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Art school abridged: exploring the inferior completion rates of art colleges

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Art school abridged: exploring the inferior completion rates of art colleges

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Content Running head: ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED i

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED:
EXPLORING THE INFERIOR COMPLETION RATES OF ART COLLEGES

by

Max King Cap

A Dissertation Presented To The
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment Of The
Requirements For The Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

December 2016

Copyright 2016 Max King Cap

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED ii

Table of Contents
Dedication v

Acknowledgements vi

Abstract vii

Chapter One: Overview of the Study 1
Introduction 1
Statement of the Problem 4
Purpose of the Study 5
Research Questions 6
Significance of the Study 7
Limitation, Delimitations, and Assumptions 7
Definitions 8
Conclusion 9

Chapter Two: Literature Review 10
Introduction 10
Background and Focus 10
Visual Arts Studies in Higher Education 14
Historical Antecedents of Contemporary Art Education in the United States 14
From the Useful to the Sublime 14
The Land Grant and the Growth of College Art Programs 16
The GI Bill and its Contribution to the Growth of College Art Education 20
Teaching and Judging Creativity 23
Theoretical Framework 26
Mental Health and College Students 30
Creativity and Mental Health 31
Career Expectations and Fears 37
Summary 42

Chapter Three: Research Methods 44
Introduction 44
Methodological Approach 47
Site and Participant Selection 47
Data Collection Procedure 49
Data Analysis 50
Validity and Role of the Researcher 51
Role of the Researcher 53

Chapter Four: The Single Case Study Institution 54
Introduction 54
Chapter Overview 55
Participant Profiles 56
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED iii

Xip/Senior/Sculpture 56
Robin/Senior/Painting & Drawing 60
Jinx/Senior/Painting & Drawing 66
Hueso/Junior/Design 69
Jill/Sophomore/Design 72
Hernandez/Sophomore/Design 74
Lily/Photography/Sophomore 76
Geno/Senior/Design 78
Summary of Findings 81
Community 81
Faculty Engagement 83
Employability 83
Mental Health 84
Conclusion 85

Chapter Five: The Research and Recommendations 88
Introduction 88
Answering the Research Questions 89
Internal Concerns 90
External Concerns 93
Addendum 95
Recommendations 96
Community: Rituals of Belonging 96
Faculty Engagement: Cultivation of Involvement 99
Employability: Economic Awareness 100
Mental Health: Isolation, Art, and Support 102
Further Research 104
Data Sharing and Proven Academic Practices 104
Conclusion 105

References 108

Appendices
Appendix A Live Interview Questions 124
Appendix B Initial Qualifying Survey 127
Appendix C Call for Volunteers Flyer for Students 129
Appendix D Call for Volunteers to Faculty and Staff 130
Appendix E Informed Consent Document 131

List of Tables
Table 1. 6-year & 4-Year Graduation Rates for Private Art Colleges, 12
2004 cohort
Table 2. Median Borrowing and Loan Default Rates for Private Art Colleges 13
Table 3. Creative Industries Employment in California, 2007 versus 2012 39

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED iv

List of Figures
Figure 1. Brofenbrenner’s Human Ecology Theory adapted to art 28
student experience.

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED v

Dedication

To the girl in the white boiler suit

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED vi

Acknowledgements
I need to thank my dissertation advisor, Prof. Tracy Tambascia, whose attention,
patience, encouragement, and guidance was sorely needed. I offer my profound thanks to the
faculty and staff of the Rossier School of Education, particularly Prof. Paula Carbone and Prof.
Sylvia Rousseau, who guided the articulation of my ideas. Also, fellow artist Nadezhda
Barbashova was an invaluable colleague in helping me complete this project. I would especially
like to thank my cohort, and those assorted occasional classmates, who shared with me their
experiences in a discipline with which I was only tangentially familiar. Most of all, however, I
would like to thank my three principal mentors—Professors Bouras, Postiglione, and Peters—
and my students, from three different colleges and over twenty years of teaching, who convinced
me that I never wanted to do anything else.

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED vii

Abstract
Inspired by the data showing the top private art colleges of Art & Design predominantly
achieved completion rates below their private college counterparts, this study investigated the
conditions and influences that encourage and dissuade persistence among undergraduate majors
enrolled in a visual art programs. This qualitative study was conducted at a large, highly
selective, private research university. Students in this study represented the second through
fourth year of undergraduate matriculation, eight students in total. Their interviews and
responses covered issues of student engagement, mentorship, social relationship, mental health,
and post graduation expectations. The accounts of their interactions within these subject areas
were analyzed through Bronfenbrenner’s human ecology scheme and Tinto’s membership and
mentorship model. The research found significant dissatisfaction with student community,
faculty engagement, professional preparation, and economic expectation. Further research areas
are suggested.

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 1

Chapter One: Overview of the Study
Introduction
According to the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings, institutional
reputation and graduation rates are of equal importance; each accounting for 22.5 percent of a
college’s score as tabulated by the nation’s most popular college guide (U.S. News, 2013). Art
schools, however, are not subject to the same criterial tandem. U.S News does not rate
undergraduate visual art programs, only graduate visual art programs, so the graduation rates of
undergraduate visual art programs are not readily revealed. Despite their highly rated graduate
programs, however, many of the elite institutions that specialize in the visual arts hide
surprisingly low undergraduate completion rates (Table 1, p. 12). These art colleges were
selected as examples for two reasons, because they are private and part of a cohort of institutions
of higher education that traditionally outperforms its public counterparts; and that as discrete art
education institutions their completion data is accessible. IPEDS data for public colleges and
universities comingles visual and performing arts completion figures—grouping dance and
music students together with those who specialize in the visual arts. While the completion rates
of all those students who study the arts are important this study confines itself to those
undergraduates who study the visual arts.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is a prestigious college of art. It boasts an
international reputation, is connected to one of the most prestigious museums in the world, and is
perennially ranked among the best places to attend for graduate studies in the visual arts; it was
tied for second place in the country (U.S. News, 2014). It is a private not-for-profit institution
that can claim many famous alumni, including Grant Wood, Claes Oldenburg, and Jeff Koons
(saic.edu, 2014). For undergraduates, however, its 6-year graduation rate in 2010 was 61.1
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 2

percent and its 4-year rate 27.4 percent (IPEDS, 2012). For comparison, the graduation rate for
all private 4-year not-for-profits, was 65.5 percent for six years and 52.5 percent for four years
(IPEDS, 2012). Annual tuition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for 2013-14 was
$40,590 (saic.edu, 2014).
The California College of the Arts in San Francisco is also ranked as a prestigious
destination—number eleven in the nation according to U.S. News & World Report (2014). Its
tuition for 2013-14 was $40,334, yet its undergraduate completion rate is 54.1 percent for six
years and only 22.9 percent for four years. That is below the graduation rate for all 4-year
institutions; 58.3 percent for six years, and the 4-year rate is 38.6 percent (IPEDS, 2012).
The tuition at these two reputable art colleges approaches that of Yale University’s
$44,000. Yale, though, has a four-year graduate rate of 89 percent. One might ask why do most
art schools, even those with elite college tuitions, fail to match the national average in
completion rates? It is an intriguing question because in a selection of thirty of the most
prominent private art schools in the country (Table 1, p.13), six were below the national average
for private 4-year institutions, and seventeen were below the national average for all 4-year
institutions (IPEDS, 2012).
The cost/completion ratio is not the only factor that is cause for concern. Post graduation
employment and earnings for art school graduates also lag behind those of their counterparts who
attended traditional colleges and universities (Carnevale, Cheah, & Strohl, 2013). Furthermore,
the average amount that undergraduate art students borrow in order to pay for art school tends to
be higher.
According to data from the Department of Education (ed.gov) students of arts-focused
colleges borrowed more than those at general education institutions (Table 2, p.14). For 2012
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 3

graduates of public four-year colleges the average debt per graduate was $11,900 in 2012, the
average debt per graduate of four-year private institutions was $19,000 (collegeboard.org, 2013).
Yet, according to the College Scorecard, typical student (or family) borrowing for Ringling
College of Art and Design, in Sarasota FL, was $37,750 and Art Center College of Design, in
Pasadena CA, was $37,561. Such significant amounts are not uncommon for art colleges. Otis
College of Art and Design, in Los Angeles, had average undergraduate borrowing of $32,000,
followed closely by San Francisco’s California College of the Arts at $31,250 and Savannah
College of Art and Design in Georgia at $31,000 (whitehouse.gov, 2014).
The incidence of loan default on these large debt burdens is also cause for concern
regarding undergraduate art students. While the national rate for student loan default is 14.7
percent, this figure is edged higher by defaults at for-profit institutions. The loan default rate for
those borrowers who attended for-profit colleges was 21.8 percent, for public institutions it was
13 percent, and 8.2 percent for private institutions. Art college default rates as seen in Table 2
tell a different story for art and design undergraduates. Of the thirty private art colleges listed,
only nine had three-year loan default rates below the 8.2 percent rate for private institutions.
Another eight of them had default rates above the public institution default rate of 13 percent.
The others’ rates varied considerably between Detroit’s College of Creative Studies at 2.2
percent and the Memphis College of Art at 17.2 percent.
For the art school graduate, this recipe of high tuition, the student loans that often
accompany it, and the possibility of lower post-graduation earnings can be particularly
burdensome.

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 4

Statement of the Problem
Students of the visual arts have inferior graduation rates compared to their general
education counterparts. What is it that accounts for the inferior graduation rates of art students?
Is it the type of student who chooses to attend a four-year art college? Is it the nature of the
curriculum? Is it the selectivity of the institution? Such low comparative completion rates must
have some precipitant. Is it the faculty? Is it the post graduation employment picture? Is it the
substance and condition of art-making itself? Is it the student borrowing debt load and the
educational return on investment? While substantial investigation has gone into pre-college art
education (Anderson & McRorie, 1997; Eisner, 2001; Tavin, 2007), college art curricula
(Cowdroy & Williams, 2006, Fehr, 1994; McKenna-Salazar, 2013), and the economics of the art
world (Alper & Wassall, 2006; Heilbrun & Gray, 2001; Simonton, 1997), these unknowns have
not been thoroughly investigated as educational concerns and particularly not in regard to the
influence they may have upon undergraduate art student completion rates.
Several contemporary artists and educators (Beech, 2014; Elkins, 2001; Singerman,
1999) have professed that art cannot be taught. Most art students readily absorb lessons in the
craft of art-making—that is the manufacture of artifacts that resemble art. However, it is the
inventive reconfiguration of these skills (form), coupled with inspired supposition (content), that
separates artists of transformative talent from those possessed of exceptional proficiency. Yet
even those artists who excel in the art academy are faced with an unenviable professional
experience. Menger showed (2001) most artists’ careers as a collection of non-art employment,
under employment, and unemployment. Alper & Wassall (2006) saw that a degree in visual art
positively affected artists’ non-art employment income but not their art-based income. If art
students are even anecdotally aware of this future, and Luftig, Donovan, Farnbaugh, Kennedy,
Filicko, & Wyszomirski (2003) demonstrate that they are, then the art student who changes their
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 5

major to a subject area to a more remunerative career path may seem to have made a wise and
practical choice.
Purpose of the Study
This study aimed at revealing some of the factors that may contribute to the completion
underperformance of undergraduate art majors. While statistical underperformance prompted this
inquiry, this is a qualitative study of undergraduate art students and their understanding of some
of the educational dilemmas associated with art school attendance. It did so by investigating and
revealing the experiences, motivations, concerns, and expectations of art students themselves.
As shown above, the student of visual arts has only a vaguely articulated career path. The
interaction of the art student with a variety of institutions and influences is complex and
conflicting. Adapting Bronfenbrenner’s theory of human ecology (1974, 1977, 1994) as a
cosmology of the art student’s interaction with the cultural, educational, and commercial
compatibilities and contentions that influence the development of the student artist, the
individual student—a combination of descriptors that compile her identity; age, gender
identification, origin—is surrounded by a series of proximal and distal orbits of influence, yet
each orbit can exert sway upon the student’s development, decision-making, and relationships
(Figure 1, p. 24).
Encircling the student most closely is the microsystem of peers, family, and art
school/faculty interactions; it is a series of face-to-face encounters and relationships. The next
outward circuit, the mesosystem, is an avenue of interactions that can compound complexities
within the microsystem; art school peers, for instance can influence the student’s relationship
with her family. Still further out, the exosystem, contains factors that can greatly influence the
student but upon which she may have little direct influence; art market trends may influence her
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 6

artistic development yet these may be in conflict with possible employment opportunities. The
outermost ring of ecological traction is the macrosystem, in which economic expectations and
social traditions exert broad influence and identity development; the cultural conventions of
acquiring wealth and property may be at odds with persistence in the artist lifestyle. An invisible
chronosystem, a temporal realm of influence, can apply significant developmental molding; the
recent economic downturn and slow recovery is a temporal condition that may have affected art
student development and choices.
Research Questions
This study was guided by these research questions:
1. What factors contribute to the inferior graduation rates of undergraduate art students?
A. Are the determining factors primarily interior—such as student identity, peer and
faculty relationships, or student mental health?
B. Are the determining factors primarily exterior—such as familial pressure; financial
considerations, either current or anticipated; or conforming to cultural norms and
expectations?
2. What are the chief circumstances that lead undergraduate art students to abandon their
undergraduate art studies?
3. What factors are most responsible for educational persistence among undergraduate art
students?

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 7

Significance of the Study
The contribution of this study is primarily in two areas. First, in identifying the prevalent
factors involved in the completion failure of undergraduate art students and, secondly, revealing
information to inform educators so that they might make timely interventions to keep art students
on the path to graduation.
Extant literature on art school students’ inferior completion rates and the reasons for such
underperformance has only been explored tangentially—creativity and mental health, the
disconnect between secondary and post secondary art education, financial burdens and return on
education investment for art students—but this study directly queries current students on their
feelings, rationales, expectations, and fears regarding the study of art and the expectations of a
career as a professional artist.
This study can assist students, parents, and faculty/staff in understanding the difficulties
faced by art students and help to inform their decisions regarding pursuing and persisting in
undergraduate art education. An examination of the Bronfenbrenner human ecology model, as
adapted for art students, personalized the art student journey and offered methods for self
examination and understanding for the creative practitioner herself, as well as those who
constitute her support network.
Limitations, Delimitations, and Assumptions
This study is limited to undergraduate art students. It does not consider graduate art
students, nor does it imply any generalizability to students in other creative pursuits such as
music, theatre, and dance—even though these pursuits are often contained in the larger academic
category of visual and performing arts. Although there is significant mention of authors in the
section describing the coincidence of artists and mental health issues, particularly in literary
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 8

pursuits, this study should not be construed as generalizable to literary artists. The research was
confined to the interpretation of data received from a limited number of students—eight; from
second through fourth year of undergraduate matriculation, purposively sampled (Creswell,
2003)—who were enrolled in the department of art and design at highly ranked institution. This
institution is located in a major urban area that plays a significant role in the international art
scene. The student participants contributed their opinion and concerns through individual
interviews that took place on campus but not in the department of Art & Design.
Regarding the researcher and the validity (Merriam, 2009) of data collection and
interpretation, it must be revealed that the author of this research possesses both a bachelor’s and
master’s degree in visual art, and has taught art and design at three colleges over twenty-five
years. This has given the researcher a deep understanding of the nomenclature, themes, demands,
and expectations of academic art education. The researcher has also enjoyed a significant career
as a professional artist, having participated in numerous solo and groups exhibition in
commercial galleries and museums, and has also received several awards for artistic
accomplishment. This experience has informed the researcher of both ends of the professional art
spectrum, from training to practice, and was therefore eminently suited to solicit and interpret the
data gleaned form art students; in this regard the research acts as an expert guide. Subjectivity
concerns had been anticipated and mitigated through the collection of rich data by thorough, in-
depth interviewing, respondent validation through member checks, transcript coding and
narrative analysis (Maxwell, 2013).
Definitions
Art school, art college, school of art & design, studio art program and fine art program are used
interchangeably to designate an undergraduate program in visual art.
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 9

Art student, art & design student, student artist, art school student, student of art, visual art
student, student of visual art, studio art student, and fine art student are used interchangeably to
designate a student enrolled in an undergraduate program in visual art.
Completion, completion rate, and graduation rate are used interchangeably to designate
successful completion of an undergraduate visual art program in either four or six years.
Visual Art includes various practices. There are the well-known and traditional pursuits of
painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture (including installation art), photography, and ceramics.
Newer additions to the art school curriculum include performance art, and digital media—which
can include video art, photography, and Internet art. Graphic design is frequently included in
some of the programs mentioned, as is occasionally product design, though architecture is not.
Conclusion
This chapter has included an introduction to, and statement of, the problem of inferior
completion rates for undergraduate art students. It has also outlined the research questions,
significance, limitations and delimitations of the study. Additionally, it has defined frequently
used terms included in the study. Chapter Two includes a background of and focus upon the
problem, a review of the literature regarding the issues involved, a brief history of visual art as a
subject area in higher education and some of its current pedagogical difficulties, political and
economic developments affecting art education, the problem’s possible contributive components,
and a theoretical framework for examining the problem. A description of the study’s
methodology and participants has been included Chapter Three, while Chapter Four provided a
summary of the data collected from the participants and other sources. Chapter Five offered
recommendations for future study based upon a thorough synthesis of the data collected.

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 10

Chapter Two: Literature Review
Introduction
This study was prompted by the discrepancy between the graduation rates of
undergraduate students who major in the visual arts when compared to overall graduation rates
of college students. The completion rates for both public and private institutions are contrasted
in this examination. Additionally, this comparison aligned the data on completion rates for
specialized art colleges in contrast to the financial considerations of post graduation
employment, student loan debt, employment difficulty, and persistence in the art field. In this
chapter are described conditions related to art school completion, a brief history of the visual art
studies as a subject offering in institutions of higher education in the context of the growth of the
American university, and the changing role of the visual arts within the academy and in the
public sphere.
Background & Focus
Most private, art-specialized colleges fail to equal the undergraduate completion rates of
non-art institutions. The 6-year and 4-year graduation rates of the twenty most notable of these
specialized institutions are inferior to their general education counterparts. In fact, the great
majority of them are below, and many of them very far below, the national average of private 4-
year colleges education institutions that provide more comprehensive subject offerings.
Additionally, more than half of these art colleges have 6-year and 4-year graduation rates that are
below the national figure for all 4-year institutions (IPEDS, 2011). Moreover, arts degree holders
are subject to higher unemployment and lower wages than other graduates. This widespread
condition is evidenced by data collected by Carnevale & Cheah showing higher unemployment
rates and lower earnings than not only business trained graduates but all other arts practitioners
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 11

(Georgetown Public Policy Institute, 2013), excluding architects. The only exception is those arts
graduates with extensive communication design skills (Otis Report on the Creative Economy,
2011). This limited employment condition is especially worrisome considering that the tuition of
these specialty colleges tends to be as high or higher than general educational institutions,
resulting in the accumulation of significant student loan debt among art graduates. This debt can
become even more burdensome when serviced by lesser earnings (Forbes, 2010).
While Liberal Arts graduates also begin lower on the salary ladder, a study (AACU,
2013) of liberal arts graduates asserted that by mid-career the earnings of these graduates level
toward the salaries of more mercantile majors. This is amplified by another report (AACU,
2013b) that claims more than 75% of employers interviewed agreed college students should
obtain a broad education in the liberal arts and sciences. It is debatable if one does recover from
meager early career earnings when one considers accruing interest, salary increases based on
lesser salaries, pensions linked to highest salary earned, and the acquisition of property and
investments earlier, rather than later in a career. Yet, employers that desire employees possess
the broad knowledge base acquired by liberal arts students place visual arts students at even a
greater disadvantage. For it is unlikely, due to their highly specialized curricula, whether
programs concentrated upon art and design can supply these necessary competencies. This study
explored aspects of art in higher education that may expand our knowledge of what is being
taught in colleges of art and design, how art is being taught and assessed, and the relationships
between students and faculty. Furthermore, this study considered student engagement and mental
health, creativity as a teachable skill, student employment ambitions, and economic
expectations. This was prefaced by a brief history of how visual art became a part of the college
curriculum.

