Grad-level film school is a gamble and I agree it’s not one that you should take unless you are damn sure that you are going to succeed (or you can afford to lose the money.)
But majoring in film as an undergrad isn’t the worst thing in the world, even if you do not end up working in the industry. It has given me the basic qualifications I needed to begin my career, gotten me into a (unrelated) professional graduate program that will lead to a good job, and most importantly given me a deep passion and understanding of a subject that will serve me my entire life, no matter where I am. Even if I am in prison, my understanding of film will continue to enrich my life. I’d like to see an accounting degree that can do that!
It is actually the degrees that ambitious people go for (law, medicine, business) where it is hard to get into a program in Germany. You do need very good Abitur grades. Most programs in the arts do take all comers, but people who do these degrees better do it for love of the subject as relevant employment prospects are meagre. Also higher education mostly isn’t free anymore - in most states it’s 1000 € (1.350 USD) per year.
A major difference in Germany seems that employers seek a specific degree. An apprenticeship served in the relevant specialty almost invariably trumps an unrelated higher education degree.
I agree that there’s a college out there for just about everyone who wants to go and can afford it.
But I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
In this society, we’ve inculcated our youth with the idea that having a college degree represents a remarkable achievement–something that will ease one’s path towards a career and the “good life”. In doing so, we’ve also taught them that not having a degree represents a lowly, loserdom existence of hamburger-flipping and Wal-Mart cashiering.
Both are lies. First, not all colleges are the same. One sounds like a snob for admitting asmuch, but it’s true. There are colleges and then there are colleges. Just getting a degree from any fly-by-night storefront school is not a remarkable achievement, and doing so can actually ruin someone’s life by burdening them with debt and no way to cover it. Also, even if you go to a stellar school, the degree you earn matters. Sometimes I think we’re so careful about having an egalitarian view of things that we don’t want to tell kids the truth about the world.
Second, despite what I just said above, we need to get away from the idea that white-collar jobs are “better” than other work. Sure, there are benefits to working in an office, pushing paper all day. But how is what I do (an environmental scientist) objectively “better” than what a busdriver does, or a what small-business owner who never went to college does? Especially since, depending on who’s working where and on what, all three of us could be making comparable salaries. I’m not out there “saving the world” with my work; I’m just a cog in a giant government machine with little say on how my science is used (or not used). I could have a much bigger impact running my own environmental non-profit, which would require skills that are not necessarily gained in a college environment (although going to college wouldn’t hurt).
I think the message we should promote to young people is that whatever path you take, you must do well at it for it to materalize into a career. If you want to major in fine arts so you can become a professional artist, you better make sure you have the talent, the drive, and the guts to do whatever it takes to be excellent in it. The same for the liberal arts, the hard and soft sciences, or the trades. Fair-to-middling isn’t going to cut it for the majority of us. Especially now.
I agree with Mozart’s post. The opportunity should be there for anyone who wants it. If I’m a poor kid in Appalachia or in the Bronx, I should have the same opportunity to go to college as a rich kid from Greenwich, Connecticut. What that means is, as soon as high school starts, I should be given the option of going through the curriculum that will get me to college. No involuntary “vocational tracking”–a system that schools have used to unofficially segregate within desegrated schools. I should have access to the types of courses (advanced placement, advanced mathematics and science courses, etc.) that will help me go to whatever school I want to go to, if I’m so motivated and talented to partake in them. There should be SAT/ACT prep courses offered so that I can fairly compete against Richy McRicherdson who’s been going to Kaplan for two years. We shouldn’t revert back to the olden-times, when only the rich sent their kids to college.
Opportunity means that no artificial, externally-placed barriers are in front of a kid, keeping him or her from reaching their goal. It does not mean “let’s open up all the colleges and let the unwashed masses in, regardless of ability or motivation.”
And college is not “available to anyone who wants it”. Typically when a student reaches their senior year of high school, they have a fairly good idea whether they have an interest and aptitude to go on to college.
We generally encourage the best and brightest to educated themselves as well as they can so they can find a productive use for their intellect. If you are unintelligent, intellectually lazy, unambitious or simply just don’t feel like book learnin’, then you are free to pursue other options. Some of those people might be much better off in a trade. Or some people just need to blaze their own path.
