Month: July 2021

If you’re creative and imaginative, a degree in art could be just what you’re looking for to express yourself. But the starving artist stereotype perpetuated across generations makes us think that career of an artist can hardly be a lucrative one, and to pursue creativity would mean accepting inevitability of being broke. Is it worth to follow your dreams and go for an art degree or are creativity and high salaries are mutually exclusive? Is that at all possible to determine the ROI of an MFA?

There are many ways to commercialize your artistic talent, from designing products to creating advertisements for corporations. The skills you gain during your art degree are likely to be highly valued and transferable to many sectors, including specialized art careers – the most obvious of which is of course that of a professional artist.

Popular options include such professions as graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, printmaker, Art therapist, Community arts worker, and Exhibition designer. Some artists also choose to continue developing their work alongside a relevant full- or part-time job, such as that of an art teacher/tutor.

A recent report from the Creative Industries Policies and Evidence Centre (PEC), UK, finds that, contrary to popular belief, having a creative arts degree gives your career a great start. The research explores the proportion of graduates of different majors in the so called “graduate jobs,” the term standing for jobs that “normally require knowledge and skills developed on a three-year university degree” from people in those occupations, needed “to enable them to perform the associated tasks competently.” The survey found that a higher proportion of creative graduates are in these roles six months after graduation than social sciences, history, geography, law, biology and psychology graduates. Moreover, three and a half years after graduation, the proportion of creative graduates in these occupations is still higher than the proportion of law, biology and psychology graduates.

The efficacy of creative higher education is reinforced by statistics – though creative graduates make up only 17 per cent of the graduate population, they represent 46 per cent of graduates working in creative industries. This figure is even higher in certain subsectors – e.g., 82 per cent in architecture businesses have a creative degree. This overrepresentation of arts graduates in the creative industries shows how much the sector relies on the skills and knowledge that comes with the creative degree.

But does creative education pay off?

A survey, from the financial services company Bankrate, which is based on data from the 2016 US Census Bureau American Community Survey obtained through the IPUMS-USA, University of Minnesota research program, names fine art the least valuable major of 162 degrees in the US colleges. The most common professions for such graduates, according to the survey, are art teachers, music contractors, craft artists, and illustrators. The unemployment rate for graduates of fine art disciplines is a staggering 9.1 per cent, while those who do get a job, receive a lower annual income of $40,855 on average.

Compensation statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reveal that many US. art professionals earn less than $60,000 per year. As of May 2019, the median annual salary was $48,760 for craft and fine artists; $56,040 for interior designers; and $52,110 for graphic designers, which demonstrates that salaries of those working in art and design are relatively modest.

But is it really that grim?

According to the BLS report, art degree recipients at certain roles, such as art directors, multimedia artists and animators, architects, and fashion designers can earn salaries that are well above that of the average job, reaching as much as $75-90,000 per year. BLS statistics reveal that the median annual salary among art directors – the visual artists who create images in publications, product packages, movies and TV shows such as brand logos – was $94,220 as of 2019, nearly $55,000 higher than the median salary within all occupations.

There are also curatorial positions for those who dream of working at art galleries and museums. According to the Association of Art Museum Directors 2019 Salary Survey, compensation for curatorial roles in US varies widely depending on hierarchy. The median salary for a curatorial assistant is about $42,000. There are many rungs on the curatorial career ladder, and each step up typically results in a pay increase, starting from $42,000 for a curatorial assistant and reaching $128,365 for a  chief curator or director of curatorial affairs.

While arts graduates may not earn as much in the early stages of their career, this does rise significantly within five years. Art school alumni who created their own companies are convinced that artists with an entrepreneurial spirit can sometimes earn a lot of money.

It is remarkable that all the studies quoted here have attempted to quantify the economic value of higher education in creative subjects. They focus on graduate earnings and find that arts-based subjects return the lowest salaries. But how does that correlate with the extraordinary growth of the creative industries over the last 10 years?

Using earnings as a metric for value would be misleading as far as creative graduates are concerned, for they have very different motivation profiles and are also more likely than their peers to be self-employed, operate as freelancers or run their own businesses than non-creative graduates.

Although graduates in employment often tend to report higher salary figures than those working for themselves, the number of the latter is high across all creative disciplines. The highest figure of all (9.7% in self-employment) refers to respondents from performing arts, but even the lowest one (design studies at 3.5%) is higher than the general graduate population, where the figure is as low as 1.1%. Moreover, even those in employment are more likely to be on a fixed employment contract of less than 12-months (7.4%) than the average (4.5%). Again, these figures prove the popular belief that creative graduates are more entrepreneurial and ready to create their own opportunities in industry.

