Especially when they are middle class without generational wealth to insulate themselves
If they want to live in a 6000 sq ft house in Malibu, then they shouldn't get a degree in 5th Century Aerobics.
I mean if that's what they want, you might as well tell them to be born into another family because you'll never enough for that as a wage worker regardless of the degree.
Of course, that assumes a normal mortgage, with no “payments go to interest only” or other malarkey.
There is no job that's kept pace with the growth of the economy, let alone the growth of the stock market.
At this point the smartest economic decision anyone can make is to invent cryosleep, build a modest nuclear reactor in their basement and wait for the year 3000 where compound interest would have made them the richest person in the world.
Seriously, this is good advice. A lot of young-uns have amazingly naive ideas about both how much money they will make but also how much money they get to keep. Like they will hear about making $70K and imagine that somehow that means that they could pay off, say, a $350K debt "in the order of 5 years" (obviously not thinking exactly 5). As opposed to the reality which is that they will be challenged to even service the interest on a $350K debt at that income level after their other expenses.
I live in Santa Monica (just a little south of Malibu) and given the number of exercise/barre/yoga/soul cycle/equinox/pilates/crossfit places near me, I have to say: Visigothercize sounds like pure genius and I have no doubt it would IPO within a year or two.
The most important part of "follow your dreams" is to not let your imagination run away. You can get very close to what you want in life if you take a realistic perspective and understand basic finance.
I'm lucky though because my kids are dual US-Canada citizens. They can go to university in Canada and it's very inexpensive.
1) The Ideal Job Venn Diagram by David Hamil (https://breakingnorms.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/ideal-job-...) It's a Venn diagram of "things you're good" at, "things you like doing", and "things that pay well". The main purpose of this is to kick off the question of whether your true passion should really be a hobby instead of a job. Also, if you don't have a "Dream Job" in mind, then start by eliminating jobs that you would hate or be terrible at. Sometimes it's just easier to pick a job that doesn't suck.
2) College is an investment in your future, so you need to understand the full costs (tuition and lost income), as well as the potential returns. What professions are you interested in and what are the average starting salaries for them? At that salary how long would it take to pay off the full cost of going to college?
Another key thing I learned is to start having the conversations well before they are stressed out about picking a college and possible career. At that point it's too emotionally charged to have a rational conversation.
If you don't plan to have a big career besides art, learn something that you can bear with and that has enough demand so you don't have to work 50h a week to pay the rent.
I know many people who simply have a vocation and an avocation. They work 3-4 days a week in an office job to pay the bills and do different stuff with the rest of the week.
Actors, musicians, tattoo artists, DJs, event organizers, illustrators, fashion designers, instagram influencers, photographers and what not.
Sure, it's cooler to do 100% of what you love, but these things really only bring fun if you can really do what you love and not have to bend yourself to apply your loved skill to some dumb projects just to make money.
I know many photographers who have to do one marriage after another, just to pay the bills and they hate it. Illustrators who have to draw corporate crap all the time etc. This sucks the soul out of your passion.
With a solid grip on those parameters, I’d say that most well-adjusted teenagers are reasonably equipped to make that decision on their own. If you feel like they’re still making the “wrong” decision, I’d personally apply anecdotes and statistics to add emphasis to the parameters you feel they’re undervaluing.
Reflecting on my own situation, having recently come through the higher education system miraculously in-tact, the biggest issues I’ve observed are:
(1) most teenagers don’t know the financial situation of their parents (very few did when I was in High School, anyway). Their parents could be bona fide millionaires, but they make choices ignorant of that fact. Or, their parents could be penniless, and they don’t apply to schools that give needs-based full rides, because they think they can’t afford it.
(2) most teenagers do not have an appreciation for how quality of life varies substantially with seemingly small variations (say, 60k vs 90k living in NYC) in salary. This makes the “worst case” of having a minimum wage job seem not too bad.
