Name: Why Art Schools Keep Closing
Uploaded: 2024-08-17T19:55:02.000Z
Duration: 35 min 5 s
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All right y'all, it's time to get spicy. Art schools across the United States keep closing, and as someone who's an artist who went to an art school and was definitely deeply involved with and drinking the art school Kool-Aid, we should talk about some of the reasons why it's happening.

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And also I'd like to talk about some of the ways that I think these schools can maybe fix it.

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First, what qualifies as an art school? In this video I'm talking about specifically private four-year colleges of art and design, and some of the ones that have recently closed.

Those are the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Delaware College of Art and Design, the University of Arts in Philadelphia, the American Academy of Art in Chicago that actually just announced its closure last week, and the San Francisco Art Institute right here in the Bay Area.

All of these closures have been quite shocking, especially to the faculty and students who oftentimes never saw it coming. And that's bad. Getting caught off guard by the fact that your school that you're teaching and working at is closing is very, very bad. I don't want to see layoffs like this happen to anyone, and I think especially these students probably feel so uncertain that they've gotten themselves in a bunch of debt already and their school closes. I don't wish this kind of thing upon anyone, which is why I think it's important to talk about. I have tons of respect for folks that teach in higher ed, especially in these schools. However, I think there are definitely some issues with the way they are run and some things around administration that I'm going to talk about in this video. So let's go ahead and wade into the depths of why these art schools keep closing. One of the main reasons these schools keep closing is cost. Quite frankly, they have gotten way too expensive. Tuition is truly blooming. When I went to the Kansas City

Art Institute, I started in 2009, and back then tuition was $28,000 a year. I managed to receive a half-tuition scholarship and some other financial aid packages, and so I paid a little bit less than $14,000 a year, meaning that I walked away with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting for less than $56,000. Pretty good. In order to help keep my cost of living low, I worked the entire time that I was in school, much to the dismay of my professors. I would spend loads and loads of time on my summers and weekends working a retail job, so that way I could pay my rent, afford food, and afford the really expensive supplies that you're required to buy in art school.

But this ended up having a negative impact on my grades. I actually had one particular professor in my foundation's year that I went to his office hours because I got to be in his class.

I thought that the work that I did was exceptional, and I just wanted to know his feedback. What did

I do wrong? And he told me, point blank, that having a job was keeping me out of the studio.

And to me, that made no sense. Looking back now to my little 18-year-old self, I was starting to see the classism that exists in the art world play out right in front of me in this professor, who had a job in order to support his practice. But working through college is a normal thing.

Most students work through college. It's a really great way to avoid taking out private, high-interest student loans. Those private loans can be really scary because oftentimes they also come with variable interest rates. And to me, the companies that run those private student loans are very fraudulent, and they're taking advantage of children. But I want to go back to my school, right? I went there in 2009. That's 15 years ago. But inflation is truly mad because that same school

I went to is now $43,000 a year. I put that into a calculator, and that is a 53.6% increase in cost.

Now, that's honestly a little bit higher than current inflation, and that number is truly crazy.

That means that you're essentially looking at $172,000 for a four-year degree in art and design.

And unfortunately, that school's kind of cheap compared to some of the other big players in the game. Let's take, for example, RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design. That school right now is currently $61,564 a year. But they actually estimate the total amount that it costs per year to attend is $85,986 a year, meaning that it's a general cost between $246,000 and $343,944 to go get a BFA. What? Like, I just, that is criminal. That should not be the case. Like, you should not pay that much for a degree. Okay. I looked into a little bit more data, and I looked into what was my dream school. I really, really badly wanted to go to CalArts.

And back in 2009, it was $42,000 a year, and I said, I can't afford that. That's gonna be a mortgage payment when I get out of school. Like, I just, I can't see myself living and going to that college. It is now $77,300 a year to go there. That means that for four years, it's $309,000 for a four-year degree. These are not doctors we are talking about. These are people studying painting. And honestly, these estimates are even higher because tuition increases between 2% and 5% every year. And truly, if I'm being honest, the math is not mathing here.

I don't know how we can justify selling this to students. If you're working in admissions in these schools, how are you justifying this? Like, what is the cost-benefit analysis here? Because that math is not logical. To really illustrate this point, I need to talk about the financial consequences. So what I did is I took them and I put each of these assumed loans of between 70 and 80 grand into a student loan payment calculator. And what I got was between $2,400 and $3,400 a month, which is more than the average two-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area.

