Is it Worth it to be an Art Student?
By Jason Wang / Fall 2019
For people who want to pursue a higher education in non-traditional fields like the arts, the odds are stacked against them. What people don’t often predict when first meeting me is that I’m an artist… and an art school dropout. In high school, I was confident in my future as an artist-in-training. I applied to one art school and was admitted exactly as I had anticipated. I felt lucky: the majority of my tuition costs were covered by scholarships and other grant monies, and I lived close enough to campus where I could commute and save on living expenses. Two years into my studies, and over $10,000 in student loan debt, I asked myself if it was worth it to put myself in so much debt to get a degree that was unlikely to be profitable. The reality was that I didn’t think my net gain from attending art school and eventually graduating with an Bachelor’s Degree of Fine Arts would outweigh the opportunity cost from debt I was putting myself in. On top of that, everybody I met in art school, especially my teachers and mentors, told me that you don’t need an art degree to do art for a living. I haven’t given up on my dreams of making art for a living. As a matter of fact, I’m making more art now that I ever was in art school, and I’ve had a few years working professionally doing 3D Modeling in the field I was studying, sans degree. I have to wonder, if I had been unsullied by the thought of amassing student debt to study something I was passionate in, would I have continued the degree program instead of dropping out like I did?
I’d argue that in our current culture driven by the notion of certain college degrees as guarantors of “economic security,” it’s commonly thought that choosing to study a less profitable field in the liberal or visual arts as committing “economic suicide”. Exorbitant tuitions in these degree programs puts the study of these fields out of the hands of many people. What if students didn’t have to worry about the debt or their economic future when choosing their field of study? What is society losing by having created a situation where many students must choose majors that have some likelihood of being profitable?
It’s science fact that it’s getting more expensive to study at a university every year. There is a dire consequence on students that comes with these ever-increasing tuition fees, and this economic consequence is manifest in multiple ways. Tuition rates nationwide have increased on average 2.4% or more on a yearly basis (CollegeBoard 2019). Additionally, jobs in the liberal arts are highly sought after and few and far between. As you might expect, competition is high for these few positions. For some people, in light of the possibility that studying their passion will not pay off, these people will choose a field of study that has a greater likelihood of paying in the future. For these people, choosing a profitable field of study is unfortunately the only hope they have hope in creating some sort of secure economic future for themselves.
I can directly relate to this story of major change. I’m currently studying Computer Science, after dropping out of art school and switching my major from Mechanical Engineering to Computer Engineering to eventually the major I have chosen. I’m lucky enough that the major I have chosen allows me to bridge my aptitude for technology with my artistic passions. But what happens to people who are not lucky enough to have the opportunity to pursue a degree that relates at all to their passions for the impracticality of the financial aspects of education? I’d argue that when somebody gives up their dreams of studying their passions for economic reasons, society is greatly impoverished. The sad truth is that this trend is not at all uncommon. This trend, if left unchecked, will inevitably lead to the increased homogeneity of what fields are studied in schools, leading to a society that is culturally poorer. When profits are pursued over passion, what is society losing?
Let’s say money was no object in what you chose to study – if you had that freedom, what would you choose to study? The reality is that people from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to choose fields of study that they consider having an increased likelihood of future economic security. How many people give up their passion for profits in their pursuit for higher education? Kim Weeden, Professor of Sociology at Cornell University, took data from the National Center for Education Statistics and showed a linear correlation between family income and the major students are most likely to choose (Pinsker 2015). This data shows that people without the means to take financial risks are much more likely to pursue a higher education in a field that assures a greater probability of leading to economic security. Conversely, people who already have economic security, whether it be through their family or otherwise, are less likely to factor in potential future financial gain when choosing an educational path. According to the data, students who fall in the lower end of family income choose fields of study such as Law Enforcement, Computer Science, and Medicine and Nursing. Conversely, students on the upper end of family income are more likely to choose majors such as Visual and Performing Arts, History, and English.
This data raises the questions of how many college students from poorer economic backgrounds would choose to study the liberal arts had they been able to afford it. An online survey of about 250,000 college graduates performed by PayScale in 2019 shows that about two-thirds of people who responded to the survey have regrets about going to college. 27.1% indicated regrets about taking out student loans, and 12.2% indicated regrets about the area of study they chose (Gruver 2019). These statistics highlight the complexity of this problem where students choose profits over passion.
What happens to the students who take risk upon themselves and take out loans to study their passion? Anecdotally, I know more than a few people who have taken out hefty loans in order to pay for expensive art schooling. Even after a decade, these people are still paying the loans they took out to pay for these schools, despite relatively well-paying positions in their field of study. The problem is even more dire for fields such as medicine or law. At a Friendsgiving party, I was talking with my friend who someday aspires to be a patent lawyer. My friend said something that genuinely shocked me: the tuition cost for the law schools he applied to. The University of California, Berkeley’s School of Law, which is regarded as one of the best law schools in the world, boasts an annual tuition of over $52,000 yearly. Given that 3 years are necessary to graduate law school, I quickly calculated in my head that my dear friend would be at least $150,000 dollars in the hole upon graduation, should he choose to attend Berkeley Law. He told me that another law school he applied to was giving him almost a free ride, and I couldn’t help but relate what I was feeling at that point: I would choose the school that put me in the least amount of debt. This made me think: what if I didn’t have to worry about the crushing debt of student loans in the pursuit of my studies in the arts? To what extent would society be changed if tuition were abolished?