(3) most teenagers don’t understand the “life impact” and psychological burden of having a mortgage-sized loan at 22: how much of a new grad paycheck is “left” after taxes, rent, loans; how the size of the loan correlates to the amount you take out of your paycheck; how much the loan costs over it’s lifetime; and how much this all impacts your decision to buy a house, start a business, marry, etc. This obviously impacts you terribly when your college adventure is unsuccessful, but it is a burden you’ll bear regardless of your success.
I feel similar to the author of this article, that it’s the responsibility of the parent to not sugar coat those issues with aphorisms like “just follow your dreams” or “the issue of money always solves itself”. It might feel embarrassing to tell your children your situation in life, but it’s a big life decision and it ought to be an informed one.
Show them the numbers, what it costs, what it pays, and say you aren’t rich enough to study a hobby. You need to study something you can support yourself with.
They can always go off on their own and do it. At that point, they are adults and you’re done your best.
And?
There are plenty of banks and government agencies more than willing to let a 17 year old sign up for a crushing student loan.
> Show them the numbers, what it costs, what it pays
Most 17 year olds are incapable of making a good decision even with this information.
The only real benefit of art college is more contacts to sell on your personality. $300,000 for that $75,000/yr college is a huge marketing budget for someone not proven to be a success. That money would be much better spent establishing an art studio and working on a portfolio. At least if they aren't very successful, some of the loss can be recovered.
The same idea goes for most art degrees in one form or another.
It certainly isn't automatic but a motivated student can get a lot out of the experience.
One is the value of very direct feedback and guidance from seasoned, respected professionals. The class sizes in top art programs are very small, and most classes have a frequent, intense “critique” portion where the professor and students tear apart each others’ work. It’s like 3 years of intense code review from other talented programmers, led by a staff engineer. It’s hard to put a sticker price on this, because you largely get out what you put in, but it’s immense and I’d argue unique to a top tier art school.
The second is that you’re living in a high pressure environment of professors and peers who always seem to be pushing you to be better in some dimension. It’s not conducive for everyone, but if you have a strong competitive drive, it can make you very productive.
Finally, the fundamentals in design and art are insanely important. My girlfriend took 4 semesters of typography, because the ROI there is legitimately defensible. Most people skip this stuff when they’re self teaching, and it shows to people who know better.
You’re right that portfolios are of paramount importance, but good companies will make you defend your portfolio pieces, and ask you what you’d do differently with different constraints or resources. An art school training will humble you to the idea that there is another way, and arm you with ideas for alternative solutions. It’s subtle, but it comes out in interviews and on the job. I’d argue it’s similar to software engineering in that way.
If there's one thing the internet has taught me, it's that finding legitimate critique about anything is easy and cheap -- just put it out there and ask. There are lots of online art communities that can do this job very well.
High-pressure environments may benefit some people, but people with that kind of drive are likely to push themselves anyway. Plus, an actual commissioned project is way more pressure than any professor could add (at least to me)
Since the principles of art and design don't really change, they can be provided cheaply and easily just as you can find free (and very good) resources on basically every fundamental of programming.
$300,000 paid over a staggering 20 years at 7% interest is $560,000 by the time you're done and you're on the hook for over $2300 every single month or around $28,000 in student loan payments every single year.
(note: these numbers are from salary.com which gives the highest income of all sites I looked at)
The average artist salary seems to be $45,000 to $55,000 per year. 90th percentile salary is only around $72,000. If you're an average artist, more than 50% of your GROSS salary goes toward your student loan and even if you are top-tier, you still wind up paying 39% of your gross toward your loans. Even as an art manager, at 88k at the 50th percentile and 125k at the 90th percentile (not something you're likely to be doing with zero experience), you're going to be in a very tough situation until your mid-40s and that's assuming you don't want to have a family.
In contrast, a low-level HVAC tech makes about as much out the gate without all the debt. A high-level tech makes 62k on average (76 at 90th percentile) while that manager position 72k on average (92k at 90th percentile). An apprenticeship is generally free, but even if you wanted to go to your local community college, you'd be 10-15k out the door at the upper-end. That would be less than $120/mo over 20 years and less than $300/mo over 5 years.
