{"id":1641,"date":"2014-10-20T17:31:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T00:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/?p=1641"},"modified":"2014-11-07T03:54:35","modified_gmt":"2014-11-07T11:54:35","slug":"what-do-college-students-in-the-arts-do-after-graduation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/10\/what-do-college-students-in-the-arts-do-after-graduation\/","title":{"rendered":"What do college students in the arts do after graduation? (updated)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/art-students.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1644\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/art-students-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"What does my future hold?\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/art-students-300x198.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/art-students.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>They get to use what they have learned in college?:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Among &#8230; respondents\u00a0employed at the time they completed the survey, 64% of recent grads and 69% of prior graduates were in jobs they described as either \u201cvery relevant\u201d or \u201crelevant\u201d to their educational training.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Or not?:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The majority of arts graduates work in non-arts fields. Out of 2 million arts graduates nationally, only 10 percent, or 200,000 people, make their primary earnings as working artists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Let&#8217;s try to sort out how and why the recent report from the <a href=\"http:\/\/snaap.indiana.edu\/pdf\/2014\/SNAAP_AR_2014.pdf\">Strategic National Arts Alumni Project<\/a> (SNAAP),* the source of the first quote, differs from the BFAMFAPHD <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/s\/3hai7psdenrbqec\/BFAMFAPhD_ArtistsReportBack2014.pdf\">National Study on the Lives of Arts Graduates and Working Artists<\/a>, the source of the second quote.<\/p>\n<p>BFAMFAPHD is based upon the Census Bureau&#8217;s 2012 American Community Survey (ACS), which captures about 3 million households. &#8216;Artists&#8217; are those who list it as a primary occupation, and this is compared with the respondent&#8217;s &#8216;field of degree&#8217;. The survey indicates that there are 1.2 million working artists, 2.0 million Americans with an arts degree, but only 200,000 who are both. They note &#8217;40 percent of working artists do not have a bachelors degree in any field. Only 16 percent of working artists have arts related bachelors degrees.&#8217; Also note designers and architects are excluded from both &#8216;artists&#8217; and &#8216;field of degree.&#8217; There is a tone of concern throughout the report, arising from the fact that arts schools are expensive relative to other degrees (net of financial aid), and so student debt is a problem (this comes up in both reports).<\/p>\n<p>As an aside, let me insert these thoughts when looking at student debt numbers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Studies consistently show that obtaining a college degree is a sound monetary investment, so acquiring debt to finance the degree is not on its own a sign of financial crisis;<\/li>\n<li>But <em>financing<\/em> the debt can be a challenge; lending markets are notoriously imperfect when it comes to student loans, so the <em>schedule of repayments<\/em> (rather than the debt level itself) often presents a problem, especially when the &#8216;payoff&#8217; from a degree might not really manifest itself for years (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/research\/papers\/2014\/09\/economist_perspective_student_loans_dynarski\">here<\/a> for a good analysis from the Brookings Institution);<\/li>\n<li>The payoff is for a <em>degree<\/em>, not for &#8216;some college&#8217;, so acquiring debt is a risk if the student does not have good odds of finishing her studies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>How is SNAAP different from BFAMFAPHD?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>SNAAP administers its own survey, rather than using the ACS;<\/li>\n<li>SNAAP is based on surveys of graduates from participating institutions &#8211; 140 postsecondary and 13 arts high schools. It is a survey of arts graduates of these institutions, not of working artists.<\/li>\n<li>SNAAP <em>does<\/em> include design and architecture.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But the big difference between the two reports is this: SNAAP does not indicate what portion of its surveyed alumni have &#8216;artist&#8217; as primary occupation. I find this a very strange omission (and please correct me if I just didn&#8217;t see it in the report!), especially since results <em>are<\/em> included (Figure 6, p. 17) as to reasons given by respondents for &#8216;not working as a professional artist&#8217; (better pay elsewhere, no work, family reasons, etc.). So the proportion of alumni working as artists must be known. I don&#8217;t get it; it&#8217;s an important number.<\/p>\n<p>And so, the two surveys do not necessarily contradict each other: it could well be that only 10 percent of arts alumni end up working as professional artists, but that 64 percent of recent arts alumni are in jobs where their training is &#8216;relevant&#8217; to their current work.<\/p>\n<p>*Disclosure: I work at Indiana University, home base for SNAAP, though I don&#8217;t work for them, and I had no hand in this project.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: See Professor Jennifer Lena in the comments below: she has the numbers &#8211; 51 percent of recent graduates from the SNAAP survey working as professional artists.<\/p>\n<p>MORE UPDATE (November 7): <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/education\/archive\/2014\/11\/what-can-you-really-do-with-a-degree-in-the-arts\/382300\/?single_page=true\"><em>The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>: &#8216;&#8230; art school programs need to be a lot more honest with their students.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They get to use what they have learned in college?: Among &#8230; respondents\u00a0employed at the time they completed the survey, 64% of recent grads and 69% of prior graduates were in jobs they described as either \u201cvery relevant\u201d or \u201crelevant\u201d to their educational training. Or not?: The majority of arts graduates work in non-arts fields. