Why Art Schools Keep Closing

Intro 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 and also I'd like to talk about some of the ways that I think these schools can maybe fix it first what qualifies as an art school in this Defining Art School and the Closures video I'm talking about specifically private 4year 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 often times 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 ever 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 wait into the depths of why these art schools keep closing one of the main reasons these schools keep closing is The Tuition is Too Damn High cost quite frankly they have gotten way too expensive tuition is truly ballooning when I went to the Kansas City Art Institute I started in 2009 and back then tuition was 20 $8,000 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 and 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 retail jobs 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 foundations year that I 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 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 often times 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 4-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 Ry the Rhode Island School of Design that school right now is currently $1,564 a year but they actually estimate the total amount that it costs per year to attend is $85,900 and3 4 3,944 to go get a BFA what like I I just that is criminal that that should not be the case like you should not pay that much for a degree okay I 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 Cal arts and back in 2009 it was $442,000 a year and I said I can't afford that that's going to be a mortgage payment when I get out of school like I I just I can't I can't see myself living and going to that college it is now $77,200 a year to go there that means that for four years it's $39,000 for a 4year 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 I don't know how we can justify selling this to students if you're working in admissions in these schools how how are you The Math isn’t Mathing 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 2400 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 another 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 cuz 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 have 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 un learn some of the I learned NOTHING about Business 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 Ry Cal Arts 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 film making is kind of an applied art and my friends who studied in these Majors were Art World Delusion perfectly set up for roles that were creative in their fields which is amazing they graduated they a lot of them got well-paying jobs and some of them were even offered roles at different illustration for firm 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 artworld 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 ksas City the Kansas City artist 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's resume now when I was going to school I was somewhat of a star pupil I 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 I Drank the Kool-Aid and I Failed put it on the screen here and scroll through it so the first thing that you here these are projects that I did for free or that I paid to do um 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 artist 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 moer 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 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 My Contagious Delusion 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 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 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 cuz 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 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 uh I was instead taught to write in the language of Museum texts and art Forum AKA International art English which is mostly goblook it uses way too many words that are over complicated 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 thousand 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 “Is there an audience for my work?” 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 this way what is the 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 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 Stop Teaching How to “Art World” to make deeply personal work about your identity and then have it be collected by some sea Suite executive at halberton 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 cuz 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 and 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 10-year 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 yall in gen Z you're freaking smart at 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 is my degree going to 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 Funding Disconnect 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 degrees 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 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 The Cliff 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 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 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 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 SO… What Now?! 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 often times when you graduate from arts 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 is telling me that she could barely afford child care and was selling her Plasma in order to pay her bells and pay for her child to go to daycare I mean like it was Bleak I I knew back then that things were not okay and if I wasn't so star 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 cuz it's busted y'all like 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 it's not sustainable it 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 sus 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 A DOSE OF HOPE 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 for your 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 casc 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 cannon to find your way forward I hope that you all like this video I have so much more that I can share about the art World about art and 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 uh definitely let me know down there and until next time stay creative and find your own way to persistently bloom see you oh hey you you there you're still watching this video which means you're amazing and thank you um so I actually have this little thing right on the screen that you can click to subscribe and there's also another video that's going to pop up on the screen here that the little algorithm thinks that you're going to like so until next time um goodbye from myself and internet right yeah goodbye