

Ask HN: What is the possibility of disrupting 'colleges' like 'Full Sail' - wturner

I worked at a digital art college called Ex&#x27;pression for a number of years and to make a long story short its tuition has ballooned to $100,000 and is business has been contracting. Most of it&#x27;s business is held together by students enrolled in the sound program and a good majority of what they teach could be done online. I&#x27;m curious if anyone thinks this might be a niche area for disruption, or if the real disruption is just the swath of education resources already online irrespective of if its sound&#x2F;audio specific.
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phaus
Simply making an art degree affordable would be a good start. The problem with
art/design/fashion/music degrees is that tuition tends to be higher than more
"boring" degrees.

What makes it even worse is that the market is already too large. Creative
people tend to keep working until they die, so you don't see the same levels
of attrition that you do in other fields, you simply end up competing with
people that have refined their skills over 20-50 years. After one finishes
paying 120k+ for tuition alone, that person will have about a 50-60% chance of
finding employment, and that includes employment that's not even remotely
related to the field. If you do find a creative gig, the average income is
around 28-32K.

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wturner
I agree ( obviously) but as a side point it's my experience that these ( audio
) schools don't teach 'art'. They teach basic technical application. If
individual students then want to apply what they learn to their (or someone
else's) art that's their business. It's too subjective to do it any other way.

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bigbossman
Not sure if this is "disruption," but I bet the trend in entertainment-focused
degree programs is toward deals with for-profit entertainment companies. For
example, take a look at the WWE's partnerships with Full Sail. Right now, Full
Sail students are producing and designing programs for the WWE's development
and training center.

[http://corporate.wwe.com/news/2012/2012_05_14.jsp](http://corporate.wwe.com/news/2012/2012_05_14.jsp)

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wturner
Thanks for pointing this out. It's useful. I know that some of these code
bootcamps basically have deals with larger companies and get paid to serve as
a filter mechanism for them. Not sure if that would work with the
entertainment aspect of the audio world as a reliable hook toward an education
business. I say that because the level of indifference culturally in the
industry (in my experience) is too great. The WWE/Full Sail example is within
a broader context of full AV setup work, and of course Full Sail has a lot of
resources to play with as well as partnerships already in place etc.