Even a 25th percentile artist will make as much without a degree at 47k per year will be making about as much as a 90th percentile 72k per year paying out 28k every year. Investing the extra 4k every year you save over paying for that degree with a mild 5% ROI gives almost 80k saved for retirement by your mid 40s when your student-loan person is just breaking even. If you've managed to learn the rest of those fundamentals sometime over that last 20 years, you're going to beat that college education by a much larger margin.
https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/artist-sala...
https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/art-manager...
https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/hvac-instal...
https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/hvac-mechan...
https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/hvac-superv...
The statistics you’ve given are a convincing argument against “arts” in general, but “arts” is a huge range. If you’re graduating a top 5 arts school, you’re generally already in the top percentile, at which point the sample sizes are small and the variance is huge.
The average ROI is very damning, but your choice of school plays a bit role in determining how “average” you are. I’m not arguing in favor of the average art school, I’m defending the ROI of the schools given as examples in the article (Pratt).
That aside, responding to your specific points:
Like a sibling comment implied, it’s not easy to find quality criticism on demand. I stand by this. It’s hard to tell until you’ve been in such an environment, but it really is an order of magnitude’s difference from what you can get online from strangers.
Further, I sort of miscommunicated the value of the environment. It’s more that you’re seeing how other talented people come up with solutions that diverge from your own in fascinating ways. It’s high pressure because everybody is so good, that it demands you to learn and better yourself, not because of deadlines, etc. That was my bad. :P
Finally, while the fundamentals are relatively constant, it’s hard to find them presented in a way that demands 4 semesters of self driven study. I stand by that point.
But yeah, in conclusion I totally agree with the statistics that the average art degree isn’t worth it. The average art position doesn’t require a top 5 degree. The positions that do are remunerative to the extent that they are worth it, in our experience. Finally, not everyone pays the sticker price; in fact, few people (mostly the very wealthy) do.
I experienced four years of group critiques, and really value that as an activity. Unfortunately very few people understand or can appreciate how directly that maps to software development.
My two cents, guidance counselors just need to shut the fuck up when it comes to talking with high-school students. There is so little knowledge about what different careers actually entail that I think it is impossible for high-school students to make informed decisions about what they want to focus on.
While I think getting a BFA was the right choice for me I also think that the school environment could have been much more beneficial and productive than it was (mostly due to students in other majors being disruptive due to their drinking and partying during the week.)
I was really jealous of that aspect of my girlfriend’s education. Some companies and incubators (recurse center?) are really good at creating this kind of learning, but I don’t know of many traditional universities experimenting with this approach at either the BS or MS level; which IMO a shame.
Also, the skill of receiving and responding constructively to criticism is incredibly underrated, and is something that the good art schools seem to be unusually good at.
The way my girlfriend tells it, it was a tortuous time (for many of the reasons you describe), but it was also very formative and it accelerated her growth dramatically.
It could be adapted to CS/E classes where students were creating something new and most Art professors could probably help run them. There is a definite discipline and culture to running good group critiques.
From my own experience hiring designers, those with formal schooling in art tend to make better creative leaders, like managers or creative directors.
But that's different than having a plan for your life. Most kids can't afford to wait until after college to start planning.
Also, your impression about what college students actually do is completely unrepresentative of the experiences of those who are grateful for the opportunity to have an education, i.e. the people who would most benefit from having the costs of their education subsidized, i.e. those who go in with few opportunities and come out with many more. The only people who party are those who could already afford to live their lives normally after they graduate, or the people getting degrees in high-return fields (i.e. business and engineering).
Source? Especially for the homelessness part.
I don't mind having my tax dollars go towards helping young people establish stable careers so they can become self-sufficient. I also don't mind paying to educate them so the can go out and help the needier members of society. I just don't think stuff like art history is a good investment of public money. I have a lot of friends who got art history degrees, which is why I use this example. they had a great time in school, but they would be hard pressed to point to any tangible benefits from the degree. most of them ended up having to pursue certifications for unrelated fields.