How can you justify paying this for college and having that kind of a payment? I think taking on this level of debt for any degree should not be the case. I truly think the American educational system is fundamentally broken if this is the way we're doing things. But I don't think these young kids who are 18, who are signing these loan papers away, who have been conditioned to believe that going to college is the way forward, are going to be okay when they get into their late 20s and their 30s and their 40s and they can't do things like buy a house, buy a car. They are just trapped by that debt. I truly would be in so much financial trouble if I had a payment like that every single month. Plus, these loans are carrying a 6.8 or higher interest rate, which means that while the government's giving you the money to go to school, they're also profiting on your debt, which is a whole nother problem. Okay, okay, let's be optimistic. Let's say you get a ton of scholarships. You get like almost a full ride to go to one of these schools. Maybe you find some like work study and you graduate with like almost no debt. Then is it a good idea to go to one of these institutions? It is important to remember what your payment is going to be after. So when you're figuring this out, putting things into a loan calculator and actually finding out what it is you're going to have to make to make that payment at the end is the smartest thing to do before you sign on the dotted line. I do think these are good schools. I met some of my best friends at art school, I felt really lucky that I was able to spend all of this time honing and focusing my craft and be able to really use that. Because that's opened up a lot of doors for me, especially as a teacher. Now, I got a good education from mostly compassionate people who had most of my best interests at heart. But I did not learn the skills of entrepreneurship.

Like at all. I did not learn how to run a business. I did not learn how to be a freelancer.

I did not learn the skills that I now need in order to pay my bills. And I think the fact that

I had to learn most of that on my own, or in order to learn that on my own, I actually had to intentionally unlearn some of the ways that I was taught in order to get to where I am now is a problem. So let's go into that. So these four-year private art colleges, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, RISD, CalArts, all of these schools take two paths, essentially, with their students. You can either focus on applied arts, like graphic design, illustration, I would even say filmmaking is kind of an applied art. And my friends who studied in these majors were perfectly set up for roles that were creative in their fields, which is amazing.

They graduated, a lot of them got well paying jobs, and some of them were even offered roles at different illustration firms. And that was huge. That was really cool to see. It was awesome seeing people get the same degree as me and not struggle as much as I did. However, I did learn, as of this morning on threads, that not all schools that teach these particular majors prepare people for careers in the field. So ask real hard questions of current students when you are thinking about going to these educational programs. If you take a second path, though, the path that I did towards a fine art major, something like painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, the schools are often operating from outdated models that are based on the rules of the art world. I personally felt trapped by unhealthy thought patterns and art world propaganda that made me make decisions that were not in my best interest. You're essentially pitted between working on your craft and making work that performs and speaks to the expectations and rules of the art world. And the art world is mostly a bad place. There are some exceptions.

There are some good arts nonprofits. I can think of two big ones in Kansas City, the Kansas City

Artists Coalition and Charlotte Street. There are artist-run galleries, if those still exist, the ones that survived the pandemic. In Kansas City, I think of Kiosk Gallery as a great example.

There are also some small, mid-tier gallery spaces that have real client lists that want to help you sell your work. But those are rare. They're kind of like unicorns. And the problem is these are often situations that are not run by artists for artists. A lot of times, arts organizations like museums are run by boards. And those boards are made up of people who are often big art collectors. But the board is the one who gets to say what happens and what doesn't.

And these board members can have really scary views sometimes. Before I go further, I want to show you how I've been deeply entrenched in this. I'm going to show you my artist resume.

Now, when I was going to school, I was somewhat of a star pupil. I took every piece of advice that my professors gave me to the letter. I was a straight-A student. I was a rule follower.

I even started teaching in my school's community extension the month I graduated. I wanted so badly to be a professor of fine art. I wanted to be a professional artist. That was my dream. Those were my goals. But I got duped. So here is my resume. I'm going to put it on the screen here and scroll through it. So the first thing that you see here, these are projects that I did for free or that I paid to do. These next things, teaching, this is where I've made most of my money as an artist. And still, it's the thing that pays most of my bills. Then next up, we've got awards, grants, and residencies. I was really, really lucky in these spaces. And I felt great. The drugstore was amazing. Charlotte Street was incredible with their Rocket Grants program, which is actually funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation. I got lots of really cool opportunities like with the Oklahoma Visual Artists Coalition to do a little fellowship on art writing and curatorial studies. And those things kept me from going to graduate school. It ended up saving me tons of money. And while these were small, they were really special. But then let's talk about exhibitions. So these are all things that I had to pay to do. Every single exhibition that you do as an artist is going to usually have a fee that you pay to apply to be in the exhibition. You have to frame your work, and that cost me hundreds of dollars each time. Eventually, I learned that

Ikea frames are a really, really great way to go if you want to look professional, but you can't afford it. And I don't think that there's enough conversation about how much artists spend to be a part of exhibitions. But then next up, here are some times that I was written up in the press.