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 12

Table 1 6-year & 4-Year Graduation Rates for Private Art Colleges, 2004 cohort
86.7/70.6 Rhode Island School of Design
77.3/71.5 Maryland Institute College of Art
72.2/69.4 Minneapolis College of Art
69.6/28.6 Art Center College of Design
68.7/60.7 Ringling College of Art and Design
68.6/63.7 School of Visual Arts*
66.7/50.8 Savannah College of Art and Design
65.5/52.5 U.S. %, 4-year private not-for-profits graduation rate
65.0/55.4 California Institute of the Arts
61.8/41.5 Pratt Institute
61.1/27.4 School of the Art Institute of Chicago
60.9/48.9 Columbus College of Art and Design
59.9/49.0 Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design
59.4/31.4 College for Creative Studies
58.3/38.6 U.S. %, all 4-year institutions graduation rate
58.0/51.0 University of the Arts
57.5/36.3 School of the Museum of Fine Arts
56.9/43.1 Otis College of Art and Design
56.2/37.2 College of Visual Arts
54.5/47.3 Corcoran College of Art and Design
54.1/22.9 California College of the Arts
53.7/25.9 Memphis College of Art
52.4/40.2 Moore College of Art
50.0/18.2 Laguna College of Art
49.0/00.0 Cleveland Institute of Art
45.9/42.9 Maine College of Art
45.0/41.0 Cornish College of the Arts
44.7/31.6 New Hampshire Institute of Art
36.5/34.6 Art Academy of Cincinnati
34.1/29.3 Kansas City Art Institute
33.0/0.00 Oregon College of Art and Craft
30.1/12.1 Pacific Northwest College of Art
* SVA is a for-profit institution and a prominent art college. Source: IPEDS, 2012
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 13

Table 2 Median Borrowing

and Loan Default Rates for Private Art Colleges
Rhode Island School of Design $25,550 4.2%
Maryland Institute College of Art $27,000 4.9%
Minneapolis College of Art of Art & Design $27,626 10.1%
Art Center College of Design $37,561 8.3%
Ringling College of Art and Design $37,750 14.3%
School of Visual Arts $27,001 9.1%
Savannah College of Art and Design $31,000 11.5%
65.5/52.5 U.S. %, 4-year private not-for-profits graduation rate
California Institute of the Arts $29,500 11.3%
Pratt Institute $33,000 9.4%
School of the Art Institute of Chicago $26,209 9.6%
Columbus College of Art and Design $31,500 12.3%
Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design $28,263 15.0%
College for Creative Studies $27,000 2.0%
58.3/38.6 U.S. %, all 4-year institutions graduation rate
University of the Arts $27,000 14.4%
School of the Museum of Fine Arts $19,500 6.0%
Otis College of Art and Design $32,000 9.4%
College of Visual Arts $22,750 3.3%
Corcoran College of Art and Design $27,000 10.5%
California College of the Arts $31,250 8.9%
Memphis College of Art $25,906 17.2%
Moore College of Art $31,100 12.5%
Laguna College of Art $25,250 3.3%
Cleveland Institute of Art $29,000 4.3%
Maine College of Art $26,250 8.6%
Cornish College of the Arts $26,593 13.1%
New Hampshire Institute of Art $22,440 5.4%
Art Academy of Cincinnati $21,382 7.5%
Kansas City Art Institute $25,000 17.6%
Oregon College of Art and Craft $20,700 20.5%
Pacific Northwest College of Art $20,750 14.0%
Source: U.S. Department of Education National Student Loan Data System, College Scorecard, 2014.
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 14

Visual Art Studies in Higher Education
Historical Antecedents of Contemporary Art Education in the United States
The college art student in the United States is a 20
th
century invention but she is the
beneficiary of an evolution that is more than three centuries in the making. She is the inheritor of
a shift from an agrarian to industrial economy, the application of two massive governmental
interventions in college education (Batten, 2011; Key, 1996; Shuh, 1986; Turner, & Bound,
2003), a substantial technological and aesthetic modification in the production of art (Gere,
2008; Manovich, 2002; Tribe, Jana, & Grosenick, 2006) and a culturally repositioned
consideration of race and gender in the art world (Darts, 2004; Duncum, 2001; Hall, 1980).
From the Useful to the Sublime
While the practicality of mimetic drawing has been noted in various educational
structures and practices in Europe and the United States for over three centuries (Efland, 1990) it
was considered less an opportunity for imaginative invention for its own sake than a functional
service toward the increase of prosperity through its utilization in product design and
architecture. “In his proposal for an academy in Philadelphia, (Benjamin) Franklin recommended
the teaching of practical subjects such as English, modern languages, arithmetic, navigation, and
drawing” (Efland, 1990, p. 43).
In the prior century drawing and painting had been considered a refinement of character
for gentlefolk and was included among other genteel inclinations, such as musical and rhetorical
talents, that might elevate the atmosphere of the drawing room (Efland, 1990). In Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland (1865) Lewis Carroll parodies this type of educational urbanity when,
after making fun of such cultivated subjects as French and music, the Mock Turtle proudly states
that he learned “drawling, stretching, and fainting in coils” as a satire of drawing, sketching, and
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 15

painting in oils. The teaching of representational drawing, in its mechanical and industrial forms,
was more utilitarian and was even mandated by state law—the Free Instruction in Drawing Act
of 1870 (Jaffee, 2005; Smith, 1996)—in order to produce designers and draftsmen for
manufacturing (Singerman, 1998). A drawing textbook from 1849, demonstrating the
conjunctive use of simple geometric shapes in the construction of more complex representations
of objects is direct in its title: The Eye and the Hand; Being a Series of Practical Lessons in
Drawing, for the Training of Those Important Organs: Adapted to the Use of Common Schools.
This use of the visual arts evolved and continued to expand from the schools into the universities
as a publicly teachable skill in contrast to one that had previously been learned through an
apprenticeship model, as it had been in previous centuries. Similarly, obtaining an education in
the legal profession had, until the late 19
th
century, been achieved through “reading law” with an
established attorney (Stein, 1981).
Art educators already aligned through teaching consortia agreed that this increase in art
education demanded professional standardization, and so in 1911 they formed the College Art
Association in order to advocate for, and establish standards in, higher education teaching of art
history and studio practice (CAA, 2011). Its century long influence extends to the training and
marketing of academic art professionals even now. It is the arbiter of standards by which art
education organizations construct themselves; the organization’s annual conference is also the
discipline’s most important assembly for art academicians seeking employment and art colleges
and university art departments seeking to hire faculty. Although the organization is now
dedicated to fine art it began as an offshoot of an organization, the Western Drawing and Manual
Training Association, dedicated to the teaching of mechanical and industrial drawing
(Crawshaw, 1913; Singerman, 1998; Stankiewicz, 2000).
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 16

The Land Grant and the Growth of College Art Programs
A nation expanding in size and world influence, however, required not only those skilled
in the industrial arts at the public school level but specialists, who gained their expertise at
universities. The Morill Acts of 1862 and 1890 (the first prohibiting the participation, and the
second aimed at the inclusion, of the Confederate states)—ceding federal land to the states to
provide for the establishment of institutions of educational purpose—not only sped the
development of agricultural colleges but universities that promoted practical education and
professionalism in a variety of disciplines. While the 1850 census showed that 59% of the labor
force was involved in agriculture and another 14% in manufacturing (Whalen, 2001) the
universities of the time remained sectarian and limited in attendance to those in the professional
classes—those involved in religion, law, and medicine. The Land Grant university model
presumed that a more practical and egalitarian participation in higher education would better
serve the populace and through them the growing republic. A focus would certainly be upon the
most important industries of the day, farming and the industrial arts, but would also create a
publicly financed and, therefore, a publically accessible university. Certainly, some private
colleges already offered greater curricular variety than Latin, Greek, and religion, but these
colleges were primarily financed by a single benefactor although most received some sort of
support from government (Rudolph, 2011). Land grant universities were to provide higher
education for the masses and to contribute to every aspect of human knowledge through research
and dissemination. The gift of land for the foundation of universities was possible because the
United States itself was endowed with so much territory; the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 had
doubled its size. Through the gift of land the nation could invest in its future by supporting
institutions of higher learning, much as it had done in encouraging railroad companies in
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 17

expansion of undeveloped territories (Whalen, 2001). Congressman Morrill’s legislation was an
effort to create a thriving knowledge-based economic engine for the nation, primarily in a
scientific approach to agriculture but committed to knowledge of all types. His congressional
colleagues, however, did not wholeheartedly support such a noble, nationalist cause. Some
maintained an abiding distrust of too much education. One claimed it was simply a bribe paid to
the states through a robbery from the federal coffers. Another opined that the nation didn’t need
fancy agricultural laborers and factory workers (Rudolph, 2011). Although the legislation’s easy
passage in the both the House and the Senate seemed to have validated fancy, this was not the
case. College student organizations had already created their own arts and humanities studies
outside of the standard classics curriculum. University literary societies created a shadow
syllabus in parallel to the conventional teaching of moral philosophy. The students at Williams
College hosted lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson though they were forbidden to use college
buildings for such transcendentalist inanity. A similar student-motivated intellectual curiosity
made the University of North Carolina’s literary society library the largest in the state (Rudolph,
2011). American painter Samuel Morse, better known for his achievements in telegraphy,
lectured on the arts at New York University before the Civil War. By 1853, the University of
Vermont was offering fine art classes and the University of Michigan had also added art courses
for its undergraduates. “By 1893 Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale all offered
graduate courses in the fine arts” (Singerman, 1998, p.12)).
Visual arts education, along with other subjects, benefitted from advances in photography
as “magic lantern” displays, a precursor to the slide show, made possible the dissemination and
study of images that were inaccessible in person or only in limited availability through books.
The use of photographic reproductions also contributed to mainstreaming the masterpiece. The
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 18

slide lecture became both a form of education and, through its similarity of spectacle—the
darkened room and the extraordinary imagery—a variety of theatre (Nelson, 2000). In the winter
of 1858 audiences in Manchester, England were able to view an exhibition of lantern slides
displaying the pyramids and other ancient Egyptian architecture (Leighton, 1984). Art history
education quickly took advantage of the benefits of this technology. Colleges and universities
such as Bryn Mawr, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, the University of Illinois, and the University
of Michigan established their own slide libraries for the teaching of art history (Freeman, 1990).
The educational utility of slide libraries was also promulgated by the New York State Education
Department. As early as 1880, through what would later become the Division of Visual
Instruction, it was preparing and distributing lantern slide shows on a variety of subjects to
schools across the state. “Over 260,000 slides on history, geography, science, literature, and art
had been accumulated by 1911” (Freeman, 1990, p. 330).
The rise of photographic dissemination of reproductions of high art was contemporary
with the American chapter of the “Grand Tour”, a European excursion of edification modeled
upon the British version that for three centuries was an essential cultural experience for upper-
class Britons (Towner, 1984). Wealthy Americans (and middle-class but eager artists) also
sought to make the European cultural superiority their own by way of experience and emulation.
Paris, particularly, attracted American artists and its influence can be seen in the American
version of that particularly French artistic movement: Impressionism. Most notable in this group
were John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, and William Merritt Chase. All three travelled
extensively and/or studied in Europe. William Merritt Chase later established what would
become the Parsons School of Design (Boyle, 1974).

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 19

Just as Matthew Brady’s photographs made the horrors of the Civil War a concrete
conception in the minds of Americans who had only read about its romanticized brutality,
photographs of European masterpieces made tangible the artistic hierarchy that kept European
cultural production at the pinnacle of human artistic endeavor. Although facsimiles of works of
art had been seen for some time in the form of engravings and lithographs—printmaking
processes still taught in art colleges today—within a generation of photography’s invention the
medium had become a significant conduit of art historical knowledge and experience. An early
adopter of the technological benefits of photography’s ability to convey masterpieces across
continents was Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. Through his own photographic
collection of the Renaissance master’s work the Prince Consort was able to enjoy the works of
the Italian painter Raphael (Leighton, 1984).
Yet this period, now known as the Gilded Age, after a Mark Twain satire on conspicuous
consumption, saw American art as simply following the conventional styles of European art. The
November issue of Art Amateur reports on the work that is being done at schools of the time; the
article mentions the students drawing from plaster casts of historical sculpture, anticipates the
access to the collections of the newly opened Metropolitan Museum of Art, examples of iron
forging from designs by Raphael, and an impressive collection of autotypes (monochrome
photographic reproductions) of the great masterpieces accessible at the School of Fine Arts at
Washington University in St. Louis. In the same issue was announced the formation of the
Corcoran School, in the nation’s capitol (Halsey, 1879). By 1915, it was claimed in Art and
Progress, there were 109 schools of art in the country serving more than 6000 students.
Additionally, the article stated that only one percent of those students would ever “attain
particular eminence or distinction” (p. 4). This presages a contemporary complaint about art
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 20

schools and their educational model. The author goes on to say that assessing the richness of a
nation’s cultural production is poorly served by merely examining eminence (Beaux, 1915). This
apologia can also be heard today.
Writing less optimistically in 2005, the former curator of painting and sculpture at New
York’s Museum of Modern Art related that 30,000 Master of Fine Art degrees would be
conferred that year. That figure quickly overwhelms the available teaching, gallery, and museum
jobs that are, or are likely to become, available (Storr, 2005). While this study concerns itself
with undergraduate art education the lessons of graduate art education can provide informative
direction.
The GI Bill and its Contribution to the Growth of College Art Education
President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation provided jobs for numerous artists
through the Works Progress Administration. In 1933 the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP),
the first federal art program, lasted only six months but employed about 3700 artists. Just three
months after the end of this pilot arts support program, a second project, The Section of Painting
and Sculpture (later called the Section of Fine Arts), began and lasted until 1943. Under the
direction of the Treasury Department it embellished new federal building with works of painting
and sculpture. It is this program that is largely responsible for the murals inside, and the stone
carving outside, of many extant courthouses and post offices (FDR Library, ND). Some of the
artists employed by the WPA would become the artists who radically altered the traditions of art
in higher education. They include Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Adolph
Gottlieb, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and Ad Reinhardt (Oakes, 2006; Singerman,
1999).
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 21

College level art education grew with the American university system and the
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act that partially or completely subsidized college education for
both World War II and Korean War veterans. Increased college attendance altered the colleges
themselves—the number of veterans entering college was massive; more than half of the 15
million WWII veterans took advantage of the program and another 2 million (out of 5.3 million
eligible) Korean War veterans drew college benefits (Stanley, 2003).
Almost 70 percent of all men who turned 21 between 1940 and 1955 were
guaranteed an essentially free college education plus a substantial stipend under
one of the two GI bills. In 1960 some 18 percent of the total stock of college-
educated males in the United States could claim that their college education had
been subsidized by a GI bill subsidy (Stanley, 2003, p.2).
Additionally, prior to the war there was a considerable class difference in those who attended
college and those who did not. The Eastern image (and reality) of the White, Anglo-Saxon,
Protestant college student gave way to a more egalitarian student body and a widening middle-
class based upon the college attendance of veterans (Batten, 2011). It was not, however, a
wholesale egalitarian shift as both iterations of the program primarily benefitted veterans whose
families were in the top half of the socioeconomic divide (Stanley, 2003). And while Blacks and
Jews made educational inroads to the academy, “for those black veterans likely to be limited to
the South in their educational choices, the G.I. Bill had little effect on collegiate outcomes”
(Turner & Bound, 2003). It must be noted that both of these programs were implemented before
the Voting Rights Act of 1964, when significant challenges of institutional racism existed.
Women were also underrepresented in college attendance through the program; they
made up only 2.9% of the veterans who attended college on the G.I. Bill. In fact, there was a
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 22

15% drop in women attending college in the immediate postwar period as universities denied
women in favor of the federally supported and mandated men (Oakes, 2006).
A portion of this throng of G.I. Bill supported (male) college students studied art.
Curricular innovations—first at smaller colleges then at universities—that made the college
experience less rigid included an accommodation of student needs and interests, interdisciplinary
courses, and, “…the elevation of the theory and practice of fine arts to full curricular status…”
(Rudolph, 1990, p. 476). The former WPA artists who would make abstract expressionism the
international style of painting taught some of these veterans. Mark Rothko, and Ad Reinhardt
taught at the California School of Fine Arts (now called the San Francisco Art Institute), and also
at Brooklyn College; Phillip Guston taught at the University of Iowa. Franz Kline and Adolph
Gottlieb taught at Pratt Institute in New York and William de Kooning at Black Mountain
College in North Carolina. Clyfford Still, a well known art professor even before the war, taught
at Virginia Commonwealth University, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, as well as a stint at
the California School of Fine Arts (Singerman, 1999)
The willfully nationalistic art made by WPA artists, first in the fight against economic
collapse and then in battle against the axis powers, presaged another nationalistic art—
abstraction expressionism—although it functioned, for the artists, as a rejection of conventional
bourgeois standards. For the government that embraced and promoted it, it became a statement
of the foundational American values of individual freedom (Cockroft, 1974; Kozloff, 1973;
Kushner, 2002; Peters, 1952) in contrast to the rigid; government dictated artistic expression
demanded in China, the Soviet Union, and their respective socialist satellites (Brooks, 1994;
Hernández-Reguant, 2004). Yet, contemporaneous with the governmental and art educational
embrace of abstract expressionism—an art that was more open-ended than directly referential
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 23

(Singerman, 1999)—were the anti-imperialist struggles percolating worldwide accompanied by
anti-imperialist literature, in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, through the works of Césaire and Fanon
(Julien, 2000; Wilder, 2004) alongside the feminist critiques of de Beauvoir and Friedan
(Dijkstra, 1980; Schulman, 1980). The historical excavation and understanding of the role that
abstract expressionism played as postwar propaganda for the American way while many other
world powers were in colonial decline is an example of the layered, interdisciplinary scrutiny
that works of art, and their uses, must now undergo through the lens of visual culture. Visual
culture, now de rigueur at all but the most recalcitrant art schools, attempts to examine visual
artifacts from a variety of positions because the art object itself is considered an abstraction, a
referent for a number of ideas, events, histories, and peoples that have rhizomatic claims upon its
authorship (Mitchell, 2002; Rampley, 2005).
Teaching and Judging Creativity
James Elkins, Chair of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago—considered one of the elite art schools in the country—professes (or confesses) in
his book, Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook For Art Students (2001), that successful art
instruction is merely the conveyance of technical mastery of the mechanics of art making, not the
making of art itself. He likens the teaching of art itself to infection, “I may give someone the flu,
but I am hardly ever sure when or how I did it” (p. 95). The “art” which cannot be taught in this
case is the originality and innovation that individuates some creative achievements from the
merely exceedingly competent. Other academics (Best, 1982; Çubukcu, 2007; Vaughan et al,
2008) have recently puzzled over this art school conundrum and have looked toward methods of
addressing it. Whether the pursuit is in the professional occupations or the industrial arts the
presumption of education is that a series of lessons delivered by a teacher can accumulate to
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 24

expertise on the part of the student; one can study the minutiae of the law and become a skilled
lawyer, one can master the capabilities of the saw and become an expert sawyer. Not so with art
and art education and it is clear that the educators know this as numerous essays (Lindstrom,
2006; Harwood, 2007; Belluigi, 2013; Svenson & Erdstrøm, 2011; Cowdry & Williams, 2006)
attempt to decode the transference of creativity and create standards for its application in
educational settings. Some of these theorists point to faculty-student relationships—consistent
with Tinto (1993)—as key to the art/creativity transference model (Logan, 2013; Barrett, 2000)
suggesting that mentorship, the attentive tutelage of the expert to the novice; and membership,
the full engagement of the student as a member of a cohesive and supportive group, boost
success. As the movement away from traditional media has progressed, assessment in college art
studies has grown more difficult. An affirmative relationship between master artist and novice
coupled with the supportive society of fellow apprentices can make the art school experience less
daunting. According to Tinto, “…students are more likely to persist and graduate in settings that
provide academic, social, and personal support (2003, p.3)”.
Howard Singerman (1999, p. 4) tells us “Although I hold a Master of Fine Arts degree in
sculpture, I do not have the traditional skills of a sculptor; I cannot carve or cast or weld or
model in clay”. This is commonplace now that visual art (formerly fine art) has morphed into
visual culture, “the study of the social construction of the visual experience” (Mitchell, 1995, p.
540).
Visual culture encompasses all disciplines of image-making; academically trained and
outsider art, cinema and home video, billboards and television commercials, community murals
and corporate logos, cricket uniforms and Russian prison tattoos. It certainly includes the
aforementioned reproductions of European masterpieces and questions who made them, for
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 25

whom they were intended, to what purpose, what was left out, and why (Bal, 2003; Beudert,
2008; Bolin & Blandy, 2003; Boughton, 2005; Duncum, 2001; 2002, 2003, 2004; Freedman,
2000; Freedman & Stuhr, 2004; Mitchell, 1995; Smith, 2003; Tavin, 2003; Tavin & Hausman,
2004). Not only are these artifacts examined visually but they are critiqued regarding the cultural
impetus behind their making and the social/anthropological interpretations of their receivers
(Duncum, 2003). This expanded visual field now demands a broader art education that requires
the inclusion of a transdisciplinary buffet of subject areas: feminist theory, post-colonial studies,
media studies, critical theory, and cultural studies (Freedman & Stuhr, 2004). This expanded
field needs a new curriculum (Boughton, 2005; Duncum, 2001; Fredman & Stuhr, 2004;
Mitchell, 1995; Tavin & Hausman, 2004) that includes thorough understanding of the constituent
subject areas that have contributed to the admixture of visual culture and integrates those
disciplines without denaturing them. Consider this visual culture artifact: Jimi Hendrix the Sex
Tape. This object must now be assessed through the lens of Critical Race Theory, as Hendrix, an
African-American man, is viewed as representative of racial oppression and dehumanization;
Post-Colonial Studies, since Hendrix is a Dutch name and the former world power’s connection
to the slave trade and its record of miscegenation in its colonies—that still include Caribbean
Islands—must be taken into account; Cultural Studies of celebrity status, emulation, fandom,
impersonation, and stalking; Media Studies of amateur filmmaking, the pornographic movie
industry, boudoir photography, and selfies; and Feminist Theory through the intersectionality of
oppression, misogyny, sexuality, and objectification.
If all this seems a vast and inassimilable body of knowledge with which an undergraduate
art student must be conversant, it is; especially since high school art classes still predominately
focus on a formalist aesthetic approach to visual art (Anderson & McRorie, 1997; Duncum,
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 26

