THE ART OF A
COLLEGE EDUCATION
when you’re an artist you never
assume anything. Trouble is, if
that’s your passion in life, unfortunately you can’t really turn
that off, and you’re never going
to be really, truly happy doing
anything else. So I just said I’m
going to do this thing.”
The decision paid off for Maloney. A year before graduating the
master’s program, she already has
a job as a concept artist for a video
game design company; an industry
recruiter saw her work featured in
this year’s spring show, which led
to an internship and a job.
Yet for many others, the gamble
wasn’t worth it.
Raya Golden came to the
Academy of Art in 2002, drawn
to its animation and illustration
programs. Promises of a more
than 90 percent job placement
rate kept her going, but by year
three she realized from talking
to other graduates that the definition of a “job placement” was
malleable. Many other illustration graduates were finding only
part-time, unsteady work in a
highly competitive field.
After graduating in 2008, she
bounced around the Los Angeles area, looking for work drawing storyboards for the movie
HUFFINGTON
10.28.12
industry. The steadiest gig she
found was managing an arts supply store in Santa Monica. By
early this year, her $80,000 in
loan debt had ballooned to more
than $130,000 after interest. Her
mother, who co-signed the private
student loans, faced the prospect
of losing her home.
“I come from poor people, and
all I wanted to do was take something that people had been telling
me my entire life I was good at, and
make a business out of it,” she says.
“That’s all I wanted to do, that
whole American dream thing. And I
felt really tricked when I got out.”
In a stroke of luck and benevolence, Golden had an uncle who
recently scored a major contract
in the entertainment industry. He
offered to pay off her loan balance
entirely if she would agree to work
for him in New Mexico.
Nonetheless, Golden has watched
her alma mater continue its expansion as friends who have graduated
struggle to find jobs and maintain
debts. She takes a dim view of the
Academy of Art’s future.
“The bigger it gets, and the less
teachers care — because their
classes are overrun and not organized well — the worse the art is
going to be. Anything that has to do
with the quality of the trade is going to disappear,” she said.
“It’s going to destroy itself.”