pay that much just to
learn better techniques. If they wanted to do that they could just stay home
and watch Bob Ross. Instead they to work with and be taught by the very good
artists and students. And its these connections that make a RISD education
worth 245k.

But to come to some kind of conclusion, art is not just a skill, at a very low
level stops being about the artists technique and about its meaning, or
communicative properties. Art education thrives on peer review, and the
community around it. As a form of communication, you need to do and present
art to other people, because without review, you can never understand how well
you are communicating.

~~~
Lambdanaut
You can get really legitimate peer review on the Internet. You don't need
somebody standing right next to you to get it.

~~~
Detrus
I made a ton of digital art. Some of it decent enough to be appreciated by
snobby art school people. Especially the stuff that looks painted like
[http://detrus.nivr.net/art/photos/01/styx.jpg](http://detrus.nivr.net/art/photos/01/styx.jpg)

All of my feedback was through the internet. There were entire genres of
digital art fed by the internet and absent from art schools.

I also went to a cheap state art/design school after. Doing the same
critique/feedback stuff I did online IRL is nothing special. Especially when
people surrounding you are years behind making presentable work. It's probably
harder to achieve aesthetic mastery with non-digital art, which some peers did
in art high schools.

------
11185d
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
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
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
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.

~~~
jseliger
_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._

As a percentage of the total, yes, but I wrote this in another comment a few
days ago:

 _Why Does College Cost So Much?_ is the most comprehensive treatment of the
issue I've seen, and it argues that the main driver of college costs is
Baumol's Cost Disease.

Universities like the University of Washington are also in a spending arms
race: universities are increasing their per-student spending, even in the face
of falling state spending:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/06/04/public_univer...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/06/04/public_university_spending_is_up_not_down.html)

Universities are in something of a prestige arms race, and that arms race is
in part being enabled by subsidized loans that can't be discharged in
bankruptcy. It's not clear that greater support from states would change this
basic dynamic.

~~~
mjn
That may be true at some universities, but certainly not all.

I'm most familiar with the University of California, where the state's
willingness to fund it has massively decreased, not only as a percentage
subsidy but in terms of actual contribution. In 1975, the state contributed
$29k towards each UC student; in 1985 it was $31k; in 1995 it was $23k; in
2005 it was $20k; and today it's a mere $13k (all figures in 2012 dollars).
That's a decrease of about 55% in per-student funding:
[http://www.kmjn.org/misc/uc_funding.txt](http://www.kmjn.org/misc/uc_funding.txt)

Overall cost of the UC system, on the other hand, has actually slightly
decreased on a per-student basis, but not nearly enough to cover that 55%
funding cut. Therefore, tuition has gone up to cover it.

If you want to factor out the confounding factor that a larger percentage of
students go to college, you can also look at it on the macro-level and ask,
what percentage of the state's resources do Californians choose to devote to
funding higher education? That gives an indication of higher education as a
public priority. And there it's again a drop of a little over half: in 1975
the UC system's funding equalled 0.3% of state GDP; today it equals 0.12% of
state GDP. If funding were put back to 0.3% of state GDP (or even 0.25% or
so), tuition could be cut almost to zero, so there is no real cost problem,
just a no-longer-willing-to-fund problem.

------
gibbitz
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
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.

------
ameister14
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
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
He's talking about learning art.

~~~
dotBen
By using RISD (nb: where "d" stands for design) as an example... :/

~~~
wahnfrieden
RISD has several departments:
[http://www.risd.edu/Academics/](http://www.risd.edu/Academics/)

------
evanmoran
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-th...](http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-
report-2013/majors-that-pay-you-back)

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
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.

------
mathnode
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-m...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-
influential-book-every-programmer-should-read)

------
codeonfire
*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
> _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
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
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.

~~~
jacques_chester
I'm in the weird valley between the mountain of basic needs and the undulating
peaks of interesting ventures.

------
keithpeter
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.

------
Volscio
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-...](http://blog.benturner.com/2013/06/08/graduation-from-formal-
education/)

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
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?

------
gcv
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.

------
tomphoolery
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
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.

------
lv001
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.

------
evincarofautumn
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
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
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).

------
cdcarter
>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.

------
wging
>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?

~~~
scarecrowbob
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
Oh, absolutely. But this seems to indicate the debt repayment math being done
to support the author's point is badly off.

------
gridmaths
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)

------
Tichy
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.

------
rdouble
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.

------
pdog
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
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&pag...](http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&pageid=icb.page246751)

Median income:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States)

------
kryten
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
_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.

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

Canada is just north.