2007; Eisner, 2001; Tavin, 2007; Vaughan, Austerlitz, Blythman, Jones, B., Jones, C., Grove-
White, Morgan, Orr, & Shreeve, 2008). In Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Visual Art
from the New York City Department of Education, 12
th
grade students are asked to demonstrate
in their painting, “an application of the elements of art and principles of design” through the use
of “at least two different media” (NYCDOE, 2007). The California Department of Education
suggests in its Nine through Twelve-Proficient: Visual Arts Content Standards that students
“analyze art elements and principles of design” and develop familiarity with the “skills,
processes, materials, and tools” (CDOE, 2014) of art. Those tools are primarily pencil and
charcoal; yet first semester painting students at Pratt Institute in New York are expected to tackle
Introduction to Literary and Critical Studies and 4-D Art. BFA students at the University of
Southern California in Los Angeles begin their first semester with Social Issues and Writing and
Critical Reasoning followed by Visual Culture and Literacy.
Confronted with seemingly infinite possibilities of contemporary art practice and
inconsistent guidelines in judging excellence, an undergraduate can easily become overwhelmed
and disquieted (Vaughan, Austerlitz, Blythman, Jones, Carol Jones, Grove-White, Morgan, Orr,
& Shreeve, 2008). As Singerman (1999) laments, “I am still not sure why, but at some point not
long after graduation it became very difficult to imagine myself as an artist, or to be convinced
by what I made” (p. 4).
Theoretical Framework
College students who study the visual arts face the same challenges to degree completion
as those who pursue more mainstream subjects. Changing one’s major can certainly delay any
student’s completion but for art students who are enrolled in schools with highly specialized
curricula such a decision often requires a transfer to a more comprehensive institution and can
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 27

significantly contribute to a lack of completion overall. Also, financial demands and familial
obligations are often substantially responsible for student withdrawal. This study acknowledged
these factors but focused mainly on the psychosocial aspect of student integration into the
particular aspects and culture of the art college environment, the expectations and demands this
environment places upon the student artist, and the anticipatory anxieties inherent in the art
education/art profession model, including student debt. The consideration of these concerns
focused on the applicability of the theories of developmental psychologist Uri Bronfenbrenner
(1992), and his human ecology model, particularly the art school relationship of the exosystem
(art industry) to the microsystem (art studies). The human ecology theory offers an important
interpretative model for the understanding of the experience of an art student’s relationship to the
art college faculty, and to other students. These relationships are instrumental in the successful
completion of undergraduate art studies. It can also be informative in understanding the post
college employment fears and expectations of art students, as well as the simultaneously alluring
and fearsome gallery and museum cartel referred to as “the art market”.
Bronfenbrenner’s theory is represented by a series of five concentric circles that separate
four bands of developmental influence that orbit a disc of identity. In the center is the student,
identified by her gender, race, and age—all significant descriptors that influence selfhood. Class
may also be added to that category. Expanding outward, into the microsystem, our art student
encounters, negotiates, and augments her identity in relation to interactions with her peers,
professors, family, and the “tribe” of artists. Further outward is the mesosystem, a free trade zone
between the influences, ambitions, conflicts, and expectations that make up the exosystem. As
the identity of “artist’ grows she must contend with the realities of this realm as she pursues her
career as a visual artist. These realities include choosing the type of artistic production that will
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 28

achieve her career goals, the slender avenue of high art production and distribution, and the
juggernaut of popular culture and mass media that significantly influences, and sometimes
envelops, artistic production. Beyond the exosystem lies the macrosystem, an encircling series of
Figure 1 Bronfenbrenner’s Human Ecology Theory adapted to the visual art student experience.

Source: Bronfenbrenner (1994), M.K. Cap (2014)

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 29

societal convictions and guidelines about which the artist—trained in transgression, originality,
and defiance—may regard with ambivalence.
This adaptation of Brofenbrenner’s developmental schema paid particular attention to the
lifetime earnings of artists—a mere 1.75 million dollars for those with only a Bachelor’s degree,
according to Carnevale, Rose, & Cheah, (2013). That low earning potential, possibly coupled
with substantial student loan debt (Table 2), could significantly impact future financial decisions,
including home ownership (Andrew, 2010). Graduate education, in the arts or another subject
area, could boost lifetime earnings but Millet (2003) recorded that students with an
undergraduate debt of $5000 or more chose not to pursue a graduate degree within a year of
completing their Bachelor’s degree. Student debt, however, does not delay its deleterious effects
until after graduation. The college debt burden impacts the mental health of current students, as
well. Those with high debt loads reported having trouble sleeping, anxiety, nervousness, and
sadness due to their financial situation (Cook, Barkham, Audin, & Bradley, 2004). Mental health
concerns, competitive peer judgment, overwhelming educational and creative demands, and
speculative standards of academic evaluation can all contribute to the difficulties in art school
completion. An additional influence, the chronosystem (Bronfenbrenner, 1993), adds another
dimension to the model. Not only does this concern the age of the student in their development
but exterior temporal events and conditions. The economic climate during the student’s time in
college may substantially influence her student and professional career. Also, the artist may face
the anxiety of the competitive race toward claiming a particular stylistic or conceptual innovation
(which may have several concurrent practitioners) in the cultural marketplace. These proximal
processes—the interactions between Bronfenbrenner’s circles of influence—have consequences
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 30

for the development of the art student, as well as the post-graduation (or non-graduating) artist
that can have substantial, life altering impact.
Mental Health and College Students
The college years, for young adults, present opportunities for a more profound
educational experience, development of career skills for a particular field of employment, and
broader socialization with students from dissimilar backgrounds. These very same conditions,
however, can also be stressors that provoke instances or repetitions of mental health problems
(Zivin, Eisenberg, Gollust, & Golberstein, 2009). According to recent studies of college student
mental health, over half of college students demonstrated a psychiatric disorder yet fewer than
half of those sought treatment for the condition (Blanco, Okuda, Wright, Hasin, Grant, Liu, &
Olfson, 2008; Zivin et al., 2009). These mental health problems included anxiety, eating
disorders, self-injury, suicidal thoughts, and depression. Several studies (Fergusson, Beautrais, &
Horwood, 2003; Furr, Westefeld, McConnell, & Jenkins, 2001; Weitzman, 2004) have
concluded that depression adversely affects a student’s capacity for full collegiate interaction
(Soet & Sevig, 2006). Additionally, American universities and colleges have indicated an
increase in student mental health issues, in both occurrence and acuteness (Kitzrow, 2003;
Pledge, Lapan, Heppner, Kivlighan, & Roehilke, 1998; Rudd, 2004). College counseling center
directors report, in a national survey, that “42.8% of their clients have severe psychological
problems, 8.5% have impairment so serious that they cannot remain in school, or can only do so
with extensive psychological/psychiatric help, while 34.5% experience severe problems but can
be treated successfully with available treatment modalities” (Gallagher, 2005, p. 5).
The academic consequences of student mental health issues are clear. Not only do the
symptoms of the mental health issues impair successful student function, the concomitant stigma
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 31

associated with the condition dissuades many students from seeking the treatment they need, thus
exacerbating the detrimental effects upon their education (Corrigan, Morris, Larson, Rafacz,
Wassel, Michaels, & Rüsch, 2010; Corrigan, Watson, & Barr, 2006; Eisenberg, Downs,
Golberstein, & Zivin, 2009; Megivern, Pellerito, & Mowbray, 2005). Various stigmas apply.
Public stigma is a societal prejudice against the mentally ill. Personal stigma is an individual’s
contribution to that public fear and distrust of the mentally ill, while perceived public stigma is
an individual’s interpretation of public stigma. Once one has identified negatively with the
mentally ill self-stigma occurs (Corrigan, 2004; Griffiths, Christensen, Jorm, Evans, & Groves,
2004). These various manifestations of stigma associated with mental illness create a significant
and powerful social avoidance toward help-seeking (Cooper, Corrigan, & Watson, 2003; Link,
Struening, Neese-Todd, Asmussen, & Phelan, 2001) as these stigmas further lower self-esteem
and self-efficacy. In 1995, Kessler, Foster, Saunders, & Stang concluded that 4.7% of college
dropouts were students with psychiatric disorders. In 2007 Breslau et al asserted that 2.6% of
college terminations were attributable to mental disorders.
Creativity and Mental Health
There is a considerable body of fictional entertainment and embellished historical
anecdote that purports to establish a connection between creative practitioners and mental illness.
Is there a provable connection and, if so, how substantial is its incidence? College students who
major in the visual arts, like non-art majors, experience the opportunities and anxieties of
meeting and interacting with broader range of students and acquiring disciplinary skills.
Additional issues, however, must be considered regarding art students. According to numerous
researchers (Batey & Furham, 2008; Burch et al., 2006; Jamison, 1993; Kaufman, 2001; Kyaga,
Lichtenstein, Boman, Hultman, Långström, & Landén, 2011; Ludwig, 1994; Nettle, 2005, 2011;
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 32

Shah, 2010; Sussmann, 2007) there exists a significant correspondence between creative
expression and mental illness. In a Swedish study (Kyaga et al., 2011) of 300,000 people, that
included those who were diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia and their healthy
siblings, found that those who had received in-patient treatment for schizophrenia were
overrepresented in artistic professions (visual artists, designers, photographers). Additionally,
their siblings were also overrepresented in analogous creative occupations (literary, musical,
performing artists).
“Even though the present study does not explain what mechanisms may underlie the
observed association between mental disorder and creative occupations, it is noteworthy
that the likelihood of creative occupations in relatives of those in the case group was
highest among healthy first-degree relatives and this gradually decreased with increasing
familial distance to these individuals” (Kyaga et al., 2011, p. 377).
This genetic correlation suggests that artistic proclivity is not entirely an environmental
conditioning or aspirational temperament.
Sussman (2007) suggested while creativity and mental illness do not always coexist, the
frequency of their coincidence indicates that they are neurologically or genetically linked. She
cites the work of Dr. Alice Flaherty (2005) regarding the similarity of decreased frontal lobe
activity in both manic and creative states and that as much as 10% of patients with
frontotemporal lobe dementia “develop compulsive artistic or musical interests, even when they
had no preexisting artistic tendencies” (Flaherty, 2005, p.148). Employing a battery of tests in
their research using university students in London, Burch, Pavelis, Hemsley, & Corr (2006)
found “visual artists score higher than non-artists on cognitive disorganization, impulsive
nonconformity, neuroticism, openness and divergent thinking (uniqueness), while non-artists
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 33

score higher on agreeableness” (p. 182), demonstrating increased schizotypy, both positive and
asocial.
Literary artists too, who, like visual artists, also work in solitude, have been researched in
regard to the creative impulse and its connection to mental illness. Based upon a ten-year
psychobiographical study Ludwig (1995) examined 1004 prominent individuals of various
professions and concluded that artists, far more than those in other professions, were subject to
mental illness. Those artists most commonly afflicted by psychiatric disturbance were poets. In
this regard Kaufmann (2001) concurs. In his two-part study, over 1,629 writers were examined
for indications of psychiatric illness. The study included men and women, and writers of all
types: playwrights, novelists, poets, and journalists. The findings showed that female poets were
the most likely to be afflicted with mental illness. The second part of the study focused on 520
prominent women of various professions. The results were in agreement—mental illness was
more likely to be found in the female poets. He called this finding “the Sylvia Plath effect”.
Placing poets and visual artists together in schizotypy, Nettle (2005) claimed that they
have as many unusual experiences (an unusual experience is “perceptual aberration,
hallucinatory, and magical thinking,” p. 878) as schizophrenics. Unlike schizophrenics, though,
they are not impaired by the debilitating introvertive adhedonia—the social withdrawal and
inability to feel pleasure—that afflicts schizophrenics. Mathematicians, also in the study, showed
fewer unusual experiences and more autism. The unusual experiences and chaotic thinking were
scored as highly for artists during the study as for those participants who had been diagnosed
with schizophrenia. This research regarding the connection between creativity and mental illness
may have bearing on college completion rates for students in arts programs.
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 34

In her numerous studies on the subject, Kay Redfield Jamison (1992, 1993, 1996, 1996b,
1997, 2011) repeatedly drew connections between mental illness and creativity and showed that
manic-depression or major depression affected an improbably large number of established artists.
Her collected research revealed that artists experience an increased suicide rate, depression, and
bi-polar disorder at rates from 10-18 times that of the general population (Jamison, 1997). She
described how a psychiatric disorder might contribute to artistic production through a condition
called hypomania, a state of elevated mood and energy that has been seen to produce acute and
divergent thinking as well as increased artistic output. She cited the career of 19
th
century
German composer Robert Schumann as an example of extraordinary artistic output during
periods of hypomania. Schumann, who twice attempted suicide and died in a mental asylum,
exhibited astounding productivity in the year 1840 and again in1849, completing fifty-one
compositions in just those two years. In 1833 he experienced debilitating depression that resulted
in only two completed compositions and a suicide attempt. In 1844 he had no compositions, and
again none in 1854 when he made another suicide attempt. His musical output in the intervening
years fluctuates, showing intermittently lean and prolific years (Jamison, 1993). Hypomania’s
pendulum swing is depression— “In a sense, depression is a view of the world through a dark
glass, and mania is that seen through a kaleidoscope—often brilliant but fractured (Jamison,
1997, p. 48). The suicide rate among artists (Stack, 1997) tabulated from occupational census
data for 1990 showed an average of 33.30 suicides per every 100,000 artists, just slightly less
than three times the rate for the general population. The artist subgroups and ratios among those
subgroups were as follows: actors and directors, 23.49/100,000; authors, 24.11/100,000; dancers,
29.40/100,000; musicians and composers, 32.61/100,000; and painters, sculptors, craft artists,
printmakers, 43.86/100,000.
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 35

These depressive symptoms may be seen in student artists even younger than the
undergraduate art majors under discussion here. New research by the American Psychological
Association (Young, Winner, & Cordes, 2013) revealed that 15-16 year olds who took part in
after-school arts programs more often reported feelings of sadness and depression than did
students who were not participants in these programs. These findings linking creativity with
mental health concerns are correspondent with other researchers on the subject (Batey &
Furham, 2008; Burch et al., 2006; Jamison, 1993; Kaufman, 2001; Kyaga, Lichtenstein, Boman,
Hultman, Långström, & Landén, 2011; Ludwig, 1994; Nettle, 2005, 2011; Shah, 2010;
Sussmann, 2007). While the sample of 2,482 15-16 year-old adolescents revealed that those
teens who participated only in after-school sports were the group least likely to describe
depressive condition, the students who participated in both art and sports showed no variation in
depressive symptoms compared to teens that participated in arts alone. This finding implies that
it was the coincidence of the arts participation, not the absence of the sports participation, which
was associated with depression. The researchers also found that students who participated in art
related after school activities were more likely to report feelings of depression than students who
participated in no after school activities at all. In attempting to explain the connections between
creative pursuits and incidence of depression the researchers suggested the possibility “…that
individuals drawn to the arts have certain underlying cognitive vulnerabilities that can lead to
both positive and negative psychological and behavioral outcomes” (Young, Winner, & Cordes,
2013, p. 200). One of these traits may be a heightened awareness that gathers information at rates
that are above average cognition but fails to filter meaningless stimuli—a condition associated
with schizophrenia. This failure to screen meaningless stimuli—called reduced latent
inhibition—may also contribute to the valuable divergent thinking seen in creative individuals
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 36

(Carson, Peterson, & Higgins, 2003). The solitary, introverted work preferences and practices of
artists may also demonstrate a link as introversion and low social integration has been linked to
depression (Barnett & Gotlib, 1988).
Although artists and art students are disproportionately afflicted with mental health
disorders, there is a sizable portion of the total college going population that has been similarly
diagnosed. The Center for the Study of Collegiate Mental Health (now the Center for Collegiate
Mental Health, CCMH) discovered, using data from 137 college and university counseling
centers across the United States, high rates of prior mental health treatment (Locke, Hayes,
Crane, Schendel, Castonguay, Boswell, McAleavy, & Nelson, 2009). Nineteen per cent of the
students included in the findings reported mental health counseling prior to college and 18%
indicated they had had mental health counseling after starting college. Additionally, 10% of the
students whose information was included in the report indicated use of psychiatric medications
prior to starting college while 14% used psychiatric medications after enrollment in college.
Also, the report showed those who had seriously considered suicide prior to starting college as
11% of the studied population, and those who had contemplated suicide after beginning college
was 6%.
These studies of established artists, college artists, and secondary school artists portray a
concerning condition for mental health treatment and for educational institutions, particularly for
students in the arts. Further study is needed specifically for undergraduate visual art students to
ascertain how significant a determinant mental health circumstances are regarding the graduation
rate of visual art students. If the conclusions from these cited studies can be extrapolated to the
undergraduate student artist population then a concerted and rigorous undertaking must be
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 37

initiated to educate faculty and staff to observe, advise, and direct students to the appropriate
mental health practitioners available to them through student health centers and other services.
Career Expectations and Fears
Employment opportunities in the field of visual art are scarce. What types of jobs do art
school graduates seek? For what jobs are they prepared? The students who study painting,
sculpture, printmaking, and performance art are trained in the manufacture of non-essential
goods—unlike students in product design, graphic design and even fashion design, though these
creative workers are also faring less well in the current economy. Consequently, the Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS, 2014) projects employment growth of fine artists and craft makers of only
3 percent in the years 2012-2022. This growth rate is more sluggish than the average for all other
occupations. The BLS states clearly that because of the optional nature of art and craft purchases
such sales are dependent upon the state of the economy overall. A consumer’s shrinking
disposable income creates a widening category of items considered to be luxuries.
The most recent edition of the Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles
Region, commissioned annually by Otis College of Art and Design from the Los Angeles County
Economic Development Corporation (LACEDC), contains recent tallies of various creative jobs
in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The number of art galleries, an appropriate place for a
newly minted BFA to work, is given as 614, supplying 2200 people with jobs as of 2012. That is
a decline of 47.8% since 2007. Even as one keeps in mind the severity of the recent recession
that is a disheartening decrease. Another area of employment for students equipped with a
bachelor’s degree in visual art is in the museum. The BLS projects 11% job growth in this area
(archivist, curators, and museum workers) in the years 2012-2022. LACEDC recorded 16.3 per
cent growth in the number of museum jobs in the Los Angeles area from 2007 to 2012. Despite
the good news for museum employment, other fields of employment appropriate to the training
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 38

received by art bachelor’s degree holders showed less robust growth over the same period.
Product /industrial design employment shrank 33.8 %; fashion, 15.6%; jobs in communication
arts jobs fell a smaller 7.1 % but within that figure is hidden the precipitous drop in jobs for
graphic designers: 27% (LACEDC, 2013). The BLS also projected a slower than average growth
for graphic designers of only 7% in the years 2012-2022.
Not only is the art student’s skill-related employment picture discouraging, so are the
wages once she does find employment. Earnings for artists are among the lowest of those
occupations included in a report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the
Workforce (Carnevale, Cheah, & Strohl, 2013). In comparing median earnings according to
college major Carnevale et al found recent (those aged 22-26 with bachelor degrees) college arts
graduates’ median salaries at $30,000, second lowest only to those who majored in recreation at
$29,000. As the college arts graduate gained experience (aged 30-54) the median salary rose to
$48,000, but adding a graduate degree (aged 30-54 with master’s degree or higher) only lifted
the median 14.5% to $55,000. That figure is only $5000 more than the recreation major without
a graduate degree. Furthermore, recent college graduates who majored in art faced a 9.8%
unemployment rate in 2010-2011 (Carnevale et al., 2013) although those with graduate degrees
experienced only a 5.6% unemployment rate. These figures must be considered against the
national unemployment rates at the time. In 2010 the national unemployment rate was 9.6%, in
2011 it was 8.9% (BLS, 2014).
The low wages for artists come as no surprise (Menger, 1999; Wassall & Alper 1992;
Throsby, 1994) as artists endure significant income deficits in pursuit of their vocation (or
avocation, as many artists practice their art in addition to their main source of income which is
often unrelated to art). They show greater income fluctuations over time and receive “lower
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 39

returns from their educational investments than is the case in other comparable occupations”
(Wenger, 1999, p.533).