I didn't necessarily get paid for this, but I got some prestige points. I also was paid to be a lecturer at different schools or give critiques to students, both at my alma mater and at other schools in the region. Some of those payments were 50 bucks or 75 to come in and give a talk.

Here are some shows I curated. And when I say curating shows, I was mostly volunteering. This was unpaid work or work that I paid to do. Here next are articles that I published. I ran an arts and culture blog called Informality from 2013 to 2020 in Kansas City. And it was my baby. And I just wanted to give back to my community and write about everybody's art. But I really wasn't paying myself for that. Occasionally, we got grants, but I always prioritized giving that money to other writers and paying other people first, not necessarily valuing myself like I should have.

This CV that I shared with you was used by my school as an example for their current students.

But to be honest, it was really hard when I would have students come up to me and be like, oh, my teacher used your resume as an example. How do you do what you do? And I'd be like,

I sell shoes at Nordstrom. That's how I do what I do. I have a day job. And that day job is what allows me and enables me to do all of these other things. And some of those projects that I had done,

I got myself into more debt in order to do. I was convinced that the only way that I could be successful or get to my goal of being a professor was to continue to collect these prestige points on my CV. And it wasn't serving me. It just wasn't. However, when I was at Nordstrom,

I got to learn some really cool things. I got to learn how to sell stuff, which is hard. I got to learn how to build a business because everybody there works on commission. So I had to actually think about building customer relationships and what that was going to look like for me.

And it was a great lesson in running a business, even though there were mentors that I had that didn't think that job was very prestigious. But who cares? What I think is cruel about teaching students that this is the way forward is that it relies on luck and prestige as methods of accessing your ability to make a living. And that is not all right. You know, I couldn't afford to move to

New York, like some of my classmates, and just go like hobnob and make friends with and network with gallery owners and people who are connected to the New York art scene or the LA art scene.

I don't think that there's enough discussion about how much money is behind a lot of people who find success in the art world. And those are the success stories that we are told about.

And that's not okay. This is not the way. And when I had my falling out with my mentor that I talked about in my recent video about quitting art multiple times, it was honestly a moment for me, a reckoning for me, to realize that the way I was working was not working. It was not going to ever set me free and allow me to make my work. When that happened. The other thing was I lost my community, I lost my support network that was enabling me making a lot of the choices I was making in the community. And I it was devastating. I needed though, to see that the vision of success that my school had for me was not going to be the way forward. I had to get out of the art school rat race in order to find the work that I'm making now in order to find myself again. I really had to go through it. Remember that lines on a CV only mean something to a very specific kind of person to a very specific way of working and making in the arts. And you don't need that in order to be a valid artist. You don't need to do stuff for free. You don't need to just collect all of those lines, because what's it going to get you? Maybe $1,000 off your graduate degree, or maybe that'll get you on a hiring panel for a full-time tenure track position. These are becoming more and more scarce, especially as these schools are closing. And that should not be the path that everyone is looking towards, because it is truly unsustainable. Never once when I was in art school was I taught to consider the audience of my work as a real person. That thing that they often teach in business and marketing, which is called the ideal customer profile? We did none of that. I was instead taught to write in the language of museum texts and art forum, aka international art English, which is mostly gobbledygook. It uses way too many words that are overcomplicated when simple ones would do. And I don't think there's a real way that artists are taught to connect to potential collectors, customers, or see themselves as a business. But y'all, when you're selling work, you're selling $1,000 paintings, you are essentially running a luxury business. And you are selling luxury products. But no one in the art world wants to acknowledge this at all. They just want to pretend that it's like fairyland. And like, I am not Mickey Mouse. Like, I can't live like that. It wasn't until 2020, when I watched as the MoMA laid off most of their staff, especially their education staff, that I realized, wait a minute, I don't like this organization.