While the PEC report reveals that three and a half year after graduation, the majority of creative graduates are working in some kind of a creative role, according to the What do graduates do? survey in the UK, only one third of creative arts graduates are working in arts, design and media professions – i.e. in creative industries (of all the subjects, only design graduates are most likely to stay in the sector, with 41.1% finding employment in the areas related to their degree). This means that art graduates may choose creative jobs outside of the creative industries, applying for mainstream graduate jobs in a wide variety of industries, such as marketing or public relations, as well as in a range of key economic sectors.

The recent COVID-19 crisis that hit the creative sector twice as hard as the wider economy in 2020 has demonstrated that creative graduates use their versatility to find employment in alternative industries. This has nothing to do with a failure of artistic talent or lack of commitment to artistic principles. On the contrary, it proves that transferable skills developed in creative higher education are valued and can be meaningfully applied to other sectors, providing a great start to any career.

Creative talents, accompanied by enterprising nature and ability to self-promote, can greatly benefit arts graduates, putting them in a position of strength at a situation when they have to deal with labour market uncertainty. Notwithstanding the fact that labour market is expected to contract considerably in creative sectors, the set of skills that comes with a creative degree may prove to be key attributes for being successful in a vast variety of key economic sectors. One should not forget that according to the WEF Future of Jobs report 2016, ‘creativity’ will become one of the top three skills workers will need to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution with its disruptive new technologies and new ways of working.

It is true that lucrative careers are not the norm in creative industries, and potential arts students who are primarily interested in money should think twice about pursuing an art degree. However, this path can be rich in significance and meaning, it can bring you the joy of being a self-motivated, curious, and creative person that is going to easily navigate the future world of work opportunities.

Online degree courses have gained immense popularity recently. The COVID-19 outbreak experienced throughout the world brought the transformation in education back to the agenda by forcing distance learning. Although learning the right brush stroke or mastering a drawing technique online can be a little more challenging than learning how to draft a business plan, online learning is now starting to gain some momentum in the fine arts as well. Students can now earn online degrees and certificates in painting, photography and other creative disciplines. However, while some consider them the future of education, others debate that it is nothing but a cheap alternative to traditional education.

For years, fine arts and creative education have been left out of online education, but today students are offered a great variety of classes and programs of art, design, architecture and other creative disciplines to choose from, depending on their goals.

A simple online search will yield plenty of results for free or relatively cheap (under $100) online courses and massive open online courses (MOOCs). Another option is for-credit individual courses that give students a chance to earn college credit in fine arts for a moderate monthly membership fee. The goal of these courses offered by online platforms like Kadenze or Sophia Learning is mainly to make students more prepared for bachelor’s degree. The college credit that students receive is recognized by the offering university, but the circumstances may vary when it comes to transferring credit to other institutions.

A few colleges and universities offer fine arts certificate online as well. At Sessions College for Professional Design, an accredited fully online college offering degree and certificate programs in art, design and photography, an undergraduate online certificate costs $510 per credit. According to President Gordon Drummond, the body of the program’s students consists mainly of adult learners who already have a degree and are less interested in qualification but in developing their skills and making their work progress, and those who want preparation in the field before pursuing a master’s degree.

And finally, some schools and universities offer online degrees in fine arts that are completed partially or 100 percent online, with no physical interaction with other students or professors. Rather than having to attend class on a set schedule, these students who have time restrictions or live far away from a physical college campus, can complete a bachelor’s degree, learning at their own pace and submitting assignments in their spare time between work, family demands, or other personal commitments.

Increasing popularity of online degrees is easy to explain.  When online learning first appeared some 25 years ago, its main aim was to make education accessible to those who are not able to attend traditional learning programs. “Online degree programs are designed to help adult learners with busy lives earn their degree without being tied down to class times and without having to go to campus,” says Jeff Caplan, dean of strategic enrollment management at American Sentinel University, an online university. With online learning, people can enroll and easily complete their courses from any part of the world eliminating the barriers of geographical borders. Offering easy access and flexible scheduling, online programs enable students to enroll in class part time or full time; choose classes that occasionally meet in person or that take place completely online; and log on to the class platform at any time of the day. In such a way, online degrees allow students who are limited by geography, opportunity, and time to obtain a degree whereas they may have not otherwise been able.

Being accessible to anyone with internet access, online classes will most likely become a space for diversity and inclusion. Here one may be learning with those who are not able to attend traditional learning programs –  disabled people, veterans, parents, professionals, and retirees, who all bring in their own experience and mindset into the educational process.

Although the cost of an online education varies greatly depending on the university, online classes generally tend to be more affordable than their traditional counterparts, because there is less overhead. Besides, some online colleges have an open admissions policy, which means that applicants will be automatically accepted to the school if they can pay the application fee and provide a copy of high school diploma or equivalency exam results.

An opportunity to learn at one’s own pace and vocational focus of most of the courses offered are among other advantages of online education. Unlike traditional programs that cover a vast array of topics for the graduation of students, online ones streamline subjects as per the degree requirements, which leads to a quicker completion of programs.