Table 3 Creative Industries Employment in California, 2007 versus 2012.
Source: LAEDC, 2013 Otis Report on the Creative Economy

A more forgiving unemployment situation was present in 2000 and 2001, 4.0% and 4.7%
respectively, when the Ohio State Center for Survey Research partnered with the Ohio Arts
Council to develop A Graduating Arts Professional Survey (Luftig, Donovan, Farnbaugh,
Kennedy, Filicko, & Wyszomirski, 2003), a survey of graduating art students designed to gain
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 40

insight into who was studying art, art students’ motivations for art study, and their ambition and
expectations of employment in their field of study after graduation from art school. Of the 1,108
students selected to participate in the survey 544 graduating arts students responded. Despite a
significantly more vigorous economy at the time a majority of the students were pessimistic
about their job prospects. Regarding the possibility of gaining full-time employment
commensurate with their field of study only 1% of the visual artists were strongly optimistic.
Those who were pessimistic totaled 36.9% and fully 40.8% were strongly pessimistic. The
remainder of the visual arts students was closely divided between optimistic and neutral. The
responses to the question of optimism in possibly securing even part-time employment related to
their field of study were only slightly more sanguine; 59% of the visual artists remained
pessimistic or strongly pessimistic.
The contingent, entrepreneurial labor model of most visual artists (Menger, 2001) is far
from the one-person/one-career ratio. Visual artists often move through part-time employment,
unemployment (compensated and uncompensated), freelance, and conditional employment. They
also often occupy multiple jobs inside and outside the arts sector. Wenger (1999) showed that
artists received lower returns on their educational investment than comparably educated workers.
Similarly, after observing the peripatetic careers of artists, Alper & Wassall (2006), found that
while the artists’ non-art derived income was positively influenced by their increased level of
education, their art income was not. In light of this finding one must then consider the return on
investment for a visual arts degree to be an extremely modest figure, especially when four years
at the California Institute of the Arts will cost no less than $166,800 (calarts.edu, 2014). The
projected lifetime (30 years) median earnings of a community service or arts professional with a
bachelor’s degree is just $1,750,000, a quarter million less than that of someone employed in
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 41

business with an associate’s degree (Carnevale, Rose, & Cheah, 2013). Though a master’s
degree in art tightens the race it does not tie such a contest—the artist still falls short by
approximately $100,000. Furthermore, Alper & Wassall (2006) related that by the end of the 20-
year period 1979-1998 only 38.7% of artists surveyed were still in the field while 51.4 % had
moved on to other, possibly more lucrative, occupations. Nearly ten percent per cent were of
unknown status. In a 2005, the Educational Policy Institute (Usher, 2005) compared the student
loan burdens and repayment conditions in eight countries and found that in a student loan debt
worst-case scenario, one where the student has high debt and low income, the United States, by
far, presented the least favorable conditions. In fact, when compared to the other countries
researched—Australia, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United
Kingdom—the United States was the worst in all but one of the debt/income ratios scenarios
presented. The United States was last in high debt/low income, low debt/low income, average
debt/average income, and high debt/high income. The United States ranked seventh in the low
debt/high income scenario. Information such as this questions the financial wisdom of acquiring
the burden of student loans in exchange for a degree in visual art. In a recent assessment, the
Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), which surveyed arts graduates of all types
from over 300 institutions found in its 2014 report that while 56% of recent graduates had debt in
excess of $10,000, fully 14% were indebted by student loans in excess of $60,000. The most
common disciplines included in alumni response were art & design, photography, theatre, and
music.
The possibility of teaching art at the college level has long been an avenue of opportunity
for art school graduates but the likelihood of a dependable career in that arena has been
dwindling. The shift away from full-time, tenured and tenure track faculty has been dramatic.
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 42

From an estimated 78 percent of all college faculty in 1969, these higher education careerists
have become the minority of college faculty (Kezar, 2014). The nature of the American
academic workforce has fundamentally shifted over the past several decades. Whereas full- time
tenured and tenure-track faculty were once the norm, the professoriate is now comprised of
mostly non-tenure-track faculty. According to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT
Higher Education Data Center, 2009) by 2009, 66.5 percent of college faculty had become non-
tenure track—18.8 percent full-time and 47.7 percent part-time—while tenured and tenure track
positions represented only 33.5 percent of the faculty. The numbers differ greatly according to
the type of institution. In the same time period, the full-time/part-time faculty ratio improved to
3:1 at public 4-year institutions. A reversal was seen at 2-year public institutions, the full-
time/part-time faculty ratio expanded to 3:7 (Kato, 2011). The rise of contingent employment for
college faculty contributes to the income uncertainty in all academic fields. Visual art graduates,
due to smaller institution commitments to the discipline, may find their job search yet more dire.
Summary
This chapter reviewed the literature concerning various factors that can affect the
successful matriculation of undergraduate students in the visual arts. The substandard graduation
rates of visual art students have possible links to the disparity between the still traditional high
school visual arts preparation (Anderson & McRorie, 1997; Duncum, 2007; Eisner, 2001; Tavin,
2007; Vaughan, Austerlitz, Blythman, Jones, B., Jones, C., Grove-White, Morgan, Orr, &
Shreeve, 2008) and the significantly more sophisticated transdisciplinary demands of education
in contemporary art (Bal, 2003; Beudert, 2008; Bolin & Blandy, 2003; Boughton, 2005;
Duncum, 2001; 2002, 2003, 2004; Freedman, 2000; Freedman & Stuhr, 2004; Mitchell, 1995;
Smith, 2003; Tavin, 2003; Tavin & Hausman, 2004). Additionally, artists and art students have
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 43

been shown by researchers (Batey & Furham, 2008; Burch et al., 2006; Jamison, 1993;
Kaufman, 2001; Kyaga, Lichtenstein, Boman, Hultman, Långström, & Landén, 2011; Ludwig,
1994; Nettle, 2005, 2011; Shah, 2010; Sussmann, 2007) to demonstrate a higher incidence of
mental illness that can have a negative influence upon their performance. Art students are also
influenced by post-college economic concerns (Carnevale, Cheah, & Strohl, 2013; Luftig,
Donovan, Farnbaugh, Kennedy, Filicko, & Wyszomirski, 2003; Menger, 1999; Wassall & Alper
1992; Throsby, 1994) that the earning opportunities in their field are limited and subject to
frequent fluctuations. This is exacerbated by professional persistence concerns (Alper & Wassall,
2006), student loan debt, and a low return on investment on their educational expenditure (Usher,
2005). These various concerns have been addressed through a research methodology outlined in
Chapter Three.

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 44

Chapter Three: Research Methods
Introduction
The research design and methodology employed in my study is outlined in this chapter.
In chapters one and two I introduced and provided purpose for the research inquiry as well as
pointing out the limited research into this subject area. In this chapter I have reiterated the
importance of the completion agenda overall and specifically for students of the visual arts,
explained my choice in employing a case study method of research, and illustrated my methods
and motivation for site and participant selection. Additionally, I discuss my means of data
collection, and the value and limitations of this investigation.
In order to better understand the completion deficiency among visual art students, and
suggest further areas of research, this study sought to investigate the conditions, relationships,
reactions, and expectations that affect visual art students’ matriculation at the post-secondary
level. My concern for completion rates in my area of experience is echoed in the overall post-
secondary graduation rate.
Between 1990 and 2014 the United States dropped, in ranking of nations with the highest
four-year degree attainment, from first to twelfth. There is also a significant college attainment
gap between rich and poor; “(H)igh school graduates from the wealthiest families in our nation
are almost certain to continue on to higher education, while just over half of our high school
graduates in the poorest quarter of families attend college. And while more than half of college
students graduate within six years, the completion rate for low-income students is around 25
percent” (whitehouse.gov, 2014). This economic disparity is reflected in the completion rates of
bachelor's degree seekers according to the selectivity of institutions; the more selective the
institution, the higher the completion rate. The 6-year graduation rate graduation rate was 88
percent at 4-year institutions that accepted fewer than 25 percent of those who applied while only
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 45

31 percent of students at open access colleges graduated in six years (NCES, 2013). This is
particularly dire as Black and Latino students overwhelmingly attend open admissions colleges,
“Between 1995 and 2009, 82 percent of new white freshman enrollments were at the 468 most
selective four-year colleges, compared to 13 percent for Hispanics and 9 percent for African
Americans; 68 percent of new African-American freshman enrollments and 72 percent of new
Hispanic freshman enrollments were at open-access two- and four-year colleges, compared to no
growth for whites” (Carnevale & Stroh, 2013). Overall, full time undergraduate students who
began in the autumn 2005 had a 57 percent 6-year graduation rate at public institutions and 65
percent completion rate at private nonprofit institutions. Private for-profit institutions showed a
42 percent 6-year completion rate (NCES, 2013).
Completion levels for college students are an ongoing concern but gained national
attention recently through President Barack Obama’s stated desire, and program implementation,
to produce more college degree holders who are ready to fully participate in a workforce that has
significantly changed. The government projects that, over the next decade, more jobs will require
a college degree and fewer will be available to those who possess only a high school diploma
(whitehouse.gov, 2014), particularly in the fastest growing occupations. “With the average
earnings of college graduates at a level that is twice as high as that of workers with only a high
school diploma, higher education is now the clearest pathway into the middle class”
(whitehouse.gov, 2014). This has placed college completion on the national economic agenda
and action has already been taken to facilitate college graduation through the reform of student
loan rates, an increase in Pell grants, expansion of education tax credits, the introduction of a
“college scorecard” to help better inform educational consumers, and additional attention and aid
directed toward the education of veterans.
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 46

While visual art students are a specialized segment among the broader college
undergraduate population the importance of their completion agenda is no less essential than for
collegians in other subject areas, yet, as seen in Table 1, some of the most prestigious art schools
have below average graduation rates. Therefore, this investigation was governed by some
essential queries into the reasons behind the substandard graduation rates of art students.
1. What factors contribute to the inferior graduation rates of undergraduate art students?
A. Are the determining factors primarily interior—such as student identity, peer and
faculty relationships, or student mental health?
B. Are the determining factors primarily exterior—such as familial pressure; financial
considerations, either current or anticipated; or conforming to cultural norms and
expectations?
2. What are chief circumstances that lead undergraduate art students to abandon their
undergraduate art studies?
3. What factors are most responsible for educational persistence among undergraduate art
students?

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 47

Methodological Approach
This qualitative, single case study was based chiefly upon interviews of visual art
students in a solitary visual arts program of study at a particular university. Although there are
educational statistics and documents included in this study they serve only to frame and inform
the qualitative method applied here. This highly descriptive approach was designed to reveal the
characteristics of studies within the visual arts, focus upon those students who have chosen to
pursue such training, investigate their expectations of their futures after such training, and the
peculiarities of the training itself. This focus on a “a particular unit of analysis (Willis, 2008, p.
74)” was essential as the context of visual art education is one that relies upon discourse built not
of numeracy and literacy—the prevalent masteries sought in the university—but imageacy (my
coinage, a more logically explanatory word than the self contradictory phrase visual literacy), a
parlance that encompasses not only historical and well known art but visual culture, a seemingly
limitless vocabulary of every image, everywhere, for every use, and from every historical period.
While the purview of contemporary art making may be boundless this case study was not
(Merriam, 2009); it sought to catalog some of the responses and opinions that a particular group
of art students has in consideration of the art world, art education, and their role in it.
The narratives collected from the art students themselves shed light on the experiences of
a little studied demographic in a seldom-examined environment. “Their experiences are rooted in
context, as is knowledge in case studies. This knowledge is distinguishable from the abstract,
formal knowledge derived from other research designs” (Merriman, 2009, p. 45).
Site and Participant Selection
Private & Selective University (PSU) was purposefully selected (Maxwell, 2013) for the
broad, overlapping characteristics it shared with ostensibly dissimilar institutions in the area of
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 48

art education. Like many of the most highly regarded schools of visual art, PSU University is in
a major urban area with ready access to significant museums and professional art galleries. It is
also, again, like many of the many of the most highly regarded schools of visual art, a private
institution. PSU is also as large as public flagship universities with embedded schools of art.
While the research site was a school of art embedded within a university, the university itself is
large enough that the school of art itself rivals in enrollment many private, arts-specific,
institutions. Its school of art is also housed in its own purpose-specific buildings so that art
students, for the most part, are cloistered among their own kind. Furthermore, this large
university also resembles some of the selective public universities that boast highly ranked
schools of art. The university has a Carnegie designation of RU/VH, a research university with
very high research activity (carnegiefoundation.org) and is considered among the most highly
selective institutions in the country (Barron’s, 2009). Even though PSU has high degree
completion rates, it was an ideal campus for this study because it would be valuable to
understand if these art students were experiencing disaffections (similar to those described by
Tinto) as art students at institutions with less robust academic opportunities and
accomplishments
After consultation with the department’s administration a flyer was posted in the art
department, but this researcher was unable to work directly with faculty or students in the
solicitation process. Some faculty in the targeted art disciplines eventually assisted in the
recruitment process and this strategy produced volunteers. Students were first asked to
participate in an on-line survey to identify those of appropriate description and to eliminate
respondents who were outside of this study’s scope. All of the students selected were required to
be full-time, studio arts majors pursuing their first art degree. Part-time students, graduate
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 49

students, and students who minor in studio arts were initially excluded from consideration as
they are outside of the IPEDS completion statistics normally reported by the university.
However, after further consideration, the researcher noted that their experiences were valuable so
these participant data were retained and included in the analysis. From the group of initial sixteen
respondents who expressed interest, twelve completed the online survey. Interviews were
requested of those respondents and eight of those students finally became full participants in the
study. Although the ages of the student respondents were noted it was not a determining factor
for selection. Individual interviews were conducted with these eight undergraduate art students
enrolled at PSU University. These interviews took place during the spring of 2015 and included
three sophomores, one junior, and four seniors. These students ranged in age and were involved
in various visual art disciplines. The students studied painting, sculpture and installation,
performance art, and photo/video media. The gender and ethnic representation was
coincidentally approximate to the level of diversity in the school of art itself.
Data Collection Procedure
Students who responded to the initial call were surveyed on-line for their descriptive
characteristics: Age, sex, race, and level of matriculation. A selection was made based upon
those characteristics in order to include a wide selection of student description but representative
of the institution. Participants were interviewed in a semi-structured format. The interview
includes fifteen questions (plus prompts) and each interview lasted approximately forty minutes.
The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded. Collection of institutional research
data regarding graduation rates in the art school, disaggregated by race and gender, was
examined to inform the interview data. Data was augmented by member checks with
interviewees. Privacy was scrupulously maintained; data was saved on two external hard drives
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 50

off site. All student participants were thanked for their time and contribution with a ten-dollar
gift card from Starbucks Coffee Company.
All interviews were conducted on the campus of PSU University, away from the school
of Art & Design. All student participants were interviewed individually. All students were
informed of the general—not specific—nature of the research study. Express, written agreement
was received from each of the participants. This agreement outlined the confidential nature of
their comments, the possible necessity for follow-up clarification (member checks), and secured
permission to record the interview sessions. Additionally, the agreement outlined that the student
would not discuss the nature of the interviews for a period of one month.
The interview setting was the study rooms in one of the university’s many libraries. The
participants and I were in the study room alone. The audio recording device was clearly visible. I
also took notes, and informed the student I would be doing so. Bottled water was supplied to the
participants. At the end of the interview I informed the student I would be in touch with them to
confirm any unclear answers. The gift cards were mailed to the participants when all interviews
were completed. All of the interviews were professionally transcribed for analysis.
Data Analysis
The narratives were first separated into categories and these categories then cross-
referenced and subdivided accordingly. For instance, employment fears were compiled and also
separated by year of matriculation, level of student loan debt, and quality of high school
attended; these named categories are congruent with my stated research questions. Although
employment fears remain an exclusive category it also contained valuable information that
informed other areas of research (Merriam, 2009). In addition to thematic coding a thorough
reading and rereading of the interviews toward “…analyzing narrative structure and contextual
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 51

relationships… (Maxwell, 2013, p. 105)” was applied to the participant responses. Furthermore,
contemporaneous memos captured not only the revelations contained in some of the responses
but also the researcher’s chronology of insights. Contiguity-based relationships were examined
to reveal deeper connections and influences between categories (Maxwell, 2013).
In regard to student artist behaviors the researcher also applied Strauss & Corbin’s (1998)
technique of systematic comparison; rather than merely comparing coincidental revelations from
the participants but what that described behavior revealed in relation to varying conditions. As a
framing strategy, numerical data on the subject was obtained from IPEDS and professional
journals on post secondary education generally, and art education specifically.
Validity and Role of the Researcher
Since I have a substantial history in the area I studied I was forced to consider several
possible validity threats due to my familiarity with the subject of art and post-secondary art
education, emotional attachment to the discipline of visual art, educational and aesthetic biases
regarding art education, and relationship to the institutional site where I plan my study. I made a
rigorous self-assessment of my role as researcher.
1. Familiarity with the subject of art and post-secondary art education: This consideration
was of greater benefit than detriment as it gave me a familiarity with the arcane
vocabulary and historical knowledge in which the student participants are immersed. This
knowledge more fully informs the interview questions and can more accurately interpret
the answers they will give.
2. Emotional attachment to the discipline of visual art: While it is true that I am a practicing
artist I have been doing so for nearly thirty years, the perspective of age and experience
has allowed me to view my art education, my art teaching, and the art business in which I
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 52

actively participate, with dispassion and circumspection. These same qualities were
applied to my research regarding undergraduate art students.
3. Educational and aesthetic biases regarding art education: As an art educator and
administrator my method has been toward student mentorship and educational rigor.
While teaching in visual art often employs a hands-off approach, mine has been one of
disciplinary immersion. This proclivity was acknowledged and was repressed while
during interviews and in my data analysis. Aesthetic biases were not a concern as my art
interests and preferences are diverse and comprehensive.
4. Relationship to the institutional site where I made my study: While my research site is
also a university that I attended, my studies took place in a different, and disciplinarily
unrelated, school than the one where my participants were enrolled. This allowed a social
and educational distance from the students and faculty who were mentioned in the
answers given by participants in my study. Also, in the three years that I attended the
university I consciously avoided contact with the school of art as I thoroughly anticipated
making a study of undergraduate art education. This clinical distance was necessary to
prevent the incidence of observational biases regarding the students, staff, faculty, and
procedures at the school of art.
Additionally, institutional data from various types of art education institutions—discrete
art schools, public university schools of art, and private university schools of art—was compared
in order to recognize agreements with, and disparities from, the research site. This, along with
survey data from the original selection process, and live interview data—coded, field-noted, and
member checked—was triangulated to give a fuller portrait of the environment of undergraduate
studio art education.
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 53

Role of Researcher
My longtime experience in art and design was considered and logically demonstrated as
posing no threat to the validity of this study, so I reexamined, explicated, and eliminated this
concern. Aside from brief excursions into civil service employment and public
relations/advertising, I have spent the bulk of my professional life in visual art education. In my
25 years of teaching visual art, advising art students, designing curriculum, and managing faculty
I have experienced a variety of student description. I’ve also encountered institutional variety;
both open access and highly selective colleges. Additionally, and importantly, my Bachelor’s
and Master’s degrees are in visual art. In the art education model I have experienced the points of
view of the student, the professor, and the administrator. This familiarity with the research area,
however, was a benefit rather than a bias. As an art student myself I experienced the doubts and
difficulties and well as the benefits and stimulation of an education focused on visual art. As an
art professor I taught foundation and advanced undergraduate students, as well as graduate
students, and witnessed their struggles and successes. As an administrator I have been
instrumental in increasing graduation rates and graduate school attendance, and continue to seek
methods of improving the educational experience and utility of visual arts education. The variety
and longevity of my experience in the field allowed me to examine this particular educational
environment in a committed but dispassionate manner. Also, the majority of my professional art
education activity has been in the teaching and advising of undergraduate art students.
Undergraduate art students were the sole focus of this enquiry and the investigation of their
environment, and their role in it, was aimed toward improving art student completion.

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 54

Chapter Four: The Single Case Study Institution
Introduction
In investigating and revealing the experiences, motivations, concerns, and expectations of
art students, this study sought to reveal some of the factors that may be contributing to the
completion underperformance of undergraduate art majors. This qualitative study documented
the personal experiences and concerns of undergraduate art students—in their own words—in
order to make known some of the specific challenges of an art school education that cannot be
revealed by statistics alone. This study was guided by these research questions:
1. What factors contribute to the inferior graduation rates of undergraduate art students?
A. Are the determining factors primarily interior—such as student identity, peer and
faculty relationships, or student mental health?
B. Are the determining factors primarily exterior—such as familial pressure; financial
considerations, either current or anticipated; or conforming to cultural norms and
expectations?
2. What are chief circumstances that lead undergraduate art students to abandon their
undergraduate art studies?
3. What factors are most responsible for educational persistence among undergraduate art
students?