The benefits of a degree in social sciences or humanities are ways of thinking that can be applied in various fields of practice. Students in these programs literally learn how to think and argue effectively, especially about social issues and social systems. This goes way beyond the first year sociology class that computer science students are 'forced' to take as an elective. Techies without social science or humanities backgrounds are notoriously bad at thinking about social systems, and end up developing extremely problematic socially-embedded tools and technologies. If we consider many of the problematic tech of the past decade (intrusive surveillance tech, under-moderated social media, crispr genetic modification, etc), they were all designed without such considerations in mind, and have had detrimental effects on society. It's sad that we continue to not 'get it', that thinking properly about human experiences and systems, as informed by specialists who deal with this specifically, is crucial.
This is not only true about tech fields. When social science and humanities graduates enter post-grad programs that actually recognize the value of such prior education (i.e. medical schools that accept students with bachelor or arts, which is surprisingly rare) these students actually tend to perform better. Public policy designed by social scientists and humanists also works more effectively, but instead we have huge lobbies funded by the tech industry and management firms pushing for de-regulation or regulation designed by those technocrats themselves (i.e. sidewalk labs in toronto).
This is completely false. In fact, the complete opposite is true. Art history students subsidize the cost of education for STEM students.
At least in Canada, your tuition is the same whether you study a STEM field or art history. But STEM has greater costs association with teaching, i.e. lab equipment, lab technicians' salaries, shop spaces, computer labs, etc. Much of social sciences and humanities teaching is based on a JSTOR subscriptions and a computer projector in the basement of a crumbling concrete building built half a century ago in the far corner of campus. 90% of the money that Social Science and Humanities students pay goes to fund the STEM programs.
Back 2011 the Freakonomics guys said this:
> According to the College Board, a year of tuition at a public college for an in-state student costs an average of $7,605, while a year at a private college costs an average of $27,293. Meaning that (assuming you graduate in four years) a college diploma from a public school costs about $30,000, and about $109,000 from a private school. That’s a lot of coin, but consider this: the difference in yearly income for a person with a college degree and a person with just a high school diploma is $19,550, according to the 2010 Census. So keeping things simple, on average, a public school college degree pays for itself in less than two years, and a private school diploma in less than six. Which is probably why, according to the Pew study, the vast majority of college graduates (86%) say that college was a good investment for them.
Now things are more expensive, but even if the payoff is 2x or 3x longer now, it's still an overall good investment.
Plus, who knows what the benefits would be if the US were producing millions of great global citizens each year. If those global citizens helped educate and raise the world's poorest people out of poverty, those countries would likely stabilize somewhat and maybe that would ease conflict and spending on war.
And even if all the things I just said were wrong, sometimes ROI isn't a great way to value things. For example, journalism, especially at a local level, is hard to fund yet the value isn't zero. Lots of people who don't pay for news still benefit from having eyes on the powerful.
All carrot with zero stick is not good just like all stick and zero carrot is not good.
Many people find satisfaction in work unrelated to what they thought they wanted when they were 18-20. Maybe they discovered other options they weren't aware of. Maybe their prospective specialities disappeared over time, maybe their values changed as they matured. A whole person is about more than income or ability to match some arbitrary standard.
In short noone should assume they know what an 18-20 yo is going to wind up doing (even if all goes well in their life). Nor do they (let alone their unfocussed 'advisors') know what occupations will stick around. A huge investment and a 4-year degree seems unwise and un-called for at this point. Never mind what 'tradition' says. Unless you're looking to be an academic, two years at first seems more reasonable. Less debt, less pressure. Get started, go try yourself in the crucible.
Five years later, that vagueness has been clarified by life experiences. At that point, the wisdom of a big investment might make more sense. 25 can be a lot more focussed than 20.
If they happen to really like it, you can increase their involvement proportional to how much they are willing to sacrifice to support it. This won't work for everyone, but it shows working towards a goal and maybe they get to the point where they are willing to sacrifice other enjoyments in life to be able to stable a pony at a local ranch.