And then just after that, it was like the following week, the San Francisco Art Institute, which I had looked at for graduate school, was closing its doors. And I was like, wait a minute, all of these institutions that I put on pedestals are crumbling. I can start to actually ask questions as to why I think that this is valuable. Why do I want to operate in this way? What is the alternative? And what might that look like? I think that because these schools are teaching this one way of working, this one way of working as an artist that starts in galleries and ends in museum shows, that isn't right. If 99% of students graduate from an art school, and they can't make it in that path, they're just going to build resentment. And every single time that I post about these things on threads, I see that seething resentment come forward. And I know you probably have it too. So let me know in the comments. I also want to bring up that this way of working only serves the wealthiest class of art collector. And I can make a whole other video sometime about how the art world is basically just a speculative economy for billionaires and other members of the ultra wealthy to dodge taxes. But let's be real, like, do you want to make deeply personal work about your identity, and then have it be collected by some C-suite executive at Halliburton, and then have it sit in a storage unit for years, only for him to wait for it to go up in value and sell it off like a stock in his portfolio? Is that what you want for your life? Because that's not what I want. I think that's gross. This way of teaching that only serves artists that can land a museum show or professorship or recognition in art forum, those artists who can maybe land amongst their mentors and get that full time tenure track job.

It's not real. That's, that's, this is just this is this is a fiction that we are that we are operating from. And when it comes to those loans that I talked about earlier, I had professors who were like, yeah, if you want to get all that loans, all those loans forgiven, you know, all you need to do is get a job like mine where you're a full time tenure track instructor, you do that for 10 years, and then it's public student loan forgiveness, baby, you get all of that forgiven.

But like, to me now, as a person in their early 30s, I hear that. And as a person from the Midwest, and I hear multi level marketing, I hear a promise of something for your down levels that is never going to come true. And this should not be the way we are teaching students that is uncompassionate, and truly, truly dark. If you have had an experience like this, and you're relating to the things that I'm saying, let's start a little conversation down in the comments. Because I want to make more videos about the struggles y'all are having, because we are in this together, like, we're allowed to be angry. And I want to help you overcome that anger and resentment that you have, and get you back to making and creating.

I have a friend who I reconnected with lately, we were in the same class, we were really, really close. And I asked them, Hey, you know, have you painted at all since graduating? And they were like, No, dude, I haven't painted at all since I was in art school.

And that makes me really upset that this person spent this money on this degree. And they don't even indulge their creative habits anymore, because they were taught that just seeing it even as a hobby was not valid. I just, it's, it makes me speechless. It's really, really not okay.

So returning to art schools closing, I think the reason why these schools are closing also is related to how they're funded. And that goes into issues around administration, right? So tuition, right, tuition cost has just ballooned. And a lot of that is coming down to schools doing really stupid, big construction projects that they don't need to be doing. It's like, cool, you have a bunch of big shiny buildings. But is that what students need? Or do they need more full time instructors that aren't just adjunct faculty that don't have health insurance and are cobbling together a bunch of different jobs? I really think that students are starting to ask questions, especially all in Gen Z, you're freaking smart. And you're starting to actually really look at this and go, is this viable? Does this make sense? Like, is this what I need? Is my degree gonna give me the things that I'm looking for here? The next thing is how they source their funding. So not just tuition, but these schools often rely on donors in order to fund the institution. So where are those donors coming from? Sometimes they are going to be wealthy people, such as the aforementioned billionaires, or just generally, you know, lower degree wealthy people in their community.

And sometimes these schools are also funded by wealthy alums, you know, like places like Harvard and Yale can stay afloat and offer the scholarships that they offer because they're funded by wealthy alums. But it's hard to have a lot of wealthy alums, when your school is teaching kids to mimic the expectations of the art world, and to basically put themselves into a debt and lottery system with limited opportunities. That's just not okay. It's hard to get people to donate to a school if they don't have the means to be able to do that if they're buried by debt. And every month they're making a payment that's similar to their rent in the rent in the Bay Area, like, how are you going to justify them giving you more of their, their cash when they are so strapped?

It's just not real. It's not realistic. The third big one is that there just aren't more people going to college. Not just the fact that Gen Z is starting to ask questions about whether or not this is viable and useful. There's a big fear that even existed when I was going to art school around the year 2026. This is when the kids that were born in the 2008 recession are turning 18.

And if you know anything about birth rates in the US, birth rates really dropped after the recession, and they've never recovered, meaning there are just less students, there are less kids going to school. And so if you have less kids going to school, and those kids are starting to ask real questions, the schools need to be able to answer for what value am I getting out of this? And how am I going to be able to sustain myself and not burn out after this all happens? I don't think that there's talk in art schools, to my knowledge, of people doing stuff like this, where in the age of social media, artists are able to reach a much bigger audience, and they're able to sell outside of galleries, at their own websites, or at makers markets and craft shows, and actually start to think about ways of making that are much more sustainable, and much more real, and tied to real people. Like, I don't do limited edition prints of my work. I leave them as open editions, so that as many people can afford to collect those pieces as they want. And if I had brought that up in art school, I would have been laughed out of my classroom. But I also asked lots of questions about art in class when I was there, and it was, I was always told that I was wrong. But the further

I get out, the more I realize they were the ones who were wrong. Personally, I don't want to see these schools close, but I think they need to become better cultural institutions in order to not succumb to the fates of some of their peers. They need to get their priorities in order.