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Chapter Overview
This chapter describes the location and nature of the institution where this single case
study took place and gives limited portrayals of the students who participated in the study. The
substance of their interview responses has been aligned with the research questions previously
defined and incidents of agreement and disparity are noted. Each of the eight participants has a
brief portrayal of their status within the School of Art, highlights from their approximately one-
hour interview, and a focus upon areas of their responses that were particularly relevant to the
issues included in the original research questions. While all of the students answered all of the
questions to varying degrees, the portrait of each student focuses on the issues about which the
student was most passionate, most garrulous, or both.
The School of Art and Design at P&S University (SAD/PSU) offers both undergraduate
and graduate degrees and its faculty is comprised of teaching artists of substantial reputation.
The undergraduate population, a portion of which this study examines, numbers slightly over
300; the total university student body, undergraduate and graduate students, numbers 43,000.
According to the approximate information (the school was less than forthcoming with its data)
supplied by one of its associate deans, the student body of SAD is 60% female, and White and
Asian students, distributed evenly, make up 80% of the population. Hispanic/Latino students
comprised 10% of the art school population compared with 13% of the university population.
Black/African Americans are 5% of both the art school at the university. The completion rate for
the various programs in the School of Art is 96%. The Student Faculty ratio at the School of is
6:1 while the overall university ratio is 9:1. The acceptance rate for undergraduates at SAD/PSU
is 25% but the university acceptance rate is 17.5%. Eight students were interviewed for this
study, representing 2.54% of the undergraduate population of SAD/PSU.
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 56

The school is housed in its own set of buildings. Its main building is located near one of
the campus’s four compass gates and is adjacent to the school of architecture and the campus
museum. The main building contains the art library, video, photography, and computer labs,
sculpture and painting studios, and classrooms. A secondary building is the home to the graduate
art students but it is off campus. Each building contains a gallery designated for student
exhibitions.
The eight students interviewed included five women and three men, leaning more heavily
female than the overall gender population of SAD/PSU. Two White men and one African
American man were the male contingent. The women were slightly more diverse; two women
were foreign nationals—one from Asia, the other from Central America; and two were first
generation Americans—the children of families from Eastern Europe and Asia. The last woman
identified as White American. Those interviewed included four Seniors, one Junior, and three
Sophomores. All the students portrayed here have pseudonyms of their own choosing.
Participant Profiles
Xip/Senior/Sculpture
I have no idea how I'm going to pay off my student debt.
The level of intellectual stimulation is too low for Xip. While she is enthusiastic about
her coursework in the school of art it is does not quite satisfy her intellectual eagerness. She feels
her range of interests have outstripped the school’s ability to keep her fulfilled.
It's not as challenging as I would like it to be. Well, after my time here I'm actually
thinking right now that maybe I should have chosen science. I'm starting to think, I'm
like, "Maybe if I continue with art, I'm going to always be under-stimulated, and like
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 57

bored, and I'm not going to have the conversations that I'd like to be having," and that
maybe what I'm actually good at is science. I was thinking actually about trying to find
some kind of synthesis between art and science, and maybe studying art in cognition, but
then I started thinking, "I kind of would love to just study cognition, or like thought, and
what thought is, or like ...” Then I was thinking I would also love to study bugs, or
reptiles.
When asked about her feelings of concern or confidence regarding student debt Xip
laughed. The possibility of adding graduate school debt contributes to her concern about college
costs but she fully expects to attend graduate school.
Oh, god. There is no confidence. There's just concern. How's that for an answer? Yeah,
just concern. I have no idea how I'm going to pay off my student debt, and right now it's
just, it's there, hovering. It's there. It's hovering. I also wonder about if I continue on to
get ... If I continue on to grad school, how I'm going to pay for that, and I'm like really
concerned about that too. There's no confidence. There's just concern.
That concern extends to post graduation employment. Regarding the possibility of
making a living based on her artwork, or the knowledge she is gaining from her academic
program, Xip continued to express ambivalence about the marketplace value of her education.
The annual cost of attending SAD/PSU is, at this writing, over $50,000.
Oh, god. Honestly I think however I end up making money right after PSU will not be
related to art. It will probably be like bartending or something. Ideally, I would love to
think that in some time I could get to a place where I could like actually make installation
art or like sculptures, and then get paid for it. I'm also very, very attracted to the idea of
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being an art professor. I'm also like, but then I'm also having these thoughts of like
abandoning art, so there's that.
The level of artistic community at SAD/PSU, according to Xip, is sorely lacking.
There's no community. There's like no community. People have their own groups, but I
feel like as a school, it doesn't have a community. It doesn't have events that people go to.
Occasionally there's events, like open studios, but not that many people go to that. Yeah,
and like I said the divisions, the design people are friends with the design people.
Painting and drawing people are friends with painting and drawing people. There's some
crossover a little bit, but not that much. Faculty, I mean I'm thinking about this question.
I'm friends with a lot of my professors, but not everyone is.
The interplay of social and academic trade within a collegiate cohort significantly
contributes to the identity of the institution and the student participants. Xip’s ambivalence about
her art program and whether or not she should move to the sciences may be in part due to the
absence of transactional learning and support within the undergraduate art program at SAD/PSU.
She does, however, have one professor whom she identifies as a mentor.
Some professors definitely have favorites, and sometimes it's less obvious, and
sometimes it's more obvious, and I think sometimes mentorship comes from that. Okay,
so I'm one of (names professor) favorites, like I know that as a fact, but I didn't always.
I've taken four classes with him, a few people had said that I'm one of his favorites, or
that he favors me over the others. I was like, "I don't think so." Then people were like,
"Every time I present an idea to him, he like, he like questions it, and thinks it's kind of a
bad idea." I'm like, "Really? He never does that to me and my ideas." Also, he sends out
emails sometimes being like, "This event is happening. You should check it out." I used
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 59

to think that he just told everyone to go, and then I realized at some point, there's like five
students he sends those emails to. I found out about this like really cool, really
intellectual upper level class because he talked about me and about these other kids to
this other professor, so that happens. Mentorship happens in indirect ways where people
are favored. Also, outside of that, I text him a lot. Sometimes I text him my streams of
consciousness, and sometimes I've texted him like really concerning things about suicide,
then he'll text me back, and be like, "Why don't we go to Starbucks?" I'm like, "Okay.
Thanks, (name of professor)." Then we go to Starbucks, and then we talk about art.
This illustration of a relationship with a professor was one of the most effulgent
renderings of the student/professor association that was described by any of the students
interviewed. Perhaps the opportunity to share closely with a professor and senior artist has
enhanced Xip’s participation in the program. Her nonchalant yet worrisome mention of suicide,
however, seemed to presage the very next interview question that asked about personal or
observed incidents of mental illness.
I don't even know where to start. I know so many people have so many mental health
issues who have chosen art, or who, even if they aren't majoring in it, they do some kind
of art, and I think anxiety seems to be very, very common. Also, okay so I think most of
the artists I know here are introverts. My art has a lot to do with like ... I think it out, and
it's a process of intellectual inquiry, whereas a lot of other people when they make a
painting, they want to make something that tells a story, maybe, but it doesn't ask a
question. I know a lot of them are introverted. I would never have guessed that they were
shy, but they tell me they consider themselves shy. I know a lot of people with social
anxiety. I know a lot of people who have like panic attacks. They just (have) panic
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 60

attacks, and not as a response to something in their life, but just as a general, chronic
thing. I know some people have issues with reality and dissociation, and delusion and
hallucinations, lots of depression. I think that's common, and I've definitely known ... I
think suicidal thoughts are also maybe more common, maybe. I'm not entirely sure. I
think the one that's definitely there though is the anxiety thing. Other mental health issues
are definitely there. I think art has its appeal because you don't have to work with people
as much. You make it on your own, and then you present it to people, and a lot of people
who have mental issues are drawn to that process.
Even though she feels unchallenged in the art program she plans to persevere in its
completion and attend graduate school in art. An additional interior struggle is the substantial
student debt she is accruing in this pursuit. While dismayed by the lack of community in the
school of art she has found a professor whom she considers a mentor and has profited from this
relationship. She has also observed numerous incidents of mental health challenges among her
fellow student artists. Fortunately, she has found a fellow student who is a friend and art
collaborator with whom she shares a deep and creatively rich partnership. They have hopes for
the future together as platonic partners and art-making confederates.
Robin/Senior/Painting & Drawing
It just caught up to him so he switched to accounting.
Both Robin and his parents appreciate the value of pursuing visual art in a comprehensive
university compared to a dedicated art academy. The educational opportunities are broader and
deeper. He takes advantage of this by pursuing courses outside his school in addition to his
liberal education requirements. This wider range of opportunity, however, may have its
drawbacks. Robin was particularly concerned about the absence of a creative nucleus of artistic
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community, making for a less immersive art school experience. While students may share classes
and critiques, their interests and demands frequently draw them elsewhere in the university.
I think the social situation at our school is kind of poor. There's not really much
community. A lot of the students don't really know each other because there's so many
different areas that you can go into that you don't overlap with certain people. Even
though I am a senior there's people in my senior seminar course who I've never had a
class with before, even though the school is so small.
Additionally, the university’s dispersed locations tend to scatter across campus the few
art students that attend this large university.
Yeah. I tried to be one of the people that started a club, one of the arts clubs, in my
freshman year. It just fell apart because people weren't really interested in doing it. I think
being at a university is hard because then you have other classes, you have general
ed(ucation) and you have a lot of things going on that cause you to spend time outside of
art school. There's no place to really hang out there. There's only a couple tables and
they're always shared with architecture students so there's no real place where you can go
and just be like, "I want to spend time with art students. I know where to go." There's no
place for that so it's kind of hard to build that community.
The faculty, Robin continues, also contributes to this lack of community. When asked
how the faculty involved students in the professor’s personal professional career, Robin was less
than enthusiastic about the faculty/student mentoring process.
I don't really feel like they include us in their professional art practice very much,
or at all for that matter. Some of the professors ... I know one professor who has one of
her students come into her studio a couple days a week just to help out. That kind of feels
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 62

like an exception to me. Most of the design teachers or fine art teachers keep their studio
practice really separate and they never discuss it. You'll get an email from the school
saying these are all the staff or faculty shows that are occurring and the professors have
never spoken about them and you don't actually really know what their work is.
Robin continued that this lack of first hand professional practices training was of concern
to him in preparing for his professional career. Although he is interested in continuing his pursuit
of an art career he understands the difficulty of making a living entirely or even consistently
from fine art. He is creating his own curriculum of professional skill acquisition in order to
prepare himself.
That's one of the main problems a lot of people have noticed with the school, is that they
don't have a sense of what professionalism in the art world means or is. They just have
this idea that you're here to make art, learn art, and make an art practice. All the other
things are selling out, or learning how to market yourself is not something that should be
taught. That idea of a professional career in art is kind of pushed to the wayside to this
idea that you can do your art and you can make your art but for your job you should just
go into design because that's the only way you can make a living.
Although he smiles while he continues it is clear that he is more bemused than amused at
the elision of the answer to this central professional art mystery.
None of the classes I've had have ever had anything in the gallery. The professional side,
I guess, that we do get exposed to is visiting galleries. I haven't had many field trips this
year but in the past, like in my photography class, every two weeks to a month there's a
visit to a museum or a gallery space and we talk to the curators of the space and learn
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about the submission process. They're like, "Oh yeah, we don't accept submissions so
don't even try." Then everyone's like, "What?"
The students are aware of the difficulty in the profession and the competition that
accompanies it. Robin’s considers his self-driven plan of acquiring professional skills—taking
classes and gathering information outside of his major subject area—a necessity in order to have
staying power in the field about which he is so passionate. While the fine art professionalism is
less aggressive than he world prefer, the more commercial media programs within the school are
more upfront about careerism.
I'm still figuring that out right now. One of the things they push you to do is to go into
design so I've been taking design a lot as well. Actually I haven't done it for a year but
my first two years I did it every semester. I did an internship in design, or two internships
in the design world, so I feel like I could find some sort of beginner position at some sort
of place to make a living while I work on my art practice on the side. I'm also interested
in doing concept art for video games, sort of like illustration. We have the cinema school
here and they have a video game design program that is really highly regarded. I've been
trying to get involved with them and kind of do the more technical side of art beyond the
fine art gallery world to get the real world commercial application. However, that's
heavily discouraged, I guess, at our schools so it's something I have to figure out on my
own.
Still, he wishes that his chosen program had the energetic drive that his design courses
and colleagues have. He has no intention of going over to the other department, however. He
fully intends to stay in studio art for the remainder of college and his envisioned career.
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I feel like at (SAD/PSU) it's not as competitive, like cutthroat, with the other students
than other schools I know my friends go to. In terms of during crit(ique)s people are very
nice. We have to encourage each other to be more critical of each other's work because
people have a tendency to just have their friends say, "Oh, I really like your piece. It
looks really nice." It's like, "Come on guys. We have to go deeper than that and we have
to really look at it subjectively and not just pat each other on the back sort of thing’.
As we further discussed the notion of competitiveness—its acceptance in the more
business-oriented design program but its reticence in studio art—we came upon the subject of
emotions, isolation, fear, and stress. Asked if he had observed evidence of such issues in his
program he readily revealed that the sentiments could vary greatly in the process of making and
presenting art.
Yeah, I think there is. A lot of people are stressed out here. I know a couple people who
have depression or have been depressed in the art school. I myself have been previously.
I don't really know why but I feel like it's just like something about being an artist and
thinking a lot. Really considering every aspect of a lot of things that other people don't
really consider can really weigh down on you and break you down a bit. It's just too
much to handle. If you have to critically observe and analyze the morality of everything
or the implications of all these little things in order to make art, it can become just a bit
overwhelming. I think artists are very ... their mood is very influenced by how their work
is going. They have a lot of insecurities about their art so it's just kind of like a recipe for
disaster.
The subjects about which Robin spoke the longest and most passionately are issues that,
as we read in Chapter Two, are common concerns in schools of art—the lack of a dependable
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community of like practitioners on whom one can rely to augment the formal teaching
relationships, the difficulty of teaching professional practices for a small and unpredictable
business model, and a scholarly intensity and explicability within the subject under study.
Robin, however, is confident. He has substantial support despite his parents both having what he
called “business-y” jobs. His mother has also taken an enthusiastic interest in contemporary art
and they discuss it vigorously. He sees himself as a practicing artist after graduate school,
although he plans to take a year off before attending. That sort of support has not been true for all
of his classmates, however. He spoke of a colleague upon whom parental pressures and
professional expectations became so great that he changed his major to something more
practical—accounting.
Okay. 20 years from now, if I'm just foreseeing as if everything's successful, I would be
an exhibiting artist. I'd have, I guess, a good amount of shows or some exhibition at some
biennial somewhere. I'd have gone to grad school and I would have a studio space and a
house and a family. Maybe I also worked in the video game industry on concept art and
illustration and done some sort of residency program in another country or some other
place. Those are just personal goals of mine. I don't know where I'd live but I've lived in
(mentions location of SAD/PSU) my whole life so I'll probably stick around. Move
around a bit but probably end up back here.
The issues that help determine success or failure in Robin’s art school experience are
both internal and external. While he has experienced some depression in the past it appears to
have been manageable and has not substantially hindered his educational progress. He is hopeful
and confident in his persistence in the field. His exterior support, most notably family, is a
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 66

