I recently posted about the advantage I managed to squeak out of the international mortgage lending crises, and another lending crises that was yet another lucky near miss for me was... The education system. When I write that I come from a poor family, I don't mean the kind of poor where you can't afford an iPhone. I mean generational poor. I mean parents living in a pigeon coop with pigeons poor. At one point, my dad's weight dropped to 115 lbs. When my parents were finally able to buy a house, it was bought on foreclosure and was in a very grubby neighborhood where we discovered things like the drug dealer's stash of pills on the neighbor's lawn. The guy around the corner was a pervert who broke into our home and stole all our underwear.
Another excellent article, Colleen. So many parts of it resonate with me, but my favorite part is: "And let’s just call this out: the arts is blue collar. It’s working class."
In 2011, the wife and I were unemployed and unemployable in Atlanta- no one would hire her as an experienced art director, and I couldn't find QA or CS work anywhere. So we were convinced to go to cosmetology school, which taught us everything you just laid out here.
Neither of us got good jobs from the experience and we still owe permanent student loan debt. I wish I'd read all this back then, because "It was all a scheme to rip off the government loan programs and the taxpayer got stuck covering the defaults."
ACCURATE. Thanks for sharing, sing it from the mountaintops.
Also, I laughed out loud and quite a lot at "Behold, many years later I draw even more like an old dead white arting dude."
My god, I don't even know where to start with all of this. From the outside looking in (I'm Australian), the United States is pretty much a wall-to-wall disaster zone, where everything is designed to benefit the privileged and morally bankrupt while keeping everyone else under the heel. And there's that insidious lie, "The American Dream", which promises that anyone can make a success of themselves, no matter how "humble" their beginnings. America's self-mythologizing as the greatest country in the world is a stark contrast to the reality.
This is a succinct, cool, brutally honest assessment of the endemic structural poverty and debt in this country. A lot of my GenX and GenZ friends accumulated this type of debt, after years of university education. Their standard of living contrasts sharply with people I know who grew up during the baby boom. Lower middle-to-middle class backgrounds, first generation to university, and good engineering positions characterize both groups. The older accumulated wealth, savings, retirement, property, and sent their kids to university. The younger, weighed down by crippling student debt, will be barely able to afford retirement. The glaring differences are blinding.
I only escaped this through dumb luck: Serving in the military after high school, in the timeframe I did, made me eligible for two sets of VA benefits that carried me through graduate school. And it galls me how you can easily find people in any generation opposed to student debt relief.
For example, you've found me. I have no formal education, while my wife paid her way through a bachelor's degree. I would be in favor of debt relief for people who drop out of college, for whatever reason--hey, I'm a bleeding-heart liberal. And if there is a way to forgive these government loans without negative effects to the taxpayer--magic?--I'm all for it. Being at a relative disadvantage due to somebody else's windfall doesn't bother me; some people are just born taller, for example.
But if there are knock-on effects from paying off these loans, like higher taxes that I'll be paying, or additional inflation eating into my savings, then I'm against it. Why would my wife and I subsidize a higher standard of living for degreed strangers, instead of putting that money into our own childrens' education?
I think there is something to be said for relief from this fraudulent school loan system, as the degrees are worthless and the students were lied to. The majority of people who got these art school degrees derived no benefit at all. I can understand your position though. What needs to happen is hard core loan and higher education reform.
I didn't lie to these students. But I completely agree that the entire system needs to be reformed. It's bizarre to me that the "fix" takes the form of a retroactive lottery--what about new students?!
My city recently instituted a 4-year pilot program, making community college tuition free for the high school class of 2024. I'm definitely footing the bill--CC is the second-biggest line item on my property taxes, after the school district--but I'm pleased to contribute to something forward-looking.
Suffice to say, economics are in this exceptional nation are very screwed up and monied interests pay our elected officials (both parties but one much more than the other) good money to keep it that way.
Suffice to say, we get the kind of government we’re allowed unless we fight for— I was going to say better but really just good. But this isn’t the place for that discussion so ‘nuff said.
As for higher ed, suffice to say it’s magnitudes worse than Colleen says — as I hope many here do not know but probably do.
Very well said. A friend of mine with 30 years experience can’t get a job in digital art right now because she has no piece of paper. Younger people I work with are strapped with debt and sometimes have issues understanding how their education relates to their work role. There must be a better way.
Yep. Another acquaintance of mine, an executive for years at a major pop culture company which cut back is having to go back to school to get a degree despite being an artist with deep dive skills and experience. No degree, no job.
