First some quotes:
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I dont really see how you can have for profit schools, learning is for the benefit of the students, (its mostly altruistic, the effort put in is always greater than what you get out), for profits garantees the students will be stiffed.
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Yes. All kinds of agreement from here. Especially bad are the teachers who just want to clock in 8 hours and get paid. Works at McDonalds but methinks educators should be held to a higher standard.
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What a shame she has to be the postergirl for this issue,i agree with you that she seems to be someone who smacks of laziness. We had our fair share of those as well. But then there are those who genuinely want to make it so bad and they are the ones who really get screwed over majorly in the process
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Yes. That is so true. Who gives a shit about the people who just won't work, that's their own problem. But it doesn't mean the rest of us weren't/aren't getting shafted. Also in agreement with the big post from before, but too much text here already.
Now my 2 cents:
Just throwing in my experience at school. By no means should this be taken as a description of the situation at most schools. I've only gone to the one and it's the only one I am even remotely qualified to talk about.
As an intro I'd like to quote one of my teachers who said something that makes a lot of sense: "I think it's important to remember that it's very difficult for a student to judge the merits of a program they are currently taking [or are planning to take] because a student simply does not possess enough experience to make a realistic assessment of what they need to know to be successful in any industry". As valuable as research may be, you can still make the wrong choice after all because all you do is from your own understanding, unless you are lucky enough to know an established professional who can help you. If your understanding is flawed, so are the results of your research. And corrupt and dishonest institutions will try their very best to muddy the waters.
<rant>
Just graduated near the top of my class from an intensive (1 year) program over at Interdec College over here in MTL. And whoo boy was that ever a bad experience.
Let's leave out the teachers being inexperienced, the best teachers I had there was teaching for the first time in their life and they did a great job. However, I had one teacher who could barely speak English or French (he was fired the semester after he taught us.), at one point the school owned less 3ds max licenses than the total number of students so it was impossible for the entire class to participate. I even taught a Zbrush class as the 1st (and only) assignment from our Zbrush teacher, I should note that the dude never actually taught a class, it was all workshops and students walking other students through tutorials they didn't understand (that includes mine). But the topper is that I was actually told to "F*ck off, you lazy idiot" by a teacher for asking him a question outside of class hours (and this wasn't just me, he said that to quite a few ppl in my class). Same teacher also told me "Your work is fine, I just gave you a bad grade because you're a lazy f*ck." when I asked him what I could improve in my project. Administration brushed me off when I brought it up. Several times.
As I mentioned before I graduated near the top of my class, 100% in a few classes. Take a look at my
portfolio. Is that enough to get a job? HELL NO! Then why didn't I fail? Seems logical, the objective of the program was to "create a professional portfolio demonstrating the skills necessary to succeed in the industry". ONE dude out of the 20 of us did this. Is this because 19 of us were lazy pricks unwilling to put in the effort? I don't know, that may be true for a few out of those 19 but for most of us it wasn't the same. I clearly remember a point where I went: "Screw this, I doesn't matter what I do, they'll tell me it's good even if it sucks." so I started posting things at CGSociety and ppl laughed at me (and they were justified). Through their (sometimes harsh) criticism I began to get a clearer picture of what the industry standards were and what I needed to learn which I had not received from school. (I.E: At that point I thought
roadkill was the standard way to unwrap as none of our teachers seemed to know about the UV Unwrap modifier in max until my animation teacher in semester 2!) When I brought these concerns to the teachers and administration I was brushed off and belittled (excepting the one teacher).
That shit just ain't right, no matter which way you slice it. Maybe there was more I could have done outside of class. I'm trying to do it now. But for me that year was my love for game art being assaulted from all sides. It's all black and blue now, with many sore spots, but it's slowly starting to heal as I get further and further away from that school. All the online resources have been a tremendous help, as has switching from max to blender and from photoshop to GIMP. Going through basic interface tutorials calmed me down and brought back some of the magic I thought was gone forever.
</rant>
In conclusion, I would say that it may not be appropriate to condemn for profit schools wholesale, but people should still speak up when they get a really crappy experience. If it can save one person's passion from being trampled underfoot until it is completely lifeless, it's good enough for me. Who knows, that dude in my class who gave up might have grown to be a top notch artist with the right support (god knows he could draw like the mother-beast and he could model pretty good for a 1st semester student, he just wasn't that good with file names and extensions, rendering and other techie stuff, but no-one was there for him and he though he just wasn't good enough). Not everyone has the ability to push forward no matter what's going on around them, that doesn't mean they'll never be exceptional artists.
Okay maybe this is more like my 2 bucks than my 2 cents but there you have it.
PS: Writing that felt quite therapeutic. Thx for the outlet.
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