Making Arts School More Career-Relevant
By Karl Androes
Many years ago, I came to Chicago for college and to study trombone with a member of the Chicago Symphony. Instead of getting a job in an orchestra afterward, I founded a non-profit that used music and drama to help young students learn to read. Wild idea, right? I ran it for 38 years, building it to a $2 million annual budget and operations in three cities. We measurably improved the lives of more than 100,000 students — a legacy I will always be proud of.
Leaving that a year ago, I wondered what higher education was doing, all these years later, to help arts students (like I’d been) think about and make plans for their coming arts careers. I decided to call 100 people and find out.
I’ve now done 107 interviews (I got carried away) of people who know something related to helping young creatives think about and create actual plans for their arts careers. Here are ten things I think I’ve learned from those interviews:
1. Much of higher ed does not see itself as being in the vocational business. Students, on the other hand, want something that helps them pay the rent after college.
2. College arts students these days think much more broadly about their desired career options than we did in my day, which seems very positive to me. My friends and I were laser-focused on getting a job in an orchestra and being “the best ever” someday. Gary Beckman at North Carolina State University said students used to want to be a star, like Jay Z. “My current students want to be ‘little Jay Z,’ avoiding the hassles of stardom while getting to pursue their highest artistry,” he said.
3. Arts professors agree someone should teach students about arts careers, but those same professors don’t want to be the ones doing it. They say they don’t know the content, and they have their own specialty to teach.
4. Time is perceived to be a huge issue. Students’ schedules are packed, to get in all the credits they need so they can graduate. Professors and administrators say they don’t have enough time to stop and think about how to make curriculum changes. It feels to me like they are all mice on a wheel, running in place and nothing changes.
5. Accreditation standards change over time, encouraging professors and department heads to add content and whole courses to meet new standards, without necessarily subtracting courses or content that met previous standards. Thus, students’ schedules are packed with requirements, squeezing out time for innovative courses about arts careers.
6. Arts entrepreneurship programs are a way for students to think about and make plans for arts work that is not based on auditions and waiting for someone to hire them for the few full-time arts jobs that exist. That might help explain why arts entrepreneurship programs in the United States have grown in number and sophistication, even as enrollment in higher ed overall has dropped.
7. While some colleges and universities I interviewed have only made small changes in their arts careers efforts from 40 years ago, there are some exemplars (see below) who have embraced “putting food on the table” as part of what they are helping their arts graduates be ready to do.
8. Even at these institutions, it’s voluntary to take a careers course or go see the career counselor. Unfortunately, that won’t work for many students who think they will be the exception and don’t need that kind of help. Interviews with current arts students like Brandon Jackson, a senior at Berklee College of Music, reminded me, nearly word for word, of my younger self all those years ago: “I don’t want a Plan B. If I don’t have Plan B to fall back on, I’m more likely to keep grinding till I make Plan A work.”
9. Career centers and career counseling on campuses are mostly about resumes and cover letters and mock interviews. Sometimes they are also about bringing artists to campus to tell “how I made it” stories and answer students’ questions. They usually do not challenge thinking about what kind of arts career one might want, what different arts career trajectories are possible, and the many possible options for what steps one, two and three look like when starting an arts career.
10. Inattention to careers for graduates is not just an arts issue, but an issue across many subjects and departments. I knew this was true when Amita Shetty, who runs a program within the undergraduate computer science department at University of Illinois Chicago, told me she has just a partial metric. “We track number of diplomas. Tracking job placement in the students’ field is difficult to ascertain.” In a way, this could make arts folks feel better because they’re not alone. But maybe it just means the problem is the whole institution of higher ed, which is a much bigger problem then.
The good news is these issues are being addressed at some institutions, sometimes in partnership with outside organizations. The less-good news is that they are not being addressed everywhere. To help spread the good news, here are some positive examples I encountered from my 107 interviews and resulting online research:
· Several universities, like University of Michigan and Northern Illinois University, have showcases in New York, Chicago or LA each spring, where agents and others who are looking to hire new talent can see seniors strut their stuff on a downtown stage rented by the university.