I FELT this. My partner Cassie was also at an Art Institute in 2006 (may that miserable chain rot in pieces) and the *damage* that system has done to so many of our peers is, ironically, extremely calculable because we've had to live with the millstone of debt. I went the private college route to escape the "closeted in Catholic school" life and being told that my family made "too much" for more aid while we were on food stamps was, uh, radicalizing. Ended up working full-time for the college while I was an undergrad and living two miles off-campus for the privilege of "only" graduating $13k in debt. Never once have I worked a job that paid what one year of my college cost let alone my degree, and working in the same field as my degree is unthinkable. To advance in counseling nowadays you need to be comfortable with six figure debt (or have generational wealth, something the 08 crash wiped out), or pivot to social work and work in the social welfare system for a decade until it's forgiven (my kudos to those with the fortitude, I'm not cut out for social work). I'm so glad you and my partner both dropped out of that school system before they could wring another cent out of you. Supreme Court nixed my own student loan relief but I am immensely glad for everyone who has received much delayed relief from that scam.
My brain is struggling to find the words to say. Wow, but bad wow! I knew the American system was rigged but ‘that’ rigged?! Just wow. And the injustice from having to resist classes as a kid to teaching the colour wheel for thousands. Just wow! I’m going to go and let my brain explode now.
Well, while I did eventually "make it" and occasionally deal with the hilarity of people telling me how my rich family must have had it handed to me on a platter, I will be the first to say that getting out of poverty is crazy hard.
This was fascinating, thank you so much for sharing this. The American system is really invested in keeping the poor as poor as possible, isn’t it? I’m also from generational poor, my parents and grandparents were renters. I inherited nothing, but now own my own home, after decades in the very turbulent entertainment industry. I only just got a degree in creative writing at the age of 53, because despite being a senior writer for television, I was technically unqualified. Fortunately, I make enough for the degree to be affordable, but it’s still a significant amount of money. Also, I haven’t really learned anything I didn’t already know, so I empathised with the colour wheel tale. (In one final year uni class, I had to read Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which was a set text more than 30 years previous, when I was in high school).
I was willing to be humble and go back to the basics and was kind of amused about the color wheel at first, and then I realized...that was it. That was about as deep as the course was going to get. And when I said something about it all in class, other students acted like they were in a fricking cult and started ragging me for not being "committed" and not being "dedicated" to my art! It was both sad and hilarious. I assumed that maybe if I got a degree I could qualify to teach or something, but screw it. I'd rather not.
Although I am happy with my college education, both undergrad and graduate degrees, the truth is I really get what you are saying about the way people are sucked into "college education." I was fortunate in having a middle class upbringing, but my Dad was a frugal man (he was very much a "do it yourself" house maintenance man, but professionally an Electrical Engineer who designed power stations). But after finishing high school (where I did well), I was tired of SCHOOL. Besides I didn't know what I wanted to do in my future.
In 9th grade we had been given an assignment to write a report on "a career" -- what the education was required, how one started in that field, the prospects for advancement, the types of salaries to be earned. At the time, my ambition was fashion design: but learning what lay ahead was discouraging to me. Up to six years of art school, starting at the bottom in a fashion house doing illustrations of other people's designs, and maybe working up to making my own designs? I realized I didn't have the temperament to be chained to the drawing board day in and day out, so not only fashion design but also commercial art was not my calling. I wanted to do art when I wanted to art. I've tried to keep polishing my art skills, but I still do it mostly to please myself.
Instead after high school, during a year off, I realized I wanted to WRITE. I had been writing for some time already, but I came to realize I wanted to do it well. Yup, I wanted to write *literature*. And to do so, I needed to study literature.
I attended the University of Houston, at the time the cheapest in Texas, because it was designed as a commuter campus, serving people who were also holding down jobs. Tuition was a flat rate per class (plus a few other minor fees, I think). I was living at home, which satisfied my Dad as he could declare me as a dependent. I had some funds of my own (a long story for here, so I'll skip over it), and I and my siblings had a deal with my Dad: he would pay half our college, but we had to come up with the other half, by jobs or scholarships. But those scholarships had to be gotten without his providing his own financial information: basically *we* were totally responsible for our half.
In any case, the student oversight at UH wasn't particularly intense. The counselor would basically okay one's class choices, assuming that curriculum requirements were being met. So, I was free do design my own course of studies. I arranged it so all my curriculum courses addressed my intention to be writing fantasy and science fiction. And the English classes were about the literature.