And I think they need to really start focusing on teaching students the skills of marketing, as hot of a topic as that might be. I think it needs to be addressed. I think students need to learn how to write about their work for people outside of the art world, in a language that's informal and informative, and not just full of neologisms that don't actually make real sense. I can't tell you how many artist statements I read and edited as an arts writer that I could not figure out what certain words really meant, or if the person writing them knew what they meant, or how they were using them. And if you're essentially writing an artist statement that's just, like, word salad, I mean, you might as well be asking generative AI to do it. Like, come on, let's ask people to write like humans for humans. We don't want the AI takeover to put us all out of work.

I think, you know, where we are at right now, artists need to know not only financial literacy, so how to manage their debt realistically, not, oh, just do what I do and get it all forgiven.

Like, no, no. I think artists need to be able to learn how to not only manage their debt, manage their finances, but figure out how to manage being self-employed. Because oftentimes, when you graduate from art school, what you're looking at is a ton of contract work. You're looking at cobbling together art jobs. You're looking at teaching over here a little bit, teaching over there a little bit, and finding ways to make life work when you're going to have periods of feast and famine. Conversations like that really need to happen. I mean,

I was having realistic conversations about the financial stakes in the art world when I was going to school. I had one teacher in particular who was telling me that she could barely afford childcare and was selling her plasma in order to pay her bills and pay for her child to go to daycare. I mean, like, it was bleak. I knew back then that things were not okay, and if I wasn't so starry-eyed and trying to just follow the path that was laid out before me, I think I would have asked some real questions about the people that were telling me these things and whether or not they were happy, and whether or not I wanted to do those things too. Schools really need to stop focusing on these shiny new construction projects and unsustainable business models and charging what they know are criminally higher rates for tuition, and if they don't, they're walking themselves towards extinction. And truly, artists and creative people, we want to know paths to freedom, not to prestige. We want to know paths to make our beautiful work, to pursue our passions, to be loud, to be incredible cultural shapers. And I think we can do that without playing the games of the art world. Because it's busted, y'all. I also think that artists need to not be burdened by a debt that costs as much as or more than their rent.

And I think that a vision of the future that continues to involve replicating the conditions of the art world is just not sustainable. This is not the way. We have to build our own paths.

And that brings me to our ending. So I've talked pretty negatively, right? I want to give you some hope here. To those of you who are current students, who are prospective students, who are recent art school or creative major grads, you are going to have to build a new art world. A new world that works for you. And I suggest reading a bunch of fiction because world building can be really fun and you can learn a lot from that. But I think that the new art world or your new creative business needs to be reflective of our existing culture and not just art culture. It's going to be hard work. There's going to be a whole hell of a lot to disentangle, but you got to stick with it.

Remember that the focus on elite language and critical theory only supports the powers that be at the top of the pyramid, right? The people at the very top. And you and your communities get to work together to suss out what it is that you value and what you want to exist. I think what's really great is you and your friends that you're making art with get to choose and refuse to play by the old games. And that's rad. One of the best ways that I have found to start learning how to create a new structure or build something new is to see the systems that you're looking at, whether it's galleries or museums or other arts organizations, and start taking them apart bit by bit, realizing what parts work and what parts don't, and start really building those new structures as a community. You can get organized. You can support one another. You should be sharing supplies and sharing rent and doing mutual aid if people are in need. And you know what? You should probably start an artist's union in your community. Remember, we always have more power as a collective and as a community than we do as individuals. Now, lastly, if your school recently closed, or if you're considering where to go to study, I think it's still very important to remember that there are amazing teaching artists outside of traditional four-year colleges of art and design.

Now, these are at more affordable state, private, and even community colleges. Believe it or not, there was a really great community college in Kansas City called the Johnson County Community

College. If you're in the KC area, you should definitely look into it. And this school paid people better than the Art Institute did. And so a lot of folks would end up moving away from teaching there and teaching at JCCC. And so remember, you can still access really great artists as your professors without paying quite as much money. Don't be afraid to search outside of what you think is the unique system or the canon to find your way forward. I hope that you all liked this video. I have so much more that I can share about the art world, about art in class, about my big feels about things like CVs and whatnot. So please, let's go ahead and continue the conversation in the comments. I would love to hear from you and hear if this impacted you, or if you agree or disagree. Definitely let me know down there. And until next time, stay creative and find your own way to persistently bloom. See ya!

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