Have to agree. All properly accredited degree programs should require you to learn certain basic skills that are useful for adult living. Accumulating a 100k debt for Women’s Studies degree is a bit excessive, but I have to assume that could be done more cheaply as an undergrad and we as a society do need some academics in all fields. Practicality is in the eye of the beholder.
I think everyone should just do what I did - go to a university AND get a well-paying trades job ;). Then you have the versatility to be both an annoying pedant on a message board on the one hand and be financially comfortable on the other :p.
'course I didn’t occur a drop of debt in my ~13 years of college ( okay, 8 of those were part time ). Moderate state U tuition + living at home the first few years when I was a ft student + working pt/ft at the same time made it manageable. I never took a single loan. Though I acknowledge that’d be a little harder to pull off today as tuitions seem to be outpacing inflation - I was last enrolled over a decade ago.
If everyone who went to film school became a director (or wanted only to become a director), film schools would contribute even less to actual production.
I did sound on four feature films, and nothing I’d done in film school made a bit of difference. What mattered was that I did a good job, and everything I needed to learn (boom, laying cable, placing mics, even recording) I learned on the job. The mixer called me back each time because he knew I could do the job right–not because I’d worked on any students films in film school. All of those “technical aspects” are nothing more complicated than what a person would learn in various other types of work (computer graphics, AV installation, etc.). In the industry, moreover, each area of work is so compartmentalized (especially on union sets) that no person needs to be able to fully understand how each one is done well, and, in fact, an AP or AD–let alone the director–just needs to have a general idea of what the work involves. The director just needs to have a DP, script supervisor, continuity, etc. whom he or she knows well and can trust.
And I didn’t even get my first job through school–just through a friend who could vouch for me to the mixer. In the USC film production program (and at AFI, too) one starts out on the premise that one will actually perform in only one aspect of production. The things that concern directors–much more than the nuts and bolts of shooting–are theater and story development: both things which people tend to cultivate better when they aren’t worrying about the various aspects of line production, and which film schools aren’t necessarily going to teach you–sometimes can’t teach you.
Don’t get me wrong–film school is a blast. If you can afford it, if you have the time, go for it. But it’s not the most practical way to start a career in the film industry, especially considering what you might otherwise do with all that money and time.
The point of my post was to show that the desire to go to college and exercise the right that we all have to go to any college we can get into isn’t, in most cases it seems, a desire based on proper motives.
As has been said further upthread, people are being encouraged to go to college, whatever the cost, whatever their ability, because it’s seen as a golden ticket. The golden ticket that’s super expensive and oftentimes useless to the person who obtained it…because they’re trying to use the ticket to obtain a sense of happiness. A “fulfilling career”, or just a high profit one. If they had pursued something they were truly passionate about, which may or may not require college, happiness wouldn’t be hard to obtain. A fulfilling career doesn’t require 5 or 6 years of education for everyone. Yes we have people who love being doctors. And we also have people who love being horticulturalists. And there are people who love being cashiers at Wal Mart. And there are people who love being mechanics. But we’ve got too many of them in the wrong places…and they’re all less happy as a result.
We all push our kids to go to college, get the degree, because then they’ll make tons of money. Then they’ll be happy, they’ll be “financially secure”. Which is the load of horse manure we need to educate OUT of the minds of just about everybody. Some people in this thread are getting it. Technical schools aren’t a bad thing. Colleges aren’t a bad thing. But going to the wrong one and devoting your life to pursuing a dollar for an ideal financial situation which may never be obtained based on factors you’re blinded to is a Bad Thing.
So no, college is not for everyone. And sometimes people need to be restricted from something in order to see that…but the mechanisms by which people are restricted are the touchy issue. Freedom is important. People are free to ruin their lives…the question is how can we make the decision to do so by means of a useless education in something you don’t actually care for (but have been convinced to believe will be profitable) less palatable?
More than likely they would turn and offshore said Customer Service job overseas.
That said, in my experience, my college degree was tech-related, CompSci. I used that about as long as it took to get me into software testing, as I realized I HATED programming. After that, it meant jack monkey squat, even considering how much I LOVE computers.
What has made me the most money is my insurance and brokers license*, primarily insurance. My wife has a college degree and she, too, got diddly out of it compared to when she got into insurance.
