Kansas City Art Institute

Date: Feb 02 2008
Major: Fine Arts - Painting/Sculpture/Photography/etc (This Major's Salary over time)
Wow, where to begin? In general, my time at KCAI was great fun, emphasis on FUN. But I think every kid who goes to college is going to have the same fun, regardless of the school they attend—the kind that comes with growing up and learning who you are.

Also, kudos to the liberal arts department at KCAI. My negative ratings and comments are meant only for the fine art instruction I received. During my time at KCAI, 1995-99, I found that I couldn't get enough of the lib. arts classes. At the time, I felt it was the only department that justified the outrageous cost of tuition, which, I have learned, has only increased since my time at the art inst. Many of the same profs are still there, and I imagine lib arts is still the best, strongest department on that campus.

So, I majored in photography at a time when digital was just coming into wide use. The campus had not yet been wired for internet. There was internet available in the computer lab and I think on a few machines in the design department. In the mid-late nineties, my department was called "Photo-video," and covered photography, video, audio, some film, and minimal animation. First semester of Sophomore year was offered as a sort of "survey" period, where each student took courses in all 3—photo, video, and computer animation, before choosing what he or she would like to pursue. I found the courses during the survey period to be pretty good, basic, introductory courses on the technique and theory of the media.

After "survey semester," instruction pretty much disappeared, and anything that was even remotely commercial was sneered upon by ALL the instructors (except the animation instructor), and some of the students. For instance, a fellow student was excellent at taking beautiful, pristine photos of natural landscapes. He had talent to burn. Most of the comments he received from professors could be boiled down to "well, it's nice, but what are you going to do?—make calendars for the rest of your life?"

In other words, the more off-beat, avant-garde and marginal your work was, the better chance you had to gain the respect of the professors. God forbid someone might want to, say, pay some bills with their work—this was no good at the high-falutin' Kansas City Art Institute, where elitism was the name of the game. Once, when a group of students, myself included, questioned our professor as to why we were not taught technique in a REQUIRED Commercial Photo class, our answer was

You want lighting techniques?—You can learn all that from a book!

If that was indeed the case, then why on earth were we enrolled in these courses? I never understood that attitude. If the feeling was that technique could be picked up in manuals and books, then surely, we must have been learning SOMETHING in art school. But what? I am still trying to figure it the hell out. I know for one thing that creativity certainly CANNOT be taught. You either have it or you don't.

Mostly, I learned the elitist language of the world of high art. I learned pretty words and phrases, that, when spewed forth in the presence of others, make you look like an asshole who paid exorbitant sums of money for a useless art degree.

What's the moral of my story? I am 31 years old and see no end to my student loans, which I have had to put in forebearance several times since graduating. In addition, a few years after graduating from KCAI, I found a small technical school and put myself through one of their certificate programs for graphic design in order to find a job that paid more than $10 an hour. This program taught me all the technical computer skills I needed, and was probably the smartest thing I have ever done. I have also considered dropping KCAI from my resume, since it does nothing but date me.

Hindsight is most definitely 20/20, and if I had it to do all over again, I would rather save myself the financial burden and resulting resentment, and either go to a different school or just not even go to college. I know that sounds bleak, but it boils down to this: 18 years old with zero debt, or 22 years old, with $80,000 of debt, and no job skills to show for it. You decide.