THE ART OF A
COLLEGE EDUCATION
and a representative in India.
University Facebook pages and
the school’s website advertise in
at least four different languages,
listing dates for meetups and information sessions.
According to the same former
employee, international students
serve as a huge source of revenue
for the school. “The thing that’s
great about international students
is not only are they full ride, but
they have to take ESL classes,
which are in addition to whatever
their unit loads are,” the employee
said. “So not only do they nail
them for the unit loads, but they
take an additional three or five
classes of ESL, which are full tuition price courses.”
International students tend to
represent a significantly more affluent segment of the population
than the overall student body.
“Money wasn’t an issue for a lot
of the international kids,” recalls
Esch, the former student advisor.
“They had to pay cash up front
and didn’t get government loans.”
Academy of Art has also managed to rapidly expand enrollments in recent years through its
introduction of online-only degree
programs. Almost all the university’s majors, from painting to
HUFFINGTON
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graphic design to visual effects,
are available through fully online
coursework—a development that
has raised concerns among both
students and faculty about an erosion of quality in its programs.
“The push for that, to me, is
100 percent entirely due to the
economic benefits of online education,” says a second former
employee, who also declined to
be identified in order to preserve
relationships with faculty members. “You create a class once, and
you’re done, and anybody can just
teach it. The only beneficiary of
that is the school itself, because of
the profit potential.”
Several former academic employees described the difference
in quality between the work of
online and on-campus students
as vast. Artwork from online students very rarely makes it into the
Academy of Art’s annual spring
show, which features the best student work of the year and is often
a jumping-off point for job opportunities, the employees said.
Rowley, the university vice
president, claims that online
students participate in both the
spring and fall shows. “We’ve
gotten rave reviews from everyone who has seen our online programs—teachers, accreditors,
everybody. They’ve all given it
five stars,” she says. “With the