Now this I totally get. My daughter was a working actress in NY and like everyone else decided she’d like to make films, and got into the summer program I mentioned thanks to a film she made. In the program she made a bunch of films, but decided she liked editing more than actual directing, but didn’t like that as a career. I don’t know for sure, but I doubt any of the sound and lighting people on the sets I’ve been on have been to film school. And I know how hard it is to get started. The son of a friend of ours dated George Romero’s daughter, and interned (kind of) on a shoot in Canada, but had no luck at all getting into a program that would get him into the union. Making it into any kind of job is a real achievement.
Second, despite what I just said above, we need to get away from the idea that white-collar jobs are “better” than other work. Sure, there are benefits to working in an office, pushing paper all day. But how is what I do (an environmental scientist) objectively “better” than what a busdriver does, or a what small-business owner who never went to college does? Especially since, depending on who’s working where and on what, all three of us could be making comparable salaries. I’m not out there “saving the world” with my work; I’m just a cog in a giant government machine with little say on how my science is used (or not used). I could have a much bigger impact running my own environmental non-profit, which would require skills that are not necessarily gained in a college environment (although going to college wouldn’t hurt).
. Fair-to-middling isn’t going to cut it for the majority of us. Especially now.[/QUOTE]
The problem is that college graduates OBJECTIVELY do better than non grads. And fairly, or not, are deemed “better” than non grads.
Graduates. Not attendees. Far more people waste time and money on college than graduate. (Hell, I’m 35 years old and just this month paid my payoff payment on $20,000 in student loans I incurred as an 18 year old for a program I didn’t finish. Where’s the sense in that?!)
I couldn’t agree more. Nothing irks me more than to hear these 20 year olds whine about how “OMG, I hate 9 o’clock classes. I have to get up so early.”
Newsflash: No matter what job you do, you will be expected to be there from 8 to 5, everyday with no time in between “classes”.
I am of the opinion that the typical college schedule is one of the WORST things to prepare a student for a career.
College itself, or getting a college degree, is perhaps not all that important for lots of kids.
What IS important is that kids (young adults, if you insist) of that age should have an opportunity to get away from their parents and their neighborhood, and to be exposed to unconventional ideas, and to have their own ideas challenged and often destroyed, and finally to learn more about academic rigor and the processes of acquiring knowledge not just for themselves but for the whole world. There are very few places besides a college campus where that all can happen.
I will grant you that it’s an opportunity that many don’t, or aren’t equipped, to take advantage of. But it’s an opportunity that they should have nevertheless.
[echo6160]
We all push our kids to go to college, get the degree, because then they’ll make tons of money.
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We push our kids to go to college so they will become well-rounded, educated people who will have the most opportunities possible.
If people think their job isn’t any better than being a bus driver, I encourge them to apply and see for themselves.
When I was home from college for the summers, I worked all manner of temp jobs to earn extra money. Factories, fast food, mail rooms, retail, supermarkets, warehouses, call centers. I found these jobs tedious, boring and not particularly intellectually challenging. Some of them were in facilities that were hot, noisy and smelly. Not to mention they didn’t pay very well. That’s why I stayed in college. Because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life working in some crappy job in the middle of rural Connecticut.
Can I objectively say that I am happier living in a small NYC appartment, working my fancy Manhattan corporate job than if I were living in a small house out in NJ or CT working in the local mall or some other job that didn’t require a degree? Or maybe as a graphic designer or architect? I can’t say. But college at least gave me the opportunity to try many different things to see what I did like.
There’s no “wrong choices”. You pick different paths at different times based on what you think is right for you at that time.
As noted above…almost twice as many people start college and do not finish, than those that obtain a degree. I would credit that to a large number of people that do not need to go to college (i.e. not enough discipline, pushed by their parents but no motivation, college is a party stop, etc.). Also as noted throughout, it is a huge waste of money.
This does not even consider the number of people that obtain some sort of throw away degree.
So? Plenty of people start jobs and quit or get fired also. How are they supposed to know if college is right for them unless they try? How are they supposed to find out about the options available to them in life without going?
I found the loves of my life (in two senses) in college. My younger daughter bloomed in college. We knew she would have no problem academically, but she went from a cautious person to a risk taker in the good sense - year in Germany, working for a legislator, applied for and got some honors.
Sure, kids can fail, but if they don’t try they are guaranteed to fail. This is for kids who want to go to college - kids who want to become mechanics or love some kind of work that doesn’t involve college are an other story.