valuable asset but the sense of community among artists in his program is less vigorous than he
would wish. He anticipates a smooth transition toward professional and familial life.
Jinx/Senior/Painting & Drawing
My dad was supportive, but when I said I was really going to art school, he got worried.
The aloofness of most of the professors struck Jinx as less than helpful. The advice of the
professional artist in practical matters is something that many of the students indicated in the
interviews that they genuinely desired but was in short supply at SAD/PSU. While the professors
were exceptional in the classroom there was little contact with them outside of the academic
schedule. Design internships are not uncommon but similar pre-professional opportunities for
studio artists can be difficult to find. When asked about professors involving students in their
studio practice Jinx was unambiguous.
The only professor that did that for us was one of my drawing professors. She actually let
us go to her own studio and see what she was doing professionally. Also, she sent out
emails like: "Oh, if anyone wants to help me do this project, I'll pay you part-time," and
we got to participate in that activity so it was great to be included in that. I think
SAD/PSU does lack that a lot; a lot of the professors don't take ... they don't even talk
about their own work, first of all (laughs). We don't know what they actually do. We have
to go research about them, and even then, it's like so limited, the information out there.
They don't really talk about their art practice as much. I really only had one professor
who was open about it and let us be part of her work, so yeah.
For Jinx this professor was extremely attentive and professionally beneficial. Working with this
professor gave Jinx a glimpse into the day-to-day operations of being a professional studio artist,
a de-facto internship.
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There was a drawing professor in my (mentions class name) class. Her name is (name of
professor). I think she was the best professor I really ever had in this school. She went
through a lot of problems herself family-wise. I think she was a lot ... She was really open
to her students, and she was willing to listen to our problems. She really took them
seriously. I mean she couldn't give like solutions for them, but going through her art
practice and going through her art career, she gave us a lot of advice that none of the
other professors did. Yeah, person-wise she was incredible. I think she was one of the
best professors at the school. Sadly, she had to take a leave just because of her family
problems, but yeah, I don't think I'll ever forget her. She was ... I think she was a
professor that I wish that every professor could be. She was really open. She was open-
minded. She helped us a lot.
The interaction with professional artists is offered in the form of a visiting artist lecture series but
the visiting artist/lecturers, successful professionals in the field whom SAD invites to speak
before students, were not as helpful.
I mean there's speakers that come and talk, but ... they don't talk about our work. They
talk about their work. They don't give critiques. They don't talk about our work. We
don't get to have like a personal relationship with them. They give lectures, and they talk
about their work.
Parental support and encouragement is also an area where Jinx has found herself without
dependable allies. It is not only worrisome when considering her personal financial future but
she feels pressure to become an earner for her family as well.
I guess it's all parents. My dad he ... I thought he was supportive, but when I said that I
really was going to and I really did apply for all school for fine arts, that's when he got
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worried. I think he thought that I would grow out of it or hoped I would grow out of my
art journey and become a person who would affect this world in a different way like a
lawyer or doctor, will become rich. I think ... No ... My relatives were really unsupportive
of it too. Just because ... I think it also has to do with the fact that culturally a lot of
Koreans, the relatives like to stick together, and they ... My aunt’s really supportive of my
mom, so they didn't want me to go to art school. I think a lot of it had to do with financial
problems. They were hoping that I could get rich later, and you know support them later.
Yeah. They ... No one was supportive around me. It wasn't until that it was too late for
me to change my mind [inaudible] my high school that they were like, "Okay, now we'll
support you. You know. Maybe we'll think about it." Even when I got into college, I
think my parents were hoping that I would change my mind, and I do think realistically I
can't think of myself as being fine artist just because it would be really hard financially. If
I did have the chance to become a fine artist, I really would want to. Just coming to this
school and learning a lot about fine art just really made me think that I really want to be
an artist. I really want to do a lot of public art, and maybe help people socially with my
artwork. Just now, I have my own financial burdens. I have my own personal problems. I
think a lot of my family influenced me into thinking that way so ... Yeah.
Financial burdens figure heavily in the experiences of Jinx. Debt has a significant hold on
her future, even to the extent that marriage and family is something that she cannot anticipate
while pursuing her ambition as an artist—because of the costs she has already incurred but also
because in the U.S. the greatest burden of child-rearing still falls upon women. Her art career,
though yet to begin, is already weighed down by a sense of financial obligation to her family; she
reasonably concludes adding a family of her own to this mixture would leave no room for art.
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I would like to study more, but like I said, financially I would ... It's really ... I cannot go
to grad school. I cannot think of going to grad school right now. Just because of my
financial burdens, and my family isn't as well-off as the other people in this school.
Because I know there's a lot of rich kids here, and they just think about going to grad
school. It's really ... there's Porsches, Lamborghinis all over the place (laughs). Debt is
one of the biggest problems that ... Fortunately, I get a lot of financial aid and some
scholarship, but ... Yeah, I meant that ... I don't know. I think financial aid is just really
hard to deal with it. Luckily, I'm in my senior year now so I'll be done with it soon, but
just looking at the numbers on the loans that I have to pay off later, it's just really
stressful. The school definitely needs to work on that. That's probably the really big part
of school that doesn't make me too happy (laughs).”
The limited opportunities for hands-on professional practices learning and faculty
mentorship have left Jinx a sort of free agent in her program who is more consumer than
participant. This lack of support within SAD/PSU mirrors the absence of familial encouragement
and engagement she has experienced. The economic burden that is upon her has affected not
only her college experience but will continue to impact her future educational and life choices.
Hueso/Junior/Design
There's only smart people there. There's just White people there.
Living two hours away from college, with no ready options to change that condition, has
impacted Hueso’s integration into the SAD/PSU Design program. Hueso has a variety of internal
and external considerations that may be affecting her successful matriculation at SAD/PSU. She
has interior struggles with the interface between her individual identity (age, sex, race, origin)
and the microsystem (peers, family, art school). Her heavy accent, superior age, health, and
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motherhood issues create separation from her peers that impairs developing a sense of
community with her colleagues. Exteriorly, her age, familial status—single mother of two, one
with learning disabilities—and her own health problems no doubt impact upon her relationship
to other macrosystem considerations, namely wealth/property and retirement.
My (high school) education was in Mexico City, but you know the lack of the knowledge
and the equipment, like computers, like the supplies, the material, everything is too
expensive. It's not available to all students, so the system is too bad in Mexico. When I
came here to USA (it was) a really bad situation in my marriage, so it was like totally into
the house, because my ex-husband I sue for domestic violence. I was not speaking
English, I was not contact with nobody, I don't have family here, my economic situation,
everything was really bad. It was since I got my second child that I thought I don't want
... I just look at the mirror of myself and I see like, dirty clothes, and really bad situation
with body and no food, nothing. I was thinking when I look to the mirror to myself, I
don't want this life to my daughters.
She is appreciative of the efforts made by her academic advisors and the support she has
received from the university. Both financially and academically she is very satisfied with the
student support provided yet the transition remains awkward.
I can say that I was not expecting for this kind like, because it's just like, I feel like my
advisors form part of my family. They care about my progress, they care about my
problems, they care about if I'm sick, if I'm not doing good, something like that. They ask
me about my family, something, because they want me to do good at classes, at school.
I'm just so really, really lucky, because my advisor is helping me a lot. I'm so excited, I'm
so happy to be here. It's just like, I feel so blessed for, because I know God blessed me,
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because this is the thing I really want and to be here. I'm just like thinking all the things
I'm going to do. Since the first day, I didn't expect to see only young people. And,
everybody was looking at me. When there was a complication, it was like everybody was
looking at me, so I was not feel good because I didn't expect (so little) diversity. When I
started my classes everybody was looking at me. (Even) today, the students look at me
like I'm old, and they're young, so it's just like I feel sometimes embarrassed. I feel bad,
but I was just thinking if hide myself, I'm not going to do nothing. I just have to do it.
Sometimes I feel like that, but some classmates now talk to me. I feel like maybe there is
just something like, it's different for them because they are young and I'm old.
Additionally, the professors have given her a great deal of understanding and support.
She says that they are friendly and helpful. Her communication with them is extensive as her
language difficulties sometimes require extra explanation of class projects but they have
consistently remained patient and accessible. They have devoted time to her in person and have
speedily answered her email inquiries. She says that they acknowledge the difficulties that she is
facing with location and family and have been accommodating of her challenges. Although she
is receiving financial support from the college, she still has a significant amount of debt but she
is exceedingly sanguine about her career possibilities and is convinced she will, despite her
challenges, be able to manage her finances. She is adamant that she would never consider
abandoning her art education but the opportunities she is missing—internships available to other
students are not feasible for her due to her parental obligations and exceptional commute—may
have a significant affect upon her employability in the field of design. Also, because she must
rush home to relieve childcare, she is unable to must forego many of the social interactions and
events that occur after classes are over.
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While her town has a household median income $500 higher the national average of
$55, 657 (Census.gov, 2014) 21.2% of the city’s population lives below the poverty line, nearly
double the national figure of 11.7%. That disparity is made plain to Hueso in that some of her
acquaintances doubt her claim to be enrolled at PSU. Hueso answers, "No, that's true," but they
insist, "Because nobody from (her town) goes to (PSU). (PSU) is too expensive and there's only
smart people there. There's just White people there."
Jill/Sophomore/Design
I feel like the more classes that I take, the more I feel like I cannot learn art.
In Chapter Two’s Teaching and Judging Creativity section (p.24) it is made clear by several art
academics that mechanical skills and theoretical knowledge can be readily taught to art students
(Lindstrom, 2006; Harwood, 2007; Belluigi, 2013; Svenson & Erdstrøm, 2011; Cowdry &
Williams, 2006). It is the achievement of uniqueness in art-making that sets imminent artists
apart form those who are significantly capable. Jill has pondered this mystery as well.
I think being in art school made me not want to go to graduate school. I feel like more
classes that I take, (the) more I feel like I cannot learn art. I can learn skills, or I can gain
theories, but I can get knowledge basically, but I don't think that I can gain talent. It's not
working like that.
Still she enjoys her classes for the most part. They are informative and materially
engaging yet it appears to her that she does not possess that fundamental yet ineffable spark that
will set her apart from her peers. She has witnessed its manifestation in class and describes the
process of coming to the realization that some her classmates possess a skill that not only does
she not possess but is unlikely to acquire.
When using typography, I wouldn't come up with the idea of using typography and the
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positioning of typography or something. I don't feel which position is appropriate for this
poster, but some people know that, just feel what's the right place to put it. When they put
it I will eventually say, "Oh yeah, that's right, that's the place that it should go." Before I
see it I just don't know how to put it. Something like that. When I feel like I want to
change major, it's times that I don't feel that talented. It's funny because I was just taking
design class right before this, and then I was seeing all the other peers' great works, and I
feel like I was so small and so not worth to be here. I think that's the main problem and
concerns that I'm having. If I'm ever considered dropping out or change majors or
something.
Although she has doubts about her visual art capabilities her academic persistence is not
in peril. She plans to complete her undergraduate studies but has no intention to pursue graduate
school. One must question whether some of the pillars of academic persistence—academic,
social, and personal support—might have helped Jill to develop an artist’s visual acuity. Would
a deeper mentorship relationship have strengthened her skills in visual composition? While the
students at SAD/PSU have academic advisors to help them navigate the course requirements and
scheduling they are not assigned faculty advisors with whom they regularly meet to confer,
question, and receive counsel. “I don’t have any mentors,” she offered.
I feel like I have limits that I can improve. I can keep improving but until that limit.
There's so many people beyond that limit, so I feel like what's the purpose of it if I'm not
going to reach that level, that highest level.
This realization, however, seems liberating. She is convinced that her art experiment has
been a success—she is one of only two students in the interview cohort who was not receiving
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financial assistance in the form of loans or grants—she has a talent of a different caliber, one that
pleases her family.
I think I'm going to be a wife and mother. I think that's the main tack that I'm going to
have. I think I'm going to get a career, but not a serious one, or not really requiring many
concentration or many devotion, just a casual job or something. I think I'm going to be
happy. Mostly not professional. I keep imagining living in this really nice place with
great husband, but I don't see myself being at a career that's connecting to art. Maybe I
will do some art, paintings in my free time, but not professionally.
Jill has no ambition to become a professional artist. In this regard she will face few of the
challenges of satisfying the societal norms of marriage, family, and property while managing
copious debt in pursuit of a position of success in the uncertain art market.
Hernandez/Sophomore/Design
It's an investment; I need to maximize this stuff.
Unlike most of the interviewees, Hernandez had a substantial introduction to design
practices before coming to college but not at his high school—that program there was severely
underfunded—he signed up for an outside art program. This program gave him a more
significant design profession experience than PSU has provided him in his first three semesters.
This intensive program gave him a real world experience and provided him with confidence and
enthusiasm in his academic direction. While he has had good rapport with the design faculty he
does not consider SAD a pure art school. The university offers greater possibilities for him to
create the professional preparation he desired. To accelerate that professional preparation, he
wanted to create a double major, one that combined with business, but was stymied in that effort.
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A lot of people can attest to this that academic advisors are really lacking. I'm trying to
double major, I want to do it so I sent a nice email saying hey, can you help me set up,
trying to find someone to talk to in (the business school). I'm going through my head, is
she going to help me out? I'm wording it nicely so I get a good response. I'm really
spending my time on it so I can get something. I'm not just slapping an email to you like,
“Hey, help me out. Hey, send me this.” I worded it nicely. She sends me "I can't help you
outside the SAD scheme". She just sends me to the blandest (business school) advising
page internet web link. The money is so expensive for the tuition that I was legitimately
considering not coming back. I was not very impressed and, personally, like a lot of
people I did not get financial aid, so I was legitimately thinking about not coming back.
The whole promise of PSU is great, but I didn't think it was worth my money, I didn't
believe I was maximizing my money. I'm just going in my head, what is this? How can
you not help me? What is your job? The assistant dean of student affairs—she's helped
me; this is everything I was honestly thinking about. She's helped me out on multiple,
many occasions. I feel very comfortable talking about anything. She'll help out with
academic stuff, when I'm trying to get that connected. (Mentions her name) is the
assistant dean of student affairs. She is absolutely amazing.
Additionally, Hernandez gives high marks for the helpfulness of the faculty.
Student/faculty interaction is good. To the best of their ability, he says, they are there to help in
every aspect. He is comfortable asking them any question. They've helped him on personal
projects, and are forthcoming in valuable feedback. They legitimately do care he believes and, he
adds, they are very charismatic.
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Hernandez takes a vocational view of his time at SAD/PSU. All of his activities are
directed toward his career after college. He aims is to secure a position as a design chief or
creative director and though he has yet to find a mentor he values the connections he has made so
far with the faculty and plans to continue to strategically build relationships.
Lily/Photography/Sophomore
She understands now this is something that I'm really passionate about, not just a hobby.
Though the BA/BFA program at SAD/PSU does not assign dedicated faculty advisors to
students—only academic advisors—some of the students manage to create relationships with
some of the faculty that are supportive, if not continuous.
I wouldn't say that I have a formal, like a mentor in the formal sense like it's a person that
I'm working with. I guess I don't ... But I do, there is one teacher that I've had for two
classes, and I think is someone I can go back and talk to even though I'm not enrolled in
her classes now. I had a really good experience with her classes. Just, yeah, I think she's
an example of someone that I feel pretty confident in confiding in, I guess? She did write
a recommendation letter for me for an internship, so. I guess, yeah, she definitely was
willing to do that.
The sense of community for Lily was bolstered when she entered and was chosen for the
annual student exhibition. It was a boost of confidence because she felt involved in the
community of student artists. She received positive feedback from other students and the entire
experience she believes was beneficial to not only the quality of her work but her art school
experience.
I guess this is something else I talked about, seeing students again and again, I'm
becoming, I've seen more familiar faces. This is an opportunity where I was able see
some classmates and be like, oh this is really cool. Like we're in this together. This is
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something that we have in common, we're both in the student show that was put on by the
faculty. I think that's a really good opportunity for people to submit stuff that they have
been working on and proud of.
The competiveness among students in the school of art is not at a level that she finds
uncomfortable. It is the other areas of the university where see sees the other students are
extremely competitive. Among non-SAD students there is some bragging about
accomplishments that Lily finds off-putting.
It makes me nervous because I feel like I'm not really, I'm not that competitive, that's who
I am, I'm more doing it for, I don't know how to say that, I'm really not that much of a
competitive person, so I think sometimes it kind of intimidates me to be around people
that are just like, always on the top of their game.
She does not see that type of competition in SAD. While the students are serious and
passionate about their work she has not experienced them boasting about what they have done. “I
think I see students really focused on their work, but not really talking about it that much.” Even
when there is a two-person show in the (student) gallery students promote not only themselves
but also the other person with whom they are sharing the gallery. This is among the experiences
that Lily has had at SAD that make her eager for graduate school, although she has yet to begin
searching for graduate programs.
I think I would kind of enjoy being in a graduate program, like an MFA program, because
I think an MFA program, is just like an extension, and more of like a zeroing in on, all of
the really great aspects of undergrad. It's kind of like taking undergrad and knocking out
half the things that you figured out you don't want to do.
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In addition to the positive experience she has had at art college she has enjoyed a
similarly smooth relationship with her parents regarding her academic choice. Although not
immediately in agreement both parents are solidly behind her now. Her father, who has worked
as a photographer himself, was enthusiastic. Lily’s mother was finally convinced after seeing the
quality of her daughter’s work and her enthusiasm for the medium. Lily has also expanded her
photographic interests to include video. Lily is also unburdened by the future obligation of
student loans so she may pursue her studies unencumbered by financial insecurity.
While several other students have found the sense of community lacking in the school of
art, Lily had not had a similar experience. Nor has she seen much evidence of mental illness
among the art student population. The one exception was a fellow student who documented her
mental health challenges and used it in her artwork. Lily is well adjusted to the various systems
of interaction illustrated in the Bronfenbrenner model.
Geno/Senior/Design
None. Short, short answer. None of our coursework involved professional practice.
Geno is over forty years old. That makes him older than the majority of students
interviewed for this study. He is also a military veteran, and that qualifies him for G.I. Bill
educational assistance. His demeanor is that of an experienced adult for whom college is not the
most significant aspect of his life. He already has a family. His wife attended PSU. Since he has
substantial life experience behind him, his relationship to his family’s regard of his art education
choice is significantly different than his younger colleagues.
Everybody is crazy about it. At this age my wife looks at my grades. She says, "Oh, babe,
I'm so proud," because my wife is a (PSU) alum and she didn't do as well as I did, so
she's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so proud of you." My mom: "I always knew you would go to
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school," and so she's proud. My sisters rave about me so all of my family and friends,
church members, best friend who's even ... it encouraged him. He actually went back for
his degree and he's the same age as I am. All of those different things worked out really
well, so I got a lot of support outside of campus, even for the subject matter that I'm
choosing to do.
However, Geno shares several of the same observations about the program as his younger
confederates. Although the academic advisors in SAD are helpful in helping the students
maneuver the course requirements and scheduling, the students are not assigned faculty advisors
who are responsible for meeting regularly with them during the semester to help the students to
negotiate creative challenges.
Not as an undergrad unless you seek that out. For example, (mentions professor’s name),
most of the projects that I've done outside of the classroom that involved my painting
practice, I'll lean on him. For my show he was a mentor. For the proposals I put him as a
faculty member. As I'm looking forward to do doing independent study, I selected
(professor’s name) as the faculty to meet with more or less in kind of edging towards that
graduate program structure, so it's not a standard practice to have one faculty that you are
(assigned to). But people tend to gravitate towards one teacher or the other and build a
relationship.
On the subject of academic community among the student artists at SAD/PSU, Geno was
in concert with the majority of students interviewed for this study. As did many others of his
colleagues, he pointed to the lack of a communal meeting place that could serve as not only an
area for social gathering but an area for the free exchange and debate of ideas concerning art and
art practice itself. With the vast PSU campus drawing students away from the SAD, and an
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enrollment of around 300 undergraduates, the school of art is without the presence of a constant
creative quorum.
Art schools are traditionally considered like this kind of community thing that they have.
The (SAD) is kind of lacking. A lot of my peers and I have noticed that that doesn't really
exist, maybe in small groups of one or two people who connect, or three or four people
that connect, or maybe even in certain classes you connect, but once you're out of that
class, you don't have those people readily available to you anymore. Then again those
one-on-one relationships with individual professors, they exist, but it's not a whole
community feel. I say that because I personally am feeling it, and have suggested an idea
to try and do something about it, try to create more of a community atmosphere in the art
school so that there's that constant exchange of ideas, the constant dialogue and the
submersion into an art culture, which doesn't really exist right now.
The teaching of professional practices is a concern for Geno, as well as with his
colleagues. While it is present in the form of senior seminar course, those come at the very end
of an art student’s matriculation. The faculty at SAD/PSU does not regularly involve students in
their professional activities as workers, collaborators, or interns. In fact, many of the students
interviewed volunteered that their professors seldom revealed their art practice to them.
None. Short, short answer. None of our coursework involved professional practice.
Senior seminars, places as you prepare to participate in a professional practice, but you
get that at the senior level: one class. Out of 132 units 4 units are geared towards
professional practice. Internships are optional. I had one internship during the summer,
but it wasn't for a credit. It was more or less for the experience of having done an
internship and a little bit of money. It was in a museum. It was in the California African
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American Museum. I was able to go over there and learn about the museum institution,
help do an exhibit and do the promotion. Again, drawing on my professional skillset in
that internship, so it was like I was a professional working as an intern, doing the job of a
professional. It was really kind of funny. That was it other than there's not a whole lot of,
"Okay, you're a professional. Do this. This is that they do in the real world." You do a
petition or write a proposal for an exhibition of your own, which is a professional act, and
then you install it yourself as a professional might do it, maybe not because if you were
getting an exhibition in a major gallery they would take care of all that for you, so you
learn a little bit about what it is to be a professional artist. But it's not built into the
curriculum at all.
Summary of Findings
Community
Geno was not alone in his assessment regarding community within the school of art and
the teaching of professional practices. Nearly two thirds of the interviewees said the SAD/PSU
lacked a sense of community. Many blamed the lack of a central meeting place or unifying
student organizations. There are student exhibitions that involve and/or are developed by the
students but none of the students mentioned any traditions or rituals that created an integral
identity for the SAD. Only one of the eight student artists claimed to enjoy the social
atmosphere. Their notion of artistic community does not mean student-to-student relations
alone—the faculty artists must play a significant role—but the interviewees believed that it is
crucial that students actively interact.
The faculty, as role models and leaders, represent not only the educational institution but
also the art profession itself. This makes it particularly worrisome that the students were rarely
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asked to participate in the faculty’s professional activities, a community-building strategy and a
practice that could help professionalize the students’ art skills and habits, as well as affirming the
direct art educational relationship to the professional art industry. The professional practices
aspect of the program was found inadequate by all of the students.
In addition to informal mentoring relationships, students pointed to student exhibitions
and internships—formal and informal—as aspects of their program that gave them
encouragement and confidence. Issues of community, mentorship, and professional practices fall
under institutional support; it is the verso of familial support. In the case of our participants,
familial support was distinctly uneven; it ranged between unsupportive, continuing reluctance,
divided, support for the college but not the major, initial reluctance then full support, and
enthusiastic support. The commonality of uneven familial support for these students makes the
constancy of institutional support all the more important.
The notion of a community of artists who share their experiences with their colleagues is
a valuable asset yet the lack of diversity at the SAD, or any other art college for that matter, is a
lost opportunity. The respondents in this study reflected the lack of diversity in the program. Of
the eight participants in this study there was one African American and one Latina; the rest were
of Asian and European descent—quite dissimilar to PSU’s neighborhood, city, and state. When
visual culture study is practiced without students, or faculty, who represent the expanded art
world then dissection of a cultural artefact like the previously mentioned Jimi Hendrix sex tape
becomes the very opposite of an expanded view of cultural production and understanding. It
approximates the very hegemony that it seeks to critique.