Student debt is an unfortunate reality for most students today. For most students, taking out student loans is the only feasible way to pay for college. CollegeBoard, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to “expand access to higher education,” releases a yearly report called the “Trends in College Pricing” which details the yearly trends in college enrollment and tuition costs. About 69% of students today take out loans to pay for higher education (Hess 2019). Upon graduation, the median indebtedness being $9,450 per year for in-state and $23,890 per year for out-of-state. (CollegeBoard 2019). For students who choose private liberal arts schools or art school, the average tuition per year is even more at $32,410 per year (CollegeBoard 2019). With such a gigantic price tag for art schools, it’s no wonder that students from poorer backgrounds choose more practical paths.
The cost of attending higher education is not the only contributing factor that encourages students to choose profitable fields of study. I’d argue that the pressures of standardized testing are a precursor to this problem. Standardized tests such as the SAT are purported by CollegeBoard to be a fair and objective metric by which to evaluate students’ aptitude in subjects like Math, Science, and English. Scores for tests like the SAT are widely used by colleges and universities as a major deciding factor in the undergraduate admissions process. These tests are not exclusive to undergraduate education, as tests like the LSAT are used for admission to post-graduate law schools, and tests like the CAHSEE and others exist for high school and below. With the wide reliance upon these tests by institutions to evaluate students, there is often a standard curriculum that schools choose to teach to prepare students for these exams. If colleges are looking for high scores on these standardized tests, doesn’t it make sense to prepare students to take them? When I was in high school, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was law. (The No Child Left Behind Act has since been replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, signed into law by President Obama.) The NCLB Act made it possible for the federal government to sanction schools that failed to submit the at least 95% of their students to required standardized tests, or that had failed to meet certain defined testing standards (Strauss 2015). In practice, these sanctions were rarely ever made on schools; an exception was made for a number of schools designated as “priority,” where it was decided that student outcomes were not good enough. For these “priority” schools, meeting the criteria set out by the federal government was mandatory and sanctions were eventually implemented if schools continually failed to meet the standard. With the looming threat of federal funding cuts hanging over the head of public schools nationwide, teaching and resources were redirected towards improving standardized testing outcomes, and soon, teaching for these standardized tests had become the norm. Even the U.S. Department of Education acknowledges these shortcomings of the NCLB Act in their 2017 report on why NCLB was being replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act: “over time, NCLB’s prescriptive requirements became increasingly unworkable for schools and educators” (U.S. Department of Education 2017). It’s common to hear of school budgets for the arts being cut. When these budgets are cut, what kind of programs are axed? Art, music, theater. Only the “important” fields remain: Math, Science, English. The consequence of these cuts is that students are less likely to be exposed to the arts, and as such lose out on opportunities to become individuals with a more well-rounded education. I was in high school while the NCLB was law. I saw many of my peers in AP classes, studying subjects they were so eager to share their disdain for, to increase their chances of being admitted to the college of their choice, usually a prestigious university. Many of my peers took the SAT, the only people I know who didn’t had already decided not to apply to college. Even I took the SAT test, even though I had already decided to apply to art school. Why are these standardized tests so ubiquitous? It seems like it’s assumed that if you’re going to college, you need to have taken this exam and (hopefully) have earned a good score. For my peers who spent the so-called “best years of their lives” giving 110% to prepare for these standardized tests and college admissions, what was the opportunity cost? Did they forgo taking art classes to take more college prep courses? If this indicates a trend on the level of primary education, then its effects must bleed into larger society.
Something intangible is lost in the trends of students feeling like they must choose future profit over passion. How many great artists have we lost to the increasing economic pressures of this world? To avoid being overwhelmed by despair, it is necessary to consider some possible remedies to the problems we have identified? An obvious (and perhaps naïve) solution would be to slash or abolish tuition costs for public universities nationwide. If students don’t have to worry about student loan debt, perhaps they would feel freer to choose educational paths that are more personally fulfilling. Another solution would be to encourage the study of these non-standard subjects. The implementation details of this solution would be much more obscure to implement since it would require a shift in the values society holds, rather than a (relatively smaller) change in governmental policy or law. Perhaps the simplest idea would be to increase funding to arts programs in public schools. These solutions are on a macro scale and would be difficult for any one person to implement. What could anybody who is fed up with these problems do to contribute towards a remedy to these problems? One idea is to stop relying on universities in the pursuit of education in the liberal arts. I feel this is an unfortunate suggestion, because a liberal arts education can be excellent within the context of the university. However, I think it’s fair to say that universities have chosen to serve profits over people, when it really be serving people in their noble pursuits of education. We must consider the consequences of the lack of liberal arts education on society. If the majority lose the opportunity to learn the breadth of knowledge that is afforded to them by being able to study the arts, then we end up as a society that is culturally poorer and where people prioritize profits over passions. That isn’t a society I wish to live in, and it’s not too late to change it.
Works Cited
“Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).” Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) | U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Education, 2017.
Gruver, Jackson. “Biggest College Regrets.” Biggest College Regrets - Compensation Research, PayScale, 25 June 2019.
Hess, Abigail J. Here's How Much the Average Student Loan Borrower Owes When They Graduate. CNBC, 20 May 2019.
Pinsker, Joe. “Rich Kids Major in English.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 6 July 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/college-major-rich-families-liberal-arts/397439/ .
Strauss, Valerie. “Will Schools Lose Federal Funds If Kids Don't Take Mandated Tests? Fact vs. Threat.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 25 Apr. 2019.
“Trends in College Pricing 2019 Highlights.” CollegeBoard, CollegeBoard, 2019.