While all of this sounds alluring, there are a few things to consider before choosing an online degree over a traditional one.

For good reason, many educators and employers have been skeptical of online learning. It would be wrong to deny that there is a stigma around online education, as some sceptics continue to judge this form of higher education solely as a cheap and more flexible alternative for nontraditional students, such as adults and students with children, implying everyone is cheating and no one is actually learning. Such opinion of course questions the qualification of the online graduates. To some people, online degrees can be an issue of trust, or lack of reputation.

Indeed, statistics shows that online students drop out or fail their classes more often than traditional students do. One of the reasons for that is that the responsibility of completing the courses and monitoring the process is much higher as compared to traditional education programs and requires a higher level of self-motivation. With relaxed entrance requirements, a liberty to study as per your own schedule, and no teacher to call on you during classes, some students procrastinate which can eventually lead to poor results. No instant feedback from the professor can also be frustrating for some people who join online programmes.

Universities, however, claim that another reason for the higher dropout rates is the fact that online degrees are in no way inferior to programs that take place in face-to-face, classroom environments. This means that some students are not expecting their classes to be that competitive and are unable to keep up with the high academic standards.

Up until now, most universities have never truly embraced online education. They offered some courses online, making them accessible through aggregators such as edX or Coursera, while their most popular and prestigious degrees were never offered remotely.

With the pandemic, online has become a backup plan for many institutions, including those offering degrees in fine arts and other creative disciplines. If seen strategically, it could expand access exponentially and drop its cost by magnitudes, while providing recession- and pandemic-proof revenues for the institutions.

While just a few years ago, a transition to online learning at the current scale would have been unimaginable. It was impossible to imagine a 100 percent  online degree in a discipline that requires hands-on experience – such as sculpture. However, professors are pioneering new methods and ed-tech companies are developing new platforms. A professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts taught a drama course that allows students to “act” with each other in virtual reality using Oculus Quest headsets; while a music professor at Stanford trained his students on software that allows musicians in different locations to perform together using internet streaming. “It’s a little more difficult to move fine arts to the online education arena, but it’s not impossible,” says Andy Fulp, Dean of Educational Technology for the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), which offers online degrees in various fine arts fields.

Experts believe that the future for the universities that wish to stay up-to-date lies in creating “parallel” online degrees for all their core degree programs. By doing so, universities could expand their reach by thousands, creating the economies of scale to drop their costs by tens of thousands. Some instructive examples are already available – e.g. in Georgia Tech, a top engineering school, who launched an online masters in computer science in 2014 and now has nearly 10,000 students enrolled, which makes it the largest science programme in the US. The case demonstrates that the online degree programme has not cannibalized the in-person one, but rather opened up an opportunity to a different target group, mostly midcareer applicants looking for a meaningful skills upgrade. There is no reasons why fine arts cannot follow this path.

With all the advantages of online learning, virtual degrees are becoming increasingly popular option. According to The National Center for Education Statistics, in 2016 alone, nearly 6 million students in the US — over 28 percent of all college learners — were enrolled in at least one online course at a degree-granting college or university.  Of those students, over 2.8 million, which makes 13 percent of all college learners, did not take any in-person courses, completing their degrees exclusively online.

With so many online learners making up the student body at top institutions, a shift in how people – and most importantly, employers – perceive online degrees is inevitable. The stigma attached to this form of education slowly disappears and companies are adjusting their hiring practices.

In a survey done by online institution Excelsior College and Zogby International, 61 percent of CEOs and small business owners nationwide said they were familiar with online or distance learning programs. As many as 83 percent of them see an online degree at a reputed institution as having the same value as an on-campus degree.

This opinion is shared by 61 percent of HR leaders. On top of that, 52 percent of them believe that, in the future, most advanced degrees will be completed online. Today already, they hire job applicants with online degrees – 71 percent of organizations claim they have done so in the last 12 months.

However, where you receive your online degree makes a significant difference in how employers will view your credential. Employers said such factors as the accreditation of the college or university, the quality of its graduates and the name of the institution awarding the degree were among other things they considered to make an online degree more credible. In fact, 58 percent of employers “believe that an institution’s brand and reputation is the main driver of a credential’s value, regardless of whether or not it was earned online.”

Among other factors that inspire trust among employers is the fact that an online degree is offered by an institution that provides traditional on-campus programmes in addition to its online coursework. This is based on the employers’ presumption that brick-and-mortar schools dedicate the same time and attention to developing online courses as they do for in-person courses. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 92 percent of employers view online degrees from brick-and-mortar schools as favorable, while only 42 percent would consider a candidate with an online degree from a university that operates solely online, despite any accreditation.

Despite all the ever growing popularity of online degrees, the debate around them continue unabated. No matter which one you choose – online or traditional – make it an informed decision and make sure the school you choose is accredited and reputable. BE OPEN Academy is always here to help you make the choice.