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Faculty Engagement
In studying this self-selecting sample of undergraduate art and design students at
SAD/PSU a number of responses coincided. Seventy-five per cent found a steep upward
transition from high school or community college art courses to those at the university level. This
revelation is unsurprising as K-12 arts programs in schools have continued to disappear, or as
Education Week reported in 2011, “fewer 18-year-olds surveyed in 2008 reported receiving any
arts education in childhood than did those surveyed in 1982, dropping from about 65 percent to
50 percent. The report also includes survey data in 1992 and 2002, and each successive time the
overall figure was lower” (edweek.org). As a consequence, some students found themselves
needing more help than anticipated. Yet, “Students are more likely to stay in schools that involve
them as valued members of the institution. The frequency and quality of contact with faculty,
staff and other students have repeatedly been shown to be independent predictors of student
persistence (p. 5).”
And while the faculty is helpful, according to many of the students in the study, there is
no formal mentoring program at SAD/PSU. The few students who did find faculty mentors did
so through the increased familiarity of multiple classes.
Students agreed that a dedicated program of mentorship was absent from the curriculum,
resulting in little faculty/student bounding and development.
Employability
While two of the students thought the curriculum not challenging enough, none of the
students planned to change majors. All students agreed that the level of competition was not high
in SAD though design students were considered more competitive than those in studio art.
Nearly all of the design students believed they would make a living based on the skills they were
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acquiring in college. The studio art students also expected they would use their skills but in a
commercial application. Only one student—studio art—professed an expectation to be employed
outside of art/design and two thirds of the other students who chose to respond to the question
concerning academic debt acknowledged it as a significant problem and that it would
substantially influence their employment decisions. The students shared similar concerns that the
curriculum lacked rigorous professional practices teaching, resulting in doubt about skills
acquired and their post-college applicability.
Mental Health
With the exception of one student who declined to answer the question, all of the students
were familiar with colleagues in the SAD who had experienced mental health challenges, some
severe. Two students specifically mentioned their issues with depression although neither
indicated its severity. One student casually and briefly mentioned discussing the subject of
suicide but chose not to elaborate. Feelings of isolation and detachment were common, as
expressed in the multiple responses concerning a lack of community in the SAD. The students
shared similar concerns that the program did not build and encourage community; this led to
isolation and detachment among the students. In the literature review of their study on the
benefits of a strong social environment in improving mental health, Ozbay, Johnson, Dimoulas,
Morgan, Charney, & Southwick (2007) concluded the “literature demonstrates the harmful
consequences of poor social support and the protective effects of having access to rich and
functional social networks on maintaining physical and psychological health.”
Several of the students indicated that the uncertainty of future success was a nagging
concern. Internal factors included the difficulty in assessing acquirable skills and ineffable
talents, lack of parental support, and financial trepidation. When answering questions about
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mental health only one of the students mentioned the counseling center and that was in response
to an emergency regarding another student to which she responded. While statistical correlation
does not indicate causation it would be prudent to consider that, as investigated in Chapter Two,
substantial literature (Batey & Furham, 2008; Burch et al., 2006; Jamison, 1993; Kaufman, 2001;
Kyaga, Lichtenstein, Boman, Hultman, Långström, & Landén, 2011; Ludwig, 1994; Nettle,
2005, 2011; Shah, 2010; Sussmann, 2007) is consonant that a substantial coincidence exists
between mental illness and creative expression. To be aware of such a correlation and dismiss it
would be reckless.
Conclusion
P&S University is a widely praised institution, and deservedly so. It is difficult to argue
with a graduation rate of 92%. The majority of the students interviewed for this study
commented on the prestige and exclusivity of the institution as an important if not the primary
factor in their attendance. Despite some of their dissatisfactions with the program they
acknowledge the value of the PSU reputation. Xip revealed, “My parents basically said that they
wouldn't help finance my college education unless I went to P&S, and that's why I'm at P&S,”
and Geno spoke of his family’s prior connection to the university, “Everybody is crazy about it.
At this age my wife looks at my grades. She says, "Oh, babe, I'm so proud," because my wife is a
P&S alum and she didn't do as well as I did, so she's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so proud of you."
Hernandez, who approaches his academic journey with businesslike proficiency, stated
unequivocally, “I want to be able to go out there and pick up a job and do that, especially coming
out of a school like P&S. In a certain essence you're paying for the name P&S.” Hueso’s delight
was clear regarding the reaction others had when she told them she had become a member of the
P&S family, “They were jealous because they can't believe I'm here at P&S.”
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The competitive environment within the university was acknowledged by Lili, “I think
everyone at P&S, that I've encountered are all really hard working and, yeah, definitely very,
very smart.” Jinx disclosed the acuteness of that competition, “Some people I know switched out
of fine arts because ... it's easier to get into fine arts school grade-wise because they can pay
other people to do their portfolio for them. They switch out of the major once they get into P&S,
and they do the major that they really want to do”.
P&S University is successful in college rankings as well. It is in the top 25 of American
universities (U.S. News, 2014) and its individual schools and graduate programs are among the
national elite. While individual undergraduate subject areas are not generally rated their
corresponding graduate programs (that share faculty and a chief administrator) more often are. In
these areas PSU also excels. Its Film, Drama, and Engineering schools are positioned favorably
among the top twenty in their national categories; Law, and Education rank highly among the top
25; Medicine and Business are in the top 40 (U.S. News, Hollywood Reporter, 2014). Yet the
SAD doesn’t share the distinction enjoyed by these other programs; it rests in the bottom third of
the top 100 ranked programs (U.S. News, 2014), or as Robin contended, “I feel like at P&S it's
not as competitive, like cutthroat, with the other students than other schools I know my friends
go to.”
Robin spoke of the more rigorous art programs that his friends were attending but only
the top discrete art colleges even approach the graduation rate of SAD/PSU at 96% (higher than
the university overall). Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) achieved 86% for its 2004 cohort;
it should be noted, however, that RISD enjoys a mutual educational relationship with Brown
University, an institution rated substantially higher than PSU. Few other dedicated art colleges
come close to RISD’s completion rate. Most of the best known independent art schools, as listed
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in Chapter One, have graduation rates below the national rate for 4-year private not-for-profits.
This includes the well known and respected Otis College of Art & Design, the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, and the California College of the Arts. The question remains, is it possible
for schools of art to achieve completion rates commensurate with their tuition demands and
career expectations?
This chapter allowed the students themselves to speak about numerous issues at their art
school, particularly about faculty mentorship and the sense of belonging within an artistic
community. These findings align with issues identified by Tinto, in which sense of belonging at
all levels of “systems” identified by Bronfenbrenner have an impact on the decision to persist
towards degree completion. The narratives offered by these students illustrate some of the very
real social, academic, creative and financial tensions experienced every day. Chapter Five has
reviewed the issues presented by the participants and made recommendations on improvements
within the art school model to support greater art student success.

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Chapter Five: The Research and Recommendations
Introduction
In examining the conditions that may contribute to completion difficulties for
undergraduate art students this study surveyed the art student experience through narratives
supplied by the students themselves. In Chapter Four the students voiced their affections and
discontents with their program of study and its ancillary aspects. Issues common to all college
students were observed but also conditions that are unique to the Art & Design student. This
chapter infers interpretations of this collected data and suggests practicable applications based
upon this evidence.
Data that contributed to this study included examining the completion rates of private
college visual art students with those of conventional college student populations and finding the
art students to have generally inferior completion rates, the significant costs of an art school
education, the outsized borrowing that art students demonstrated, and the lesser lifetime earnings
of art school graduates. This study’s conjecture was that in addition to the general concerns and
challenges faced by college students, the art student was confronted with issues unique to their
program of study and post-college expectations. The data suggested that art students face a more
ambiguous employment picture, found a greater gulf between high school art preparation and
college art demands, and toiled in an intellectual arena of less definable goals and obscure
indicators of success. The issues explored that affect completion were numerous—financial
demands both during college and afterward, social wellbeing, academic interaction and
preparation, mental health, and art teachability. These concerns often overlapped but were
divided into two categories, exterior and interior influences, in order to determine how much
impact an institution and its faculty might have upon each area of concern.
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The theoretical framework adapted Bronfenbrenner’s Theory of Human Ecology to
demonstrate the interconnectivity of these various influential orbits. The exterior categories
included familial, financial, and cultural norms and expectations—over which the educational
institution can exert little influence; and the interior considerations of professional preparation,
supportive peer and faculty relationships, student identity considerations and mental health—
domains where the institution and its representatives might have significant impact. Also, Tinto’s
assertion (1990) that successful college engagement relies strongly upon the tandem of
mentorship and membership was also a guideline in assessing art student satisfaction and
progress.
Unlike many of the independent colleges of art & design that prompted this study
SAD/PSU does not have an attrition problem. It is a university with superior completion rates—
no doubt its extremely selective acceptance rate has much to do with its admirable graduation
outcomes—but there was significant dissatisfaction within the SAD.
Answering the Research Questions
In reviewing the research questions that guided this study we found connections in the
responses of the students that reveal concerned and informative reactions.
1. What factors contribute to the inferior graduation rates of undergraduate art students?
A. Are the determining factors primarily interior—such as student identity, peer and
faculty relationships, or student mental health?
B. Are the determining factors primarily exterior—such as familial pressure; financial
considerations, either current or anticipated; or conforming to cultural norms and
expectations?
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2. What are the chief circumstances that lead undergraduate art students to abandon their
undergraduate art studies?
3. What factors are most responsible for educational persistence among undergraduate art
students?
The first question aims to locate which detrimental conditions might impede timely
completion and to locate them as either internal or external—located within the student’s
personal realm of affect and outside of the institution’s general influence, or rooted in conditions
that the institution generates, controls, and has the potential to change. While acknowledging that
the internal and external meet in areas of overlap, the internal factors were primarily creative
talent, community identity within the college, social rank or status outside the college, and
mental health. The external factors were identified as program engagement, mentorship,
professional practice/employment, and student loans. Within these areas of concern the students
pointed to several issues that were negative toward a smooth and/or satisfactory matriculation.
Internal Concerns
The internal issue of creative talent is an anxiety in a mysterious discipline that rewards
both consistent traditional accomplishment and rule-breaking innovation. This was most
eloquently voiced by Jill, who lamented that she felt she could acquire complex skills but not
transformative capacity (Best, 1982; Çubukcu, 2007; Vaughan et al, 2008). Yet it was also
mentioned by Robin, who felt that a standard critical reference point was too elusive to allow
students to generate the confidence of analytical conviction. With much of the faculty’s
professional practice remaining hidden and little substantive critical engagement with other
students, Jinx, too, found it difficult to gauge herself creatively within and against her cohort.
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The development of a personal identity within the community of student artists was a
difficult consideration. Robin partially attributed this to the SAD being a small school within
PSU and that students, due to general studies obligations and the opportunity of other social
sphere interaction, became dispersed across the campus. He also indicated that the numerous
majors often divided students into ever smaller subgroups who might have little interface.
Hernandez agreed that SAD/PSU was not “a pure art school,” in that it is not an immersive
environment that could create a vibrant atmosphere for artistic identity development. Hueso
indicated that her age and ethnicity isolated her from her colleagues, in addition to the
geographic challenges she faces in attending the university. These aspects of marginality and
mattering, as identified by Schlossberg (1989), ebbed and flowed for these students. The lack of
a central meeting place within the SAD was frequently mentioned as a drawback to student
interaction, collaboration, and productive identity development (Chickering & Reisser, 1993;
Baxter Magolda, 2001).
The successful development of her own identity within the SAD, Lily believes, has been
aided by the social connections that she made when her work was chosen for the annual student
exhibition. Her comfort and confidence was boosted by interacting within that group of select
students and she received validation through enabling and supportive recognition of her value
within the group of student artists (Rendòn, 1994). Geno agreed that the identity of the student
artist within the program depended significantly upon the sense of community that the program’s
designers—the faculty, staff, and administration—manufacture by actively creating an
environment of interaction, camaraderie, and support.
As the discipline of of visual art is not well understood social rank or status outside the
SAD was also an area of concern, both within relations with students who are enrolled in more
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traditionally remunerative subject areas and with those nonacademic peers and relations who are
unfamiliar with visual art and artists. The notion of identity in college students is socially and
culturally informed strongly by self reference in regard to peers. Seen through Bronfenbrenner’s
adapted cosmology of interactive orbits (p. 35) the art student (individual) may find their
relationships with non-art peers and family (microsystem) strained by a misunderstanding,
indifference, or antagonism toward the art student’s relationship with esoteric culture
(exosystem). Immersion in this esoteric culture, and/or remarkable student debt loads could
engender an uneagerness by the student in the societal norms of marriage, wealth/property, and
children (macrosystem). This which might be seen as a rejection of those peers and family.
Because of the continuing stigma surrounding the subject, participants were reticent to
discuss the subject of mental health, despite assurances of confidentiality. For all this reticence
the student artists still revealed useful information. Hernandez spoke of having experienced
depression and but not as ongoing condition. Xip spoke most freely of knowing other student
artists with substantial social anxiety whom she has encountered, and others who experienced
panic attacks. Depression was also something she noted as frequent in her experience with other
art students.
Robin, who also had experienced depression, thought it commonplace in the school of
art. The insecurity and introversion he has observed in his colleagues, he thought, was also
linked to the progress or impediment in their art-making. He pointed to this as a particularly
stressful condition. Financial and familial pressures were significant stressors for Jinx. The
expectations placed upon her by her family to find monetary success as a direct product of her
education is coupled by her financial obligations in student loans.
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While Hueso did not speak of any mental health issues that she has experienced she
spoke sympathetically of two students whom she witnessed having problems. She encountered a
student, whom she regarded as confident and successful, having an emotional breakdown in the
women’s restroom. The incident was prolonged and emotionally painful. She accompanied the
fellow student to the counseling center. She says that since that incident the student’s personality
has substantially changed. Hueso described another student, one with whom she has a class, as
impenetrably introverted. Taciturn and standoffish, she described him as appearing fearful.
None of the students interviewed, however, spoke of seeking help for the depression, stress, or
anxiety they themselves had been experiencing.
External Concerns
The range of academic interests that Xip confessed were certainly the product of her
eager mind but one must consider if her contemplation of study in other disciplines is not only
intellectual eagerness but a dissatisfaction with the disciplinary engagement in the program.
Student engagement, a consequence of valuing the possible outcomes of one’s academic
commitment (Willms, 2003), is essential in an educational program as esoteric as art and design
since the future outcomes are less certain than more common and vocational fields of study
(Menger, 1999; Wassall & Alper 1992; Throsby, 1994). The level of engagement within the
program was questioned by several of the student respondents. Program engagement concerns of
mentorship, preparatory professional practices, and professional expectations within one’s
discipline yet those very concerns, according to SAD/PSU students, were not being satisfactorily
met.
Mentorship, Xip volunteered, was a matter of becoming a favorite of a faculty member.
A matter of luck and being noticed by the professor. Jinx and Robin agreed that the SAD faculty
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only rarely involved students in their professional activities as assistants or collaborators, though
both of them had taken multiple classes with one professor and developed a relationship in that
manner. Most participants suggested that professors did not generally reveal their professional
art practice to the students. Jill has stated flatly that she does not have any mentors within the
SAD. Hernandez did not identify a particular mentor but said he found all of the faculty
extremely helpful and the they had given him guidance on personal projects. On the day of our
interview, however, he had just come from a meeting about student concerns with the program
and one of those concerns was professional practices—articulated by one student as feeling
completely unprepared to graduate into the professional world. Lily also has developed a more
supportive relationship with a member of the faculty—she has taken two courses with this
professor—but would not consider it a dedicated mentoring relationship. Geno stated
emphatically there is a distinct lack of professional practice teaching and that mentoring is
something the student must actively solicit.
Student loans were a significant concern for Xip—she does not have a plan yet on how to
pay them off and fears the addition of graduate school debt complicating her educational
ambitions. Jinx, who wants to pursue art as social practice, is aware of the low economic returns
that avenue promises and expects to work in digital media to help repay her loans. Geno is
circumspect about loan repayment, as if it is something to be planned for and endured like
income tax. Hueso acknowledges that her debt is substantial but is resolutely confident, despite
her other challenges, she will be able to pay off her loans in a reasonable time. Although
Hernandez is financing a minority portion his education with loans he is well informed on the
burden of student debt and is driven to leverage the full value of the reputation of SAD/PSU to
repay it.
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Addendum
The questions about mental health found some students taciturn, others garrulous. One of
the students had previously spoken openly to one of her professors about the issue of suicide.
During her interview she was extremely forthcoming about her personal life and aspirations, and
her close friend/art partner.
We're both mostly gay. We met and became really good friends really fast, and it was
like a wild friendship because he really understood me, and we could talk about really
fucked up things that we usually can't talk about with other people, but he was also like
the most difficult friendship that I've ever had because he's so antagonistic. We've made
so much great art together, and we've just like explored LA, and made weird art where
he's stuffing flowers into my face, and all this great stuff. Then we ended our friendship
then we started it again. He lives in (names location) now because that's where he's from,
so he graduated and he went back home, and I do sometimes think it would be kind of
nice if we both ended up in Berlin, and were like, lived down the street from each other,
or in the same apartment building. That's not like family, because he wouldn't be my
family, but it is really nice to have that kind of a friend, because I think it's really rare,
especially for me because I don't form close friendships very easily, but I do kind of, I've
had that daydream before, and I've shared it with him.
In describing her future relationship as she saw herself twenty years hence she spoke of
having a partner who was not romantic, not sexual.
Sometimes in twenty years, or it wouldn't even have to be him, but to have someone
who's at my level, and really who makes art the same way I make it, or who's like, I guess
like ... Have you heard the term queer platonic partner? I kind of daydream about that
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sometimes, like having a partner who's not romantic or sexual, and who doesn't live in the
same space as me, because I don't like sharing space, but like having someone who's like
a good friend, who's kind of a partner, I’d like that in twenty years.
Less than a month after the completion of this interview her good friend and artistic
collaborator committed suicide.
Recommendations
The responses given by the student participants and investigation into the subject areas
that affect art student success have led to a series of recommendations on how to encourage both
successful completion and professional prosperity.
1. Community: Rituals of Belonging
Establish rituals and traditions unique to the school of art would help define the identity
of the program and create a sense of belonging. PSU is an extremely large university but the
SAD is very small community of students. The level of artistic community at SAD/PSU,
according to Xip, is sorely lacking. The robust function of community in an academic setting can
be, according to Tinto (1987), a deterrent to student attrition. Tinto’s membership/mentorship
model stresses the caliber of a student’s reciprocal relationships with members of the faculty as
well as with other students as integral in student retention. As seen in Figure 1, page 29—
Brofenbrenner’s Human Ecology Theory adapted to the visual art student experience—such
interactions represent an opportunity for the student artist to move from the microsystem orbit of
peers, family, and art school to the exosystem realm of the art market, esoteric culture, and
employment.
These missed interactions represent a lost educational and professional opportunity, one
that might also strengthen Jinx, the student who lacked eager support from her family regarding
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her educational choices. The establishment of rituals and traditions unique to the school of art
would help define the identity of the program and create a sense of belonging (Tierney, 1992)
despite social class differences (Ostrove &Long, 2007) and help mediate racial and ethnic
differences (Fischer, 2007). This, alongside the establishment of dedicated art advising—distinct
from academic advising—relationships, is recommended. None of the students mentioned that
they belonged to a discipline-based club or organization. On the contrary, some described their
failed attempts to create such a club or regularly occurring event that would bring the
undergraduate artists together. Such an organization or event could help strengthen the
membership model that aids completion. Such traditions function not only as social events but
bonding and networking opportunities for art students to augment and reinforce practical
knowledge, skills, and motivation.
The visiting artist program is another support of the membership model by connecting
professional success and information alongside effective demonstrations of art theory and
practice. However, without these visiting artists making studio visits and interacting personally
with the student artists, as indicated by Jinx, the advantages of a visiting artist/lecture are not
fully realized as the student artist is less likely to see themselves reflected in the impressive but
personally inaccessible role model.
For college students, a sense of belonging is a valuable concept in healthy social and
psychological functioning (Hagerty et al 1992, 1993, 1995) and is demonstrated through the
individual’s experiences in an environment or system that directly contributes to their belief that
they themselves are an essential component of that environment.
The faculty, staff, and administrators of SAD/PSU and other art colleges can enhance
their students’ educational, social, and physiological experience through affirmations of
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belonging and camaraderie. Creating a distinctive organizational culture could help the SAD
(and other colleges of art) develop rituals of belonging that integrate the student more fully (Kuh,
Schuh, & Whitt, 1991; Kuh, 2001). Rituals and celebrations, and discipline-based learning
communities create an academic identity that marks it student participants as unique from other
programs and confederate in their own. When connected to the school’s mission these rituals and
learning communities create cultural bonds of collegiality.
Traditions and celebrations help solidify the identity of an institution and create a
personal connection for the student to the organization (Manning, 2001). From the egg drop at
MIT, where students construct a device that will keep an egg unbroken after a twenty-four foot
drop from the tallest building on campus; to Cornell’s Dragon Day, begun in 1897, in which
architecture students build a giant dragon to do battle with engineering’s giant Phoenix, to Penn
State’s THON, a 2-day dance marathon that since its inception in 1977 has raised $137 million
for pediatric cancer. These are rituals, respectively, of accomplishment, investiture, and healing
(Manning, 2001).
The creation of rigorous learning communities would aid both social and academic
purposes as, “learning communities were found to facilitate the development of relationships that
integrated both academic and social aspects of university life by allowing for greater interaction
among peers around common challenges and stressors” (Hoffman, Richmond, Morrow, &
Salomone, 2002, p. 26). Learning communities link groups of students in paired classes, often
with professors occasionally visiting each other’s class. These communities foster academic and
social diversity, interdependence, and deeper learning (Kuh, Schuh, & Whitt, 1991).

