The Ringling College of Art and Design

Date: Mar 23 2015
Major: Fine Arts - Painting/Sculpture/Photography/etc (This Major's Salary over time)
I was looking forward to going to Ringling. I was willing to spend $40,000 a year just for tuition because of how Great a school it was suppose to be. First Semester was so disappointing. Figure Drawing teacher had worked for Disney (My Dream Job). He may of been a great drawer for Disney but terrible teacher. He only worked with students who are already great drawers. The students who needed help from him were left on their own. He stated he needed to spread himself around to every student. He spread himself around to the talent students. My 2D teacher was worse then figure drawing. I even dropped her class. She is an older woman who tells you one thing then changes her mind at 2 am. Sends out an email and changes the type of paper, or size of paper, etc. If you asked for help she would tell you to read about it on the internet. One student actually helped most of the class learn how to us a program because she informed us that was not her job. I had 2 great teachers the first semester for Drawing and Art History. The 2nd semester came and had an older teacher for 3D, whos language needed to be cleaned up. He once told me that he was not there to teach us that the other students are our teachers. He told me one day that I should just get a job and work out of my basement, because I asked a question about the clay. He also did not take time to show how to work with clay. Most of the class looked it up on the internet. My Figure Drawing 2 teacher has such demands on us. She grades us against the other students. So even if your improving and working hard if you can not draw as well as other students you grade will not increase even with a lot of effort and improvement. She is not a friendly person and hard to feel comfortable talking to or even to ask a question. I have been told by 2-3rd students that the teachers get better each year. I would think it would be as important to have Great Teachers for each year. The teachers seem to be there only to get a pay check and not put much effort into their jobs. Half of my teachers have been great, but majority of them are for elective classes, not the drawing teachers. There have been several students who dropped out after First semester. Ringling wants you to believe its because of the cost, but students already knew how much it cost prior starting school. They dropped out because they are not getting what they paid for "TO BE TEACHED". I am not sure I will be coming back for a 2nd Year. I feel that I could use the money more wisely by going to another school where they want you to succeed. Ringling doesn't seem to care if you succeed or not, especially is your are not one of their top students. I have friends who live on campus and pay an extra $20,000 to live on campus where they sometimes lose electricity, and no hot water majority of the time, and see bugs in rooms. It seems like a lot of money to live on campus to these types of services. It is much cheaper to live off campus in an apartment or rent a house with several classmates. My dream of going to Ringling has been more of a Nightmare. I feel I could get more out of internet school, community college, or 4 Year University with 2 Years of Art Classes and succeed just as much as going to Ringling. If you ARE NOT THE TOP STUDENT WHEN IT COMES TO ART THEN SAVE YOUR MONEY and go somewhere cheaper and where teachers want to help all students successed in Art. Not just the students who can out draw most of the teachers at Ringling. Most teachers at Ringling are part time and did not earn teaching degree with an Art Degree. Some Teachers even spend time working on projects during class. This are projects they are doing for clients, so they are too busy on their own artwork then to help their students. Please make sure this is the school you want to spend a lot of money on and may graduate only because you had the spend the time teaching yourself from the internet or are already so talented you'll pass with honors because of your own hard work and talent, not because you learned it at Ringling. Some student have so much talent that they get "Poached from Ringling by Companies who come to Ringling to discuss job openings. Ringling gets upset when this happens because they have 2 years less tuition from that student. But Ringling doesn't seem to be upset when 1 or 2nd year students leave because they are not getting the education they are paying for and move on to a college where they can get taught. Please make sure this is a good fit for you, its too expensive of a lesson to waste $40,000 on like I did. Also was told Ringling has a lot of Scholarships available but they don't give them out. A friend's dad called Ringling and asked why didn't his daughter get a merit scholarship? He was not happy with them and started getting loud and upset. Then all of sudden his daughter was given a Scholarship. So you have to fight to get Scholarship from Ringling if you qualify for merit type scholarship.