The Unbearable Cost of Massive Talent
Before anyone gets all wound up about the title, I want to clarify that it's a play on the title of a movie* I like. As artists go, I'm probably slightly better than your average inebriated living room Pictionary contestant. Calm down.
As I write this, we are headed into late Spring. Acceptance letters from slightly disorganized admissions offices and the second wave of letters from safety schools to perfectly suitable prospects have gone out. Families of the next crop of incoming freshmen are beginning to take a hard look at not only where, but whether they will be able to afford to cost of a BFA or a BA for their young'uns.
Some people will be drawn to conservatory type schools where the main focus is on a student's chosen discipline. Others might choose amore traditional university where there are required classes in nearly every area of study. I attended art school in both kinds of settings and ended up with a degree in anthropology.** Regular university art school happened at Memphis State University and the conservatory-style schooling took place at California College of Arts and Crafts. Both schools have since changed their names. Coincidence? I'm trying to not take it personally.
CCAC afforded me some opportunities I would not have had anywhere else. I took an inter-school cooperative class on multimedia art with Laurie Anderson, UC Berkeley threw open the doors to their museums with only the sight of a student ID as a requirement, The Pacific Film Archive was my own personal video store where I could fill out a request card and a few days later watch whatever I wanted projected in a small screening room in gloriously restored and curated film. And yet...I still got fidgety.***
Extracurriculars at MSU included a Cheap Trick concert**** during Tigerfest, lectures by the likes of John Updike and Richard Leakey, and basketball coached by Larry Finch in his prime. MSU was a lot cheaper, but I had a heavier load of general ed requirements. This wasn't the problem some might think it would be. I met a lot of my fellow art students in classes offered by other programs, especially in the physics and chemistry departments. It was a great way to get a deeper understanding of how light, color, and our various media worked. Of course, textbooks didn't cost what they do now.
Treating university life like the world's biggest brain buffet wasn't as prohibitively expensive back then. My JACT Greek books ran roughly ten to fifteen dollars apiece and the Westview ethnographic monographs were six to ten dollars in the mid- to late eighties. Those same books are often four to five times as expensive now and they sit at the lower end of the price spectrum for textbooks. Many places have been renting them rather than selling them for some time.*****
There's also tuition. In the late eighties, my "registration fee" ("in-state students do not pay tuition in Tennessee") was in the five-to-six-hundred-dollar range per semester at MSU. My tuition at CCAC per semester was roughly 1,250 dollars. The costs to attend those schools now weighed in at $5,628 for MSU and matriculation at CCAC is going for $60,864. Both of these quotes are for an academic year of undergraduate attendance.
This brings up some important questions for people trying to crunch the numbers for an arts education. First, will the savings on general ed requirement textbooks offset the higher cost of a private conservatory-type art school? Not really.
But...but...but textbooks cost as much as a Boomer's first beater car, and lab fees re ridiculous. It's bound vto save time and money to go straight to sixteen or so credit hours of studio class where there are no textbooks and how much is a jar of paint and a pencil, anyway?
THIS is where I've been headed. Walk with me.
Those office supply store pencils and the cute little plastic bottles of paint are not going to cut it in most college art classes. Your kid is going to need graphite pencils and tubes, yes, real tubes of paint.
*Preview is NSFW!
** The ultimate degree program for free-range thinkers. Post-graduate professional programs love it. I think it was the anth degree and not my LSAT scores or intelligence (I'm not that smart!) that netted me scholarship offers. That's for another day when I'm feeling myself a little more. Not today.
***Blame Ishi, if you must.
**** Shut up. I love Cheap Trick, even though one of my bosses at Opryland thought they were the devil for running up a four-figure long-distance tab to Japan.
*****Welcome to the 21st Century, Rat Van Winkle!
As I write this, we are headed into late Spring. Acceptance letters from slightly disorganized admissions offices and the second wave of letters from safety schools to perfectly suitable prospects have gone out. Families of the next crop of incoming freshmen are beginning to take a hard look at not only where, but whether they will be able to afford to cost of a BFA or a BA for their young'uns.
Some people will be drawn to conservatory type schools where the main focus is on a student's chosen discipline. Others might choose amore traditional university where there are required classes in nearly every area of study. I attended art school in both kinds of settings and ended up with a degree in anthropology.** Regular university art school happened at Memphis State University and the conservatory-style schooling took place at California College of Arts and Crafts. Both schools have since changed their names. Coincidence? I'm trying to not take it personally.
CCAC afforded me some opportunities I would not have had anywhere else. I took an inter-school cooperative class on multimedia art with Laurie Anderson, UC Berkeley threw open the doors to their museums with only the sight of a student ID as a requirement, The Pacific Film Archive was my own personal video store where I could fill out a request card and a few days later watch whatever I wanted projected in a small screening room in gloriously restored and curated film. And yet...I still got fidgety.***
Extracurriculars at MSU included a Cheap Trick concert**** during Tigerfest, lectures by the likes of John Updike and Richard Leakey, and basketball coached by Larry Finch in his prime. MSU was a lot cheaper, but I had a heavier load of general ed requirements. This wasn't the problem some might think it would be. I met a lot of my fellow art students in classes offered by other programs, especially in the physics and chemistry departments. It was a great way to get a deeper understanding of how light, color, and our various media worked. Of course, textbooks didn't cost what they do now.
Treating university life like the world's biggest brain buffet wasn't as prohibitively expensive back then. My JACT Greek books ran roughly ten to fifteen dollars apiece and the Westview ethnographic monographs were six to ten dollars in the mid- to late eighties. Those same books are often four to five times as expensive now and they sit at the lower end of the price spectrum for textbooks. Many places have been renting them rather than selling them for some time.*****
There's also tuition. In the late eighties, my "registration fee" ("in-state students do not pay tuition in Tennessee") was in the five-to-six-hundred-dollar range per semester at MSU. My tuition at CCAC per semester was roughly 1,250 dollars. The costs to attend those schools now weighed in at $5,628 for MSU and matriculation at CCAC is going for $60,864. Both of these quotes are for an academic year of undergraduate attendance.
This brings up some important questions for people trying to crunch the numbers for an arts education. First, will the savings on general ed requirement textbooks offset the higher cost of a private conservatory-type art school? Not really.
But...but...but textbooks cost as much as a Boomer's first beater car, and lab fees re ridiculous. It's bound vto save time and money to go straight to sixteen or so credit hours of studio class where there are no textbooks and how much is a jar of paint and a pencil, anyway?
THIS is where I've been headed. Walk with me.
Those office supply store pencils and the cute little plastic bottles of paint are not going to cut it in most college art classes. Your kid is going to need graphite pencils and tubes, yes, real tubes of paint.
*Preview is NSFW!
** The ultimate degree program for free-range thinkers. Post-graduate professional programs love it. I think it was the anth degree and not my LSAT scores or intelligence (I'm not that smart!) that netted me scholarship offers. That's for another day when I'm feeling myself a little more. Not today.
***Blame Ishi, if you must.
**** Shut up. I love Cheap Trick, even though one of my bosses at Opryland thought they were the devil for running up a four-figure long-distance tab to Japan.
*****Welcome to the 21st Century, Rat Van Winkle!