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2. Faculty Engagement: Cultivation of Involvement
Cultivate an environment where student artists have faculty mentors. While the traditions
of visual art have changed significantly since the master/apprentice model was in its iconic
heyday—post-modern thought insisted that we question, antagonize, and reject that
arrangement—it remains a valuable disposition in colleges of art because they have changed
from aesthetic factories into cellars of refutation, where iconoclasm is not revolutionary but de
rigueur. When Marlon Brando’s character in the 1953 film, The Wild One, is asked, “Hey,
Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” he questions back, “What do you got?” Art students
now, more than ever, are required to rebel. They must rebel in order to stand out from the rest of
their student, and soon to be professional, competitors. They must make something new,
distinctive, and unique yet they are now academically responsible for art history, political
science, philosophy, media and cultural studies, theory and criticism, as well as being conversant
with an ever changing roster of trending contemporary artists (Bal, 2003; Beudert, 2008; Bolin &
Blandy, 2003; Boughton, 2005; Duncum, 2001; 2002, 2003, 2004; Freedman, 2000; Freedman &
Stuhr, 2004; Mitchell, 1995; Smith, 2003; Tavin, 2003; Tavin & Hausman, 2004). To negotiate
this labyrinth of visual culture expertise, material manipulation as well as digital media skills,
and professional navigational proficiency the student artist needs the dedicated tutelage of a
faculty mentor. Lacking a formal employer/employee structure, the business of the visual arts is
primarily entrepreneurial (Bridgstock, 2012). These entrepreneurial skills, however, are not
being taught—at least not at the fine art programs of 87 British and German colleges and
universities recently studied that found, “Clear evidence is shown that fine art students will not
be sufficiently prepared for their most chosen career path of self-employment” (Thom, 2014).
Nor, according to the responses from the art & design student interviews, are they being taught at
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the SAD/PSU. Brando’s audacious retort might mirror that of the eager and arrogant first year art
student but by the fourth year it is the faculty’s obligation to have indoctrinated them in the
realities of the business of being a visual artist.
3. Employability: Economic Awareness
Students embarking upon an expensive education in art & design in should be given a
thorough indoctrination in the expectations and demands of the program and the employment
and financial possibilities of post-college professional life. Hernandez is in advantageous
position in regard to the Bronfenbrenner framework. His financial awareness and professional
striving are consistent with progress through the exosystem concerns of employment and debt
and, through such consequent financial acuity, the macrosystem of societal norms and
expectations that include wealth-building and family development. Hernandez is an example of
an SAD student who has thoroughly embraced the new vocationalism of higher education
(Grubb & Lazerson, 2005; Symes & McIntyre, 2000), one that stresses technological,
communications, and commercial knowledge that can fill an employment need in the
marketplace. Professional skills are needed as much in the the visual arts as any other business so
the professional practices courses taught at SAD/PSU should additionally stress
entrepreneurship, arts law, marketing and networking, and financial management (Lamb, 2015).
Here, also, the robust visiting artist program makes a considerable contribution. The
visiting artists should not be just visual artists but other arts professionals as well. Museum,
gallery, and not-for-profit arts community and governmental professionals have an enormous
role to play. Many art students will find jobs in these organizations that require a variety of
skills. Some students will find themselves in exhibition design, some in fundraising, others in
members’ services. A wide range of role models must be presented so that the student may make
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informed choices in planning their professional futures. Successful alumni are also a component
in this mixture.
Yet the substantial student loan debt that follows art students makes their low earning
potential more crucial. With over half of the arts graduates surveyed in the 2014 Strategic
National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP, 2013) reporting that they still had over $10,000 in
student loans extant, the survey found a significant number, 14%, still owed over $60,000. Such
debt can severely impede the financial growth of the student for years to come (Alper & Wassall,
2006; Carnevale, Rose, & Cheah, 2013) and eliminate, or at least severely delay, them from
conventional pursuits like marriage, home ownership, family, and retirement—all components in
the macrosystem of Bronfenbrenner’s Human Ecology model. This is too high a price to pay for
an art education. Students with high debt are more likely to consider leaving college, more likely
to endure anxiety about their debt load, have increased anxiety as they matriculate, feel more
criticized, and have trouble sleeping (Cook, Barkham, Audin, & Bradley, 2004). Additionally,
employment and earnings fears are well- founded. As seen in Career Expectations and Fears
section of Chapter Two, college arts graduates’ median salaries were $30,000, less than a year’s
tuition at SAD/PSU, while those students who majored in leisure and recreation earned $29,000
(Carnevale, Cheah, & Strohl, 2013). Also artists’ educational investment generated lower
economic returns than workers who had attained a similar education level (Wenger, 1999). These
facts may tend to increase anxiety among student artists.
In view of the several detriments art students are likely to experience, their educators,
academic advisors, and student loan officers are morally obligated to vigorously inform students
of the realities of debt service and the affect it can have on their future. This means
institutionalizing a thorough, even if off-putting, fiscal indoctrination for students that privileges
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their future wellbeing over the institution’s eagerness for tuition dollars. Furthermore, the
students at PSU were more than satisfied with the liberal arts courses that were part of their
undergraduate requirements and options. As mentioned in Chapter Two, the competencies
acquired in such courses are, according to studies by the AACU (AACU, 2013; AACU, 2013b),
more traditionally remunerative as employers have been shown to desire more broadly educated
employees. A strategy of encouraging art students to increase their liberal arts course loads to
augment their specialized visual art skills might mitigate some of the employment difficulties
that art graduates endure, create more economic options for wealth building, and aid debt
repayment in advance of default.
4. Mental Health: Isolation, Art, and Support
Coordinate support from faculty, staff, parents to support students’ mental health needs.
While college students and similarly aged non-students demonstrate the same level of
incidence of mental disorders Hunt & Eisenberg (2010) reveal:
Within the college population certain subgroups have a significantly higher prevalence of
mental health problems, which is consistent with studies of the general population. Male
undergraduates are at a higher risk for suicide, but female students are more likely to
screen positive for major depression and anxiety disorders. Students from lower
socioeconomic backgrounds are at a higher risk for depressive and anxiety
symptoms and. Poor mental health is also more common among students with
relationship stressors, low social support, or victimization by sexual violence.
SAD/PSU has a majority female population (80%) and, as students reported in their
interviews, a lack of social support within the SAD. This combination should be a cause for
concern at SAD/PSU.
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The above findings reinforce that the coincidence of those in creative pursuits and
mental illness should not be ignored. Social interaction can be an asset in the discipline of art and
design where students work mostly in isolation, especially now with the denatured socialization
of online interaction having become so substantial (Eisenberg, Downs, Golberstein, & Zivin,
2009; Megivern, Pellerito, & Mowbray, 2005). Isolation tends to carry with it a number of health
concerns, from low flu immunization effectiveness (Pressman et al, 2005), to depression (Wei,
Russell & Zakalik, 2005), and self-harm (Kitzrow, 2003). Additionally, Kuh & Hu (2001) found
that student artists described receiving lesser benefits from their college education even though
they had greater frequency of contact with faculty than was reported by students in other
disciplines. This suggests that a more hands-on approach is needed from faculty and staff
concerning art students who, not only experience the struggles common to all college students,
may have their disaffection compounded by the addition of less concrete guidelines of academic
success.
The education of parents is also an essential for art programs. In order to create the
support for students from their families it will be necessary to demonstrate to those families (and
reinforce the students who may be doubting themselves) the value of visual art skills and their
applicability in a concrete and statistically attestable manner.
A combination of support from faculty, staff, parents—and students in support of one
another—can combat the difficulties sometimes seen in art students who, as is frequently
coincidental with their art practice, may experience mental health challenges. An active support
network can substantially aid psychological resilience (Ozbay et al 2007). It is essential that for
student artists, who work in isolation and immerse in introspection, that mental health
maintenance issues must be openly encouraged, normalized, and destigmatized (Corrigan, 2004;
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Griffiths, Christensen, Jorm, Evans, & Groves, 2004), and assistance be made readily available.
We must build a culture of help availability but also of help-seeking (Cooper, Corrigan, &
Watson, 2003; Link, Struening, Neese-Todd, Asmussen, & Phelan, 2001).
Further Research
Data Sharing and Proven Academic Practices
There are two other areas for further research; they are harnessed in their efficacy. First,
we must analyze which type of art schools seem to have the best results in art student retention
and completion? Are they discrete art schools or those that are embedded within universities?
Are those public or private universities? Are college art departments and university art schools
equal in their dedication to successful artist academic completion. Disaggregating the completion
rates in IPEDS fine and performing art statistics would make such comparisons feasible.
Otherwise, each art department or school of art that is embedded within a university would have
to be approached individually. The will to create a network of beneficial information sharing
would have to be greater than the territoriality of each individual art school. College art
education organizations—the College Art Association being the primary institution but only one
of the scores of organizations dedicated to art studies and professionalism—would first have to
recognize art school completion rates as an area of concern and summon the will to do something
about it.
Secondly, further research is required to learn which practices are employed by the most
successful art colleges in order to move their student artists toward completion. Are there
practices at all or are high performing art schools benefitting primarily from selective acceptance
rates? Are their practices specific to art schools? Are these practices applicable across the
discipline? Are these successful practices applicable to all types of art colleges? Is
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entrepreneurship one of the key educational commitments that art faculty and administrators are
making to these artists, who are training to be, essentially, small business owners
(Oberschachtsiek, 2008); Thom, 2014; Welsh, Onishi, DeHoog, & Syed, 2014)? Also, have art
school teaching methods been effectively updated to maximize information transfer and
retention? Teaching and learning strategies are routinely taught in schools of education and
applied to other disciplines. Academic managers are trained in creating, and charged with
implementing positive learning and completion outcomes. Are schools of art resistant to
academic management and pedagogical advancement? Are schools of art employing the most
current teaching strategies?
Conclusion
Certainly, acquiring productive professional visual art skills can be taught and learned.
The enduring notion of success in the visual arts, however, is a moving target that, like a carnival
midway game-of-chance, has a highly unlikely outcome. This is the notion of Art & Design that
Jill has subsumed, that innate talent and luck counts more than a steady and rigorous dedication
to, and application of, one’s art practice.
Artist is a profession that has very few successful practitioners compared to the number
of those who attempt a career it and in comparison to the size of the general population. Like
many non-essential industries—drama, sports—it exists as a form of entertainment, albeit one for
elevated tastes. Are these attractions so consistently diverting because only people who possess
rare and somewhat inexplicable qualities can perform them? For example, there were only 854
active players in Major League Baseball in 2015 (only slightly more than the membership of the
League of American Orchestras). All of them can hit a fastball, though some clearly much better
than others. The curveball is another story. It perplexes even major leaguers, and hitting one with
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even limited success is considered an essential skill to anyone hoping for baseball career. In this
way the curveball is a gatekeeper. It works by creating an optical illusion—a motion induced
position shift—that perplexes the batter (Kwon, Tadin, & Knill 2014). What has mystified Jill is
the optical allusion, a visual reference or configuration that creates added meaning and influence
to a perceptual arrangement; not a trick of the eye but of the mind. Few of us even have dreams
of becoming a major league baseball player. Could it be that images, something we process daily
and—we believe—accurately, are a more complex language than most of us can ever learn, a
pitch at which our students will continually swing and miss? This allows art to remain vaguely
mystical and resistant to guidelines. Academia resists such vagaries and art is and should
continue to be an academic subject. Art education makes a difference in a viable manner; we live
in an invented world and nearly everything we encounter has involved the input of an artist.
Training students as the authors of our culture does not mean merely high culture; it means the
armies of painters, designers, sculptors, photographers, and arts managers who construct our
built world. Art skills are adaptable and versatile but the teaching of art must be subjected to the
same rigorous educational scrutiny as other academic subjects.
There are lofty targets at which art students are taught to aim—the Whitney Biennial,
Documenta, a MacArthur Fellowship. To train students to become such artists is akin to training
them to win the lottery. It would also mean that we fail nearly all of our students. We must teach
students to become arts practitioners with ambition, intelligence, and realism, with applicable
skills along with anticipatory and measurable results.
In order to be successful in this challenge visual art education programs must compile the
data of their educational and administrative successes and failures through constant assessment
and revision. Art colleges must create vigorous art communities by the creation of interlocking
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circles of support for their students, through traditions and rituals of association that create a
congregation of affinity. Students and their biological, or acquired, families are a part of this
caucus but it is the administrators, faculty, and staff of the institution that are its primary
curators. Art colleges must also require experiential learning in a professional setting that
anticipates art students’ futures. Yet, mostly, in order to create an educational environment that
fully serves students instead of merely processing them, art programs must set an example by
submitting themselves, regularly and wholeheartedly, to the scrutiny for which art schools are
well known, the rigorous critique.

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Appendix A
Live Interview Questions for Art School Abridged
Research questions
1. What factors contribute to the inferior graduation rates of undergraduate art students?
A. Are the determining factors primarily interior—such as student identity, peer and
faculty relationships, or student mental health?
B. Are the determining factors primarily exterior—such as familial pressure; financial
considerations, either current or anticipated; or conforming to cultural norms and
expectations?
2. What are the chief circumstances that lead undergraduate art students to abandon their art
studies?
3. What factors are most responsible for educational persistence among undergraduate art
students?
What factors contribute to the inferior graduation rates of undergraduate art students?
1. Considering your high school arts preparation, could you describe in what ways you found the
classes in college more difficult, easier, or about what you expected?
2. In what ways do you find your faculty advisor, and the other faculty, available and accessible?
How has this condition affected your progress?
3. Could you illustrate for me the social atmosphere of the art school regarding peer relationships
and student faculty interaction?
4. How does the faculty include the students in their professional art activities as guests,
collaborators, assistants, or performers?
5. Please tell about your feelings of confidence or concern regarding student loan debt?
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What are the chief circumstances that lead undergraduate art students to abandon their
undergraduate art studies?
6. For various reasons some students find art school is not for them. What factors have ever
caused you to consider changing majors or dropping out, and what has persuaded you to stay?
7. How much of your course work involves the professional art world and in what ways—
internships, professional practices courses? Does that include teaching preparation?
8. How do you plan to make a living based upon your artwork or the knowledge you are gaining
in this program?
9. I’d like for you to describe yourself for me twenty years from now—family, living
arrangements, location, employment?
10. I’d like you to describe for me the level of competiveness and/or collegiality in your
program—how has that helped or hindered you?
What factors are most responsible for educational persistence among undergraduate art
students?
11. How does this undergraduate experience make you eager for graduate school in the visual
arts or do you have some other considerations?
12. Considerable research has verified a relationship between creativity and mental illness. Are
you aware of any mental health issues among your colleagues while you have been here? That
would include anxiety and depression, either transient or ongoing, self-harm, or suicidal
thoughts?
13. Please tell me of any particular mentors you have within the program and how did that
relationship occur—what particular benefits has this relationship given you?
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14. What events, programs, or relationships have given the most encouragement and confidence
in your success as art student and art professional?
15. How do your family and friends feel about your academic and career choice?

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 127

Appendix B
Initial Qualifying Survey
Are you an undergraduate visual art major at USC? Yes ( ) No ( )
Are you full time or part time? FT ( ) PT ( )
What is your discipline?
Painting/Drawing ( ) Sculpture/Installation ( ) Intermedia ( ) Performance
Photography ( ) Design ( ) Ceramics ( ) Printmaking
Is this your only university major? Yes ( ) No ( )
If no, what was your previous major? ____________________
Is USC the only college you have attended? Yes ( ) No ( )
Has there been any interruption in your undergraduate studies? Yes ( ) No ( )
If yes, what was the reason for the interruption? ______________
How is your tuition being paid? Please enter percentages.
Scholarship ___
Parents ___
Outside Employment ___
Personal Assets ___
Employee Tuition Benefit ___
Loans ___
Are you employed? Yes ( ) No ( )
Is your employment art related? Yes ( ) No ( )
How many hours per week do you work? 10-20 ( ) 20-30 ( ) 30-40 ( ) 40+ ( )
What is your gender identity? _______________
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 128

What is your racial identity? _______________
What is your age? 18-24 ( ) 25-31( ) 32 and above ( )
What is your class? Freshmen ( ) Sophomore ( ) Junior ( ) Senior ( )
Are you interested in participating in an in-depth study of undergraduate art education?
Yes ( ) No ( )
If yes, please leave e-mail contact information. ——————————————

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 129

Appendix C
Call for Volunteers Flyer

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 130

Appendix D
Letter to Faculty and Staff for Volunteers
Dear Visual Art Colleague,
I am hoping to enlist your help in recruiting volunteers for my research study on Visual
Art Students. I am a doctoral student in the Rossier School of Education and my single case,
qualitative study would, through anonymous surveys and interviews, produce a narrative portrait
of students in your Studio Arts programs. The data collected will be of use to educators and
administrators as an indication of student ambitions, assessments, and concerns regarding
attendance in undergraduate studio arts programs.
The limitations of the study require me to include only undergraduate Art Students who
have the Roski School of Art as their sole higher education academic experience. All of the data
will be kept secure. Students may participate with the assurance that their anonymity will be
protected as required by stringent research standards of the Rossier School and the USC Internal
Review Board. By the time you read this notices for volunteers will have already been posted
within the Roski School of Art.
I hope you will encourage your students to participate in this study. Although there is
considerable research done on art teaching and the changes in art studies, there is little research
that focuses on art students themselves. This small but important group deserves to be known
better in order to provide them the academic services that will contribute to their success.
I appreciate your help.
Sincerely,

Max King Cap
ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 131

Appendix E
Informed Consent Form
University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education

INFORMED CONSENT FOR NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED

You are invited to participate in a research study conducted by Max King CAP, under the
advisement of Dr. Tracy TAMBASCIA, at the University of Southern California, because you
are full-time, undergraduate Art student. Your participation is voluntary. You should read the
information below, and ask questions about anything you do not understand, before deciding
whether to participate. Please take as much time as you need to read the consent form. You may
also decide to discuss participation with your family or friends. If you decide to participate, you
will be asked to sign this form. You will be given a copy of this form.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to investigate student experiences that contribute to student success.

STUDY PROCEDURES
If you volunteer to participate in this study, you will be asked to participate in a live, oral
interview lasting between 30-45 minutes. An audio recording will be made of the interview. The
researcher may contact you after the interview for clarification of your recorded statements. The
interview will take place in the Rossier School of Education of the University of Southern
California.

POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS
There are no anticipated risks.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO PARTICIPANTS AND/OR TO SOCIETY

Potential benefits to the participant may include academic professional insight into the
participant’s academic area. Educational benefits may accrue to similar students as the
concluding research is applied toward increasing art student success.

PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
While there is no monetary compensation all interview participants will receive a twenty-dollar
($20) gift card for Starbucks Coffee.

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 132

POTENTIAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST OF THE INVESTIGATOR
There are no conflicts of interest. If, however, the researcher includes this original research in a
future publication and receives money for that publication you will not receive any money.

CONFIDENTIALITY
We will keep your records for this study confidential as far as permitted by law. However, if we
are required to do so by law, we will disclose confidential information about you. The members
of the research team and the University of Southern California’s Human Subjects Protection
Program (HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP reviews and monitors research studies to
protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.
The data will be stored in duplicate and in a secure location on campus as well as off campus. No
information will be released to another party except the researcher and advisor. The anonymous
recordings will be professionally transcribed for interpretation by the researcher. Data collected
will be analyzed and interpreted by the researcher and advisor alone. No other access will be
made available except as required by the university for protection of the participants. The audio
recordings will be labeled under a pseudonym and used for research purposes only. The
recordings and transcripts will be kept for three years

PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL
Your participation is voluntary. Your refusal to participate will involve no penalty or loss of
benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. You may withdraw your consent at any time and
discontinue participation without penalty. You are not waiving any legal claims, rights or
remedies because of your participation in this research study.

ALTERNATIVES TO PARTICIPATION
There are no alternatives to the recorded interview.

EMERGENCY CARE AND COMPENSATION FOR INJURY If you are injured as a direct
result of research procedures you will receive medical treatment; however, you or your insurance
will be responsible for the cost. The University of Southern California does not provide any
monetary compensation for injury.

INVESTIGATOR’S CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact
mcap@usc.edu. The dissertation advisor for this student researcher is Dr. Tracy Tambascia,
tpoon@rossier.usc.edu.

RIGHTS OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT – IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have questions, concerns, or complaints about your rights as a research participant or the
research in general and are unable to contact the research team, or if you want to talk to someone
independent of the research team, please contact the University Park Institutional Review Board
(UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or
upirb@usc.edu

ART SCHOOL ABRIDGED 133

SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT

I have read the information provided above. I have been given a chance to ask questions. My
questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and I agree to participate in this study. I have
been given a copy of this form.

AUDIO/VIDEO/PHOTOGRAPHS

□ I agree to be audio-recorded.

Name of Participant (print clearly)

Signature of Participant Date (print clearly)

SIGNATURE OF INVESTIGATOR

I have explained the research to the participant and answered all of his/her questions. I believe
that he/she understands the information described in this document and freely consents to
participate.

Name of Person Obtaining Consent (print clearly)

Signature of Person Obtaining Consent Date (print clearly)

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Inspired by the data showing the top private art colleges of Art & Design predominantly achieved completion rates below their private college counterparts, this study investigated the conditions and influences that encourage and dissuade persistence among undergraduate majors enrolled in a visual art programs. This qualitative study was conducted at a large, highly selective, private research university. Students in this study represented the second through fourth year of undergraduate matriculation, eight students in total. Their interviews and responses covered issues of student engagement, mentorship, social relationship, mental health, and post graduation expectations. The accounts of their interactions within these subject areas were analyzed through Bronfenbrenner’s human ecology scheme and Tinto’s membership and mentorship model. The research found significant dissatisfaction with student community, faculty engagement, professional preparation, and economic expectation. Further research areas are suggested.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Cap, Max King (author)

Core Title Art school abridged: exploring the inferior completion rates of art colleges

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Publication Date 09/22/2016

Defense Date 09/22/2016

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Art School,completion rates,Higher education,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Tambascia, Tracy Poon (committee chair), Carbone, Paula (committee member), Green, Alan (committee member)

Creator Email ennis.ciara@gmail.com,maxkingcap5@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-304554

Unique identifier UC11281300

Identifier etd-CapMaxKing-4793.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-304554 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-CapMaxKing-4793.pdf

Dmrecord 304554

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Cap, Max King

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA