The MFA: 20 years of schooling and they put you on the day shift

The recession has made getting teaching jobs more difficult, but see this Frieze article by Robert Storr, written in 2005:

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/view_from_the_bridge4/

My motivations for attending graduate school were to position myself outside of (provincial) Seattle on a good edge, be shook up as an artist, and to have teaching as an option. Half way through the program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I became half-hearted about teaching, doubting I had the temperament and I did not particularly care for the glimpses into its political environs. I ended up sending perhaps fifteen apps with no interviews. Another grad put out ninety to get one interview, which worked. It's now well known that College Art Association meetings bring in money for the CAA and put out many a dashed hope for a teaching job.

As far as what it did for me as an artist goes: it was not absolutely necessary, though it was a thrilling and grand experience otherwise. I was not turned on my head; I already knew where I was going. I did not need to be shook up as my self-mythology insisted, at least to the degree I then thought. I did have my horzons expanded and was exposed to major art and artists that I would never have seen in Seattle. But the clouds, so to speak, did not part.

Were I to do it over, I would not have gone. But the reason is debt, which will dog me the rest of my life and never be paid off, and that is no exaggeration. Fortunately, the USDE is being flexible (for now). I would get a BFA, for sure, but largely because artists need to know much more than art to be artists. We need to know how to write well, study science, history, language, and on and on. All of these things and life experience make an artist. Maybe the actual practice of art should be only half of a BFA.

I would only go to graduate school if I were rich, had substantial scholarships, and-or knew an in demand trade that paid well and I enjoyed to pay back those loans. (Education loans I think should be interest free, but that's another subject.)

Lastly, I feel I must take issue with Sanda above: no such thing as a self taught artist, just as there is no such thing as the self made man. Whether you go to art school or not, you will only learn by doing the work yourself and being guided by someone. "Self taught" artists can't operate in a critical vacuum. And if you don't go to art school, and you go to museums and galleries and turn to books and magazines for instruction and insight, you will have to ask what their academic connections are. "Self taught" is just a marketing device, as is "outsider".

I never wanted a degree in art. Mostly self-taught, I noticed that many artists come away from schools with art that looks like their instructors'. Degrees are definitely a way to get work teaching, part of a "network" to get gallery and other shows. One makes choices.

Art is an itch that must be scratched.

When Martin Puryear went to Yale, he was a realist painter of barns and boats. Chuck Close showed up painting like De Kooning. They are two cases in which graduate school served a key purpose. But I think for lots of artists who have it together already, why go? Such artists don't need the graduate school doctor. Dave Hickey is arrogant. That's his style, his persona. Wouldn't work, except he backs it up.

I don't know how you do it. Agreeing with that arrogant bit of drivel from Dave Hickey. Regina... I haven't felt so poorly towards a misguided and thick headed Art pundit since Pincus-Witten.
JVK