The Ringling College of Art and Design

Date: Jul 16 2012
Major: Art & Design Department (This Major's Salary over time)
I attended Ringling for four years and graduated with a degree in illustration and a minor in Fine Arts in 2011. I had previously attended Marlboro College in VT which is an excellent institution. Ringling has its good points and its bad points. First, let me address the good points:

Ringling has some amazing professors, who care about the students and want them to excel and succeed.

Ringling had a very good Career Center, with a helpful and caring staff that will look at a students portfolio and give great advice to help prepare him/her for interviews and jobs.

Ringling has a mental-health center, a decent dining hall and I hear they are going to have some sort of physical health-care starting this year. (props to them for that, it was needed)

Ringling also attracts some great recruiters.

Ringling is in Florida, so if you love the sunlight the location is probably great for you.

Now, let's discuss some of the negatives.

Ringling is expensive, very expensive and students don't necessarily see much of what their tuition is paying for because certain majors are very costly to maintain, so the tuition of all students supplements those departments.

Ringling has some lousy teachers, so some students will have a professor who responds to them and cares deeply about preparing them to do a good job, but the unlucky ones will receive instruction from a professor who is a well-respected artist in his field but doesn't know or care how to help students learn and meet their potential. The class selections are left up to the students by lottery, which means, if you don't get first pick, you may just not learn how to use oil paint that semester.

Ringling does not care if you are bad at art. If you can't draw, can't paint, can't animate, can't conceptualize well and basically are not going to be able to succeed in the world, NO ONE is going to tell you and no one is going to advise you not to continue. No one is even going to tell you you need to work harder and do a better job. They allow people to spend four years (or more) to get a degree in something they have no hope of succeeding in. For me, this devalues the degree and is plainly unkind to those students. we were told that

A Ringling degree will get the art director to look at your work.

How long will that hold true if there are people out there with that degree who have no skill? If I was training to be a surgeon and obviously was not smart enough to do the job, would they just let me continue? No. Because it's not sensible.

Ringling's mental-health counselors are not very good. Two of my dear friends went to them while I was at school and neither one of them received the help they needed. I am of the opinion that a counselor needs to be smarter than his/her patients and they cannot often meet that bill.

Ringling is in a bad part of town. There were muggings, thefts and I once saw a guy with a gun running through a lot RIGHT NEXT TO SCHOOL. Now, that's not the college's fault, but it should be a consideration.

Ringling will not make you feel cared about as an Alumni or as a student. When you have concerns, they will brush you off if they can.

So, that's the basic points that I think might be helpful to someone considering Ringling College of Art and Design, hope I was helpful. For the money, I can't recommend the school, unless you want to be a CA or an ID, in which case, maybe.