· University of Michigan has an exemplary roster of courses in career development with courses including Running Your Own Ensemble, Theatre Troupe or Dance Company, Starting Music Businesses, Fundraising and the Arts, Arts Entrepreneurship Essentials, Legal Issues in the Arts, and more, ranging from one credit courses to three credit courses.
· Multiple other institutions, including smaller places like Beloit College, mid-size places like Southern Methodist University and Wake Forest University, and large places like University of Colorado at Boulder have robust arts entrepreneurship offerings, from individual courses like Entrepreneurship In The Arts, The Entrepreneurial Artist, and Dance Entrepreneurship, to certificate programs, minors and even a few bachelors and graduate degree options.
· Action-oriented opportunities on-campus for arts students to experience different arts jobs showed up at several institutions. At Beloit College, for instance, these student opportunities were part of a wide-ranging entrepreneurship center that included a venture lab, an access television station, an art gallery, a maker lab, and a music recording studio. At much larger Northern Illinois University, a theater space was offered for student-produced shows, with a $50 per year budget that forced students to find the money and all resources to produce and market their shows, just like the storefront theaters some students will encounter or create post-graduation.
· Internships showed up, also. University of Illinois at Chicago, for instance, offers internships for all their music business students and UIC’s Director of the School of Theatre and Music, Christine Dunford, wants to expand that to more or most students in music and theatre. Interestingly, she says one challenge is that not all students take advantage of this offering, due to time pressures for completing all other degree requirements. (See #4 and #5 above.)
· The number of institutions in the United States offering arts entrepreneurship courses, certificates, minors and even majors has grown in the last 20 years. There are now over 100 schools in the United States offering something, with those offerings including arts entrepreneurship as an undergraduate major at ten institutions. There is a slightly-outdated list of these here on the website of the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education.
· Olin College of Engineering in Needham, MA requires every student to start and run an entrepreneurial venture for at least one semester. And Wake Forest University encourages students in the entrepreneurship program, who can be from any major across the campus including the arts, to launch ventures while in college, in order to generate a strong entrepreneurial culture across the entire campus. Brian Morello at Beloit College asserts that college is not the appropriate time in a young life to stand up a scalable enterprise. Instead, his Center for Entrepreneurship provides small, simple, and fast experiences that students can later draw upon to start and run their own ventures, post-college. Jim Hart at Southern Methodist University offers a kind of hybrid. “I use experiential exercises in the classroom to offer experiences into the entrepreneurial process so that students learn by doing, discover their knowledge, and thus own it. However, I do also advocate students start ventures while in school, as they will, at least at SMU, have access to resources including classes, mentors, incubation space, and considerable access to funds.”
Here are two ideas I am pondering, as a result of my many interviews and all I’ve been learning. What if we required every arts major to start and run some kind of arts business venture during their four years as an undergraduate, and not give them a diploma until they had done that well enough to generate at least $5,000 of revenue? The point being, what if they all had to create something that could attract paying customers? Even the failed ventures would be great learning experiences. What if we offered courses and coaching from outside experts to support this new venture creation and implementation?
What if we provided a “sampling period” for all arts students, where they got to experience what a variety of arts jobs are really like. This could be through paid internships or action-oriented on-campus opportunities to produce performances and sell tickets. My wife, Jean Clough, did this as a physical therapy assistant major at a junior college. Part of the course work she had to complete and on which she was graded, were three clinical affiliations — one at a hospital, another in a neighborhood storefront clinic, and one more at a residential rehab facility. By working in three very different settings, she got an idea of where she wanted to use her new degree. The book “Range” by David Epstein, recommended to me by Amita Shetty at the University of Illinois Chicago, makes a case for this very thing, as implemented by such organizations as Braven and the Pat Tillman Foundation. Those programs include a coach who helps participants reflect and make sense of what they are sampling: analyzing what they like and don’t like about each. This increases what Epstein calls the “signal” that students are getting and increases the likelihood of the student finding the best job match for their blossoming talents and nascent interests. Paul Kassel at NIU told me enthusiastically, “If you could create an organization like that for the arts, I’d want to be on its board!”
