Are you fishing for NASCAR sponsorship???

mk

Le Grand Requin Blanc -Emeritus

I too found the “What What (in the butt)” video a bit pompous.

But(t) you have to admire Samwell’s musical chops.

Richard

Carcharodon Carcharias
White Death Emeritus
Shark Practice And Theory
Farallon Islands

People can complain about the MFA being just a license for a teaching job but what’s wrong with that? Many very excellent artists teach even when they’re financially solid enough not to. Colleges and Universities that appoint MFA artists to real tenure-line positions are providing a kind of shelter to them, just as they do for scholars in obscure but vital fields. A good teaching position is nothing to scoff at. It affords artists the opportunity to work with energetic and bright students, collegiality with peers, enough “research” time to persue a serious career, and a decent salary with the important benefits. Artists need to know, however, that academia has its rules just as any other entity. In academia one is expected to be a good communicator and able to participate in useful dialogue both within and across related disciplines. There is also plenty of pressure to attain enough recognition as an artist to justify the enormous research benefits a tenure-line position usually provides. Anybody can realize that no degree on earth will guarantee success in any field. But degrees do provide access to field enabling participation within the academy and opportunity to develop one’s abilities.

I regret that many MFA programs have turned away from preparing MFA students for solid teaching positions. Somehow the fantasy developed over the past two decades that it was a mediocre ambition to want a teaching job instead of being totally at risk in the art market. That’s a silly and degrading outlook that somehow passed into the MFA programs through the celebrity visiting artists who happen to be wildly successful and therefore free from any need for a paycheck job. MFA programs should teach students how to get jood teaching jobs and help them with influential recommendations, exactly what happens in all other graduate disciplines.

If the studio PhD becomes a reality for artists the central benefit will the promise of a better situation for the teaching artists who have the degree. It won’t make them better artists, nor will it make them worse artists. It will, for a while, raise suspicion among among other teaching MFA artists. But just as the MFA gained its status as the teaching degree, so too will the PhD become the standard. And it’s a good thing to be well educated.

Meanwhile, it’s a very bad thing that artists often need to go into serious debt to attend grad school. They should look for programs that provide financial support through fellowships, assistantships, scholarships. That’s the norm in most good PhD programs. If you’re a very good artist, some MFA program will pay you to enroll and they often have the best teaching artists, too, because they, too, will be well paid.

Willliam Conger

I agree with James’ and Duncan’s misgivings, yet several additional thoughts came to my mind. One— isn’t the MFA with its “top schools” etc. already a classist enterprise, thus won’t a PhD make that worse? I am not against a studio PhD, I’m in the process of getting a “real” PhD (in the sense that it is in scholarly areas: literature, art history and lingusitics), but I still haven’t heard a reason to truly justify a studio PhD beyond “well, its coming anyway, so deal with it.” Pretty sophistic.

Furthermore, as most of you may well know, and I confront this regularly being in several “camps,” a BFA and even the MFA are in NO way taken seriously by most other fields. Yeah, we hear this beautiful fairytale of Ford (not the best company anyway) seeking MFAs, and 25 years ago IBM was supposedly courting Philosophy grads, but I’d like some specifics. I know people in business and usually they have taken people DESPITE an MFA, not BECAUSE, and then only when those applying have other immense experience and skills outside art that apply directly to the job — usually with continuing education certificates at the very least in other specific skills. Tell me the truth — can you picture an MFA with no other qualifications marching up to Dole or Nestle or wherever and asking to apply for a job — the secretary at the desk will first of all ask “in what?” — and that is never mentioned in the fairytale.

Kery James’ “fraud” statements have clearly been meant to point out that art schools exist to create jobs for art professors, not to create artists or anything else. That too needs to be considered — thus back to one of Duncan’s main (and repeated) observations that maybe schools need to teach skills (still — or perhaps once again), teach art, but also teach SOMETHING(S) that get grads jobs as well.

Such considerations would be far more useful than simply joining the paper inflation rush in a way that does NOT actually put us artists on equal footing with other disciplines. if you want that, then you can go and get a degree in a scholarly area as well as your studio one (which I feel is not truly necessary for an artist, no matter the fact that I do it for my own personal fun).

As far as curricular development. “Free form” learning does students an educational disservice. Student centered, or constructivist learning is different than “free form”. Any valid curriculum requires structure, goals, and assessment. Even Art.

Steve Hamann
Masters Degree: Curriculum and Instruction
Illinois State University
Go Redbirds!