Kansas City Art Institute

Date: May 04 2011
Major: Art & Design Department (This Major's Salary over time)
At KCAI, people will often (and do often) say

this isn't for everyone.

They are certainly correct. This school was challenging and pretty fun my Freshman year. I had excellent Faculty and an overall enjoyable experience. But after entering my Sophomore year I chose to major in Ceramics - perhaps the best and worst decision of my life to date.

The Ceramics department is full of snotty brats who all think that their work is greater than the work of others around them. The students are competitive to the point of sabotaging other people's work purposefully and they rarely if ever will be helpful or discuss one another's work in a productive way. The competition is encouraged sadistically by the Faculty who are for the most part completely uninvolved until Critique when they tear you apart and degrade you. The students literally kill themselves over the ridiculous workload, staying up for days on end (I stayed awake for 6 days once), just trying to keep up with the work given. The expectations are unrealistic and harsh. The environment is not healthy, many students lose a lot of weight from not having time to eat and the others gain a ton of weight from stress eating. On several occasions people have mental meltdowns in class or studio: crying, screaming, throwing work… completely mental. The faculty recognizes that there is unhealthy behavior such as staying up and not leaving to eat happening and they seem to be supportive of such behavior. It is as if they care more about the ceramic objects a student produces more than the student themselves and what they may or may not be learning or gaining.