Regardless if they bail or stick with it, valuable life lessons are to be learned. I did this with my niece for a year and she discovered that she really loved horses even to the point of enjoying cleaning them, but also was too afraid of them (after seeing another girl get injured by a spooked horse).
IMO it is better for parents to stick to logistics and standards, like "this is how much we can spend on college" and "this is how hard I expect you to work."
Our suggestions to choose something that might be profitable was a huge stress factor that pushed her towards depression and we decided to back off.
She had always surprised us in a good way, and she has proven to be very good a connecting with people, organizing, making things work.
I think she’ll be fine eventually.
We are not generationally wealthy, but tech has made us rich enough afford the college tuition without too much pain.
Not everyone can or wants to be an engineer.
Even writing - something I pursued - offers a path to a stable career if you move towards copywriting and content. A few years in an agency as a copywriter and all sorts of options open up, some highly lucrative ones (creative director/strategist).
Have them meet people in the profession, talk to them about the expense of college, and more generally help them strategize about what they'll need to do to maintain a middle class lifestyle as an artist. A middle-aged artist will be happy to share experiences and talk about money.
The other thing is to help them think about backup plans. There are plenty of jobs in art or theatre, business and technical, that don't necessary involve performing or creating art. In my experience with a theatre program in a large university, they're quite realistic about helping their students prepare for employment.
If it's art, they could live at home, work as a barista, take art classes, and paint as much as they want.
If it's acting they could move to L.A. or new york, wait tables and take lessons while auditioning.
After a few years they'll find a little traction and decide to pursue it a few more or they'll figure accounting isn't so bad. Better to figure that out at 21 than 28.
Of course, from the replies, I notice that in America the price of degrees makes the perspective very different because the decision may not be easily reversible...
You don’t need art school to be an artist. http://www.avam.org/
It took him 4 months in college before discovering an Engineering field he was more interested in than Physics. It wasn't my fear-speak that did it, he just discovered how interesting it was on his own and now wants to pursue it.
My sigh of relief could be heard throughout the galaxy.
We are also at a state school and paying all of his college expenses out of pocket except for books and a small stipend of financial aid. So, being in a career that would yield a high paying job after he left school was very important to us.
Thanks.
This does mean sacrificing a lot of the fun during college, but in exchange you get both an education in what you love and a career that can support what you love even if what you love isn't financially viable.
maybe the 529 will grow in that time anyway
You can do anything with a liberal arts major from Harvard.
Though, in reality I would have continued to support them if they switched majors after giving STEM a chance for 2-years.
The kids grow up thinking pursuing your passions and dreams is more important than accumulating money. And it feels so good and right until you find yourself broke and poor and your passion is gone, and you think life just sucks.
It takes no effort to throw down a spreadsheet. List their yearly earnings for the rest of their life. Throw in expenses like mortgages, vacations, food, then add in kids and family, medical emergencies, show them just how poor they will be if they go down the path of their shitty career. Many kids may be left wide eyed when they accept these numbers are true. There’s no extra money hidden away, no big windfall waiting to come out and propel them up the class ladder. This is it, this is their life. Good luck.
Our household has very open finances. We have dinner table talks about dollar cost averaging, compounded growth, and investing in broad mutual funds.
Kids have a bank account with debit card at 14, and a personal Vanguard account at 18, as well as a Roth IRA in which we match their taxable earnings.
And the kids know that making money is hard: they tutor, they create their own Kickstarter campaigns, they work as a cashier for extras.
They know how to make a budget and what things cost.
But no amount of your discussion or financial education is going change the mind of a very determined, strong headed youngster who “doesn’t want to live in the bubble of Silicon Valley anyway” and wants to pursue a non-technical creative course of live.
Just don’t assume that avoiding the parental flaws that you think you’ve identified to be the root is a silver bullet.
You need to expose them to people who have made bad decisions. Seeing how people live can be very illustrative.