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1641","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-issues","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/art-students.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dIW5-qt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2884,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2023\/05\/who-wants-to-go-to-college\/","url_meta":{"origin":1641,"position":0},"title":"Who wants to go to college?","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"May 16, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Should more young people go to college? This morning's papers presented very different answers to the question. The New York Times reports on President Biden's idea that we ought to ensure there are good and interesting careers and stable incomes for people who do not want to, or find it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;issues&quot;","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/image-2.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/image-2.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/image-2.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/image-2.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4662,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2026\/03\/colleges-students-and-jobs-nobody-knows-anything\/","url_meta":{"origin":1641,"position":1},"title":"Colleges, students, and jobs: nobody knows anything","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 9, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"In my past life I spent some time in university administration, and one of my jobs at this public university was to take proposals for new degree programs that the university had approved of to the state board of higher education, for\u00a0their\u00a0necessary approval. In those proposals we had to include\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;issues&quot;","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/image-1.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1488,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/09\/how-should-we-rank-the-employment-prospects-of-cities\/","url_meta":{"origin":1641,"position":2},"title":"How should we rank the employment prospects of cities?","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"September 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"News sites on the web demand a stream of content, and a sure way to produce something is to make a list. My previous post knocked a recent list of \u00a0'top cities for culture', on the grounds that the way the index was constructed made no sense. Another day, another\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;issues&quot;","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"what are the data telling us?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/whirlwind-computer.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1447,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/08\/know-when-to-fold-em\/","url_meta":{"origin":1641,"position":3},"title":"Know when to fold &#8217;em","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"August 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"There lies a contradiction within us. As teachers, mentors, coaches, friends, parents, we encourage people to pursue their dreams, to strive, persevere, don't give up. We reward and praise determination, the kid who 'sticks with it.' And we should - these are excellent qualities in a person, very worth fostering.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;issues&quot;","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"move on","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/uhaul.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4619,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2025\/11\/what-should-we-teach-future-arts-administrators-and-where-should-we-teach-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":1641,"position":4},"title":"What should we teach future arts administrators and where should we teach it?","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"November 25, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"(Indiana University Bloomington, Kelley School of Business (left) and O\u2019Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs (right)). At her blog\u00a0Arts Analytics, Joanna Woronkowicz has\u00a0written a post\u00a0- reposted to a wide audience at\u00a0artsjournal.com\u00a0- trying to answer the two questions in the title of this post, with the heading (which I don\u2019t\u00a0fully\u00a0understand)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;issues&quot;","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image-3.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image-3.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image-3.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image-3.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2112,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2016\/09\/what-should-congress-do-about-the-arts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1641,"position":5},"title":"What should Congress do about the arts?","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"September 28, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Blog neighbour Doug McLennan reviews the recent Congressional Arts Report Card produced by the Americans for the Arts Action Fund PAC. He notes that there isn't really a lot of material on which to base a report card - indeed, there were no recorded floor votes that were solely concerned\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;issues&quot;","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"where's the vision?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Mr-Smith.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Mr-Smith.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Mr-Smith.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Mr-Smith.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Mr-Smith.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Mr-Smith.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1641"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1693,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions\/1693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}