THE ART OF A
COLLEGE EDUCATION
the online master’s degree while
still working in New Orleans, given
the flexibility the school was advertising. But almost from the start, he
felt frustrated with the coursework.
Some of the classes were very
basic, like figure drawing, while
others required complicated and
expensive equipment that he had
to purchase, he says. For a smallscale bronze casting and jewelrymaking class, for example, he said
he had to buy nearly $15,000
worth of supplies, including a crucible and a vacuum chamber for
pouring and heating bronze. Often, he’d only find out about the
supply lists a few weeks before the
beginning of class.
“It had no application to my work,
and I felt as a graduate student that I
should be choosing the type of work
I want to do,” Ballard says.
Toland, the spokeswoman, called
Ballard’s situation “an anomaly.”
“I’ve never heard of someone
spending that much money on a
single class,” she says. “The choices a student makes for materials and how much to use is up to
them. Teachers usually don’t dictate that to the class.”
Ballard says there were a handful of professors he admired, but
most were unremarkable. And the
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online format created problems.
Professors often did not respond
to emails or other questions for
days, he said, and the work was
never graded on time.
He often thought about dropping
out, but with tens of thousands
of dollars already paid, Ballard
decided to stick it out. He graduated earlier this year and said he
is resigned to the fact that he’ll be
working the rest of his life to pay
back the more than $100,000 he
borrowed for classes and supplies.
“That’s a big sword hanging
over my head,” he says. “It’s like
you get yourself so far into debt
that you can’t afford to lose. You
just have to kick ass all day long.
I’m taking on crazy production
jobs left and right, and a lot of it is
specifically for the purpose of just
trying to kill this debt.”
‘THE MYTH OF
THE STARVING ARTIST’
As for-profit higher education has
grown rapidly in recent years, artsrelated majors have proven a popular way for companies to expand
enrollment and enter new markets.
Education Management Corp., a
publicly traded corporation that is
the nation’s second-largest owner
of for-profit colleges, grew its Art
Institutes chain from 22 schools
in 2001 to 50 by last year, operating in 24 states, according to the