I chose not to go the route of the "creative writing" courses -- except that I did take a playwriting course from the Drama Department. But the others I skipped over. At the time I was a student, they were still taking root. But a guy I knew from high school, and who I knew was actually a good writer, did go that route. A few years later, I ran into him at our high school 10 year reunion (the only reason I'd gone was to connect up with one special friend I'd lost track of). I chatted with him a bit and asked him how his writing was going. He rather bitterly said he'd quit it. I gathered that he'd become frustrated with the labor of trying to break into the market in any fashion.
I often wondered how much the "creative writing class" route had set him up for that disappointment.
In my own pursuit (while still a student), I regularly bought my own copy of Writers Market, and read it thoroughly. I had even submitted some short stories in that period, and still have my collection of rejection letters (not all of them discouraging, either). But WM rather prepares you to face the pursuit of a writing career with the bare basics. It's a rough choice. I made it with my eyes open, so, though I may fret about finances, I'd rather be working this field, hoeing it by hand, than whizzing by on the freeway with no creative life.
My dad actively discouraged my desire to make art. I didn't begin studying until I took night figure drawing classes in my mid-20s (Steve Rude was also a student in my first class- talk about intimidating!).
I let life get in the way of my art and my studies.
Eventually, I took a 2 year commercial art course at a community college. I learned about art mechanics, production art and craft- crucial lessons.
8 years later, I attended Minneapolis College of Art & Design, graduating from the relatively new program in Comic Book Illustration.
But I wasn't happy with my work.
Over ensuing years, I learned to embrace the tools, techniques and inspirations I was given in school and in life.
The work got better.
Maybe not great, certainly not perfect. But better. As Jefferson said about democracy, perfection is impossible, but better is always possible.
It's getting to a point where I can like my own work. IF I WORK AT IT.
Could I have reached this point without those schools? Maybe. But I don't want to live in regrets. Those experiences also informed my art. And spending 2 1/2 years (due to earned credits from that commercial art school) studying with and under people who shared my passion for comics sure didn't hurt!
Is art school necessary? Good ones are to those who find them of use. But ultimately, you live or die on the page.
I'm really glad you had a good experience at art school. I REALLY am. I know a lot of people who enjoyed their time at college.
But going to a good art school when you have the maturity to make the informed choice, money, and time, as you did when you were well into adulthood, is not the same thing as making that choice as a hopeful teenager or a lower class aspirant, and getting stuck with a six figure debt from a diploma mill that lies to you about what benefit you will derive from the curriculum and has you sign a predatory loan...which is the point of this article.
IF you get into a good school and IF you can afford it, and IF it works out, then great. I'm sure people who went to Harvard and got tony jobs afterward aren't complaining about how much it cost to go there now.
I'd have loved to have had the money to go to a fine atelier. Then I wouldn't have spent years trying to suss out how to paint in oils on my own.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the money.
But clearly, some schools are defrauding the public.
If art schools (or any schools) are willing to take anyone who applies, drain them financially, and give them no useful skills, then they're not doing anyone any service, either materially or spiritually. They are destroying the financial stability of the young people of this country via fraud.
Seriously, how many people taking photography courses, graphic design courses, and gaming design courses can expect to graduate from all the art schools around this country per annum and expect to be employed in their field when they get out?
Art schools claim over 70% of their students become working artists. But the reality is about 10% of those who study art become working artists.
Being able to go to an expensive school and not really have to get a return on the investment is a luxury many simply can't afford.
I taught myself more as a child by the age of 16 (and was a professional artist by that age) than anyone in those schools could teach me.
"Ultimately, you live or die on the page".
OK, but most of the people in comics of my generation, for example, had no higher education in this field at all, and were successful in it without $100,000 worth of schooling.
It is a fact you can create comics successfully without investing in expensive art schools, and art schools are a luxury item most people can't afford.
I'm glad you don't want to live in regrets.
But did you ruin your family's credit and future well being with a student loan that gave you no return on the investment in your education?
I'm thinking, no.
FWIW, I now go to an online school that I think is very good. Instead of costing me $100,000, I take all the video courses I want for about $550 per annum. And I learn more in a half hour than I learned in a year at The Art Institutes. https://www.nma.art/
I was expecting pushback on this article from legions of people who had good experiences at these schools, but not a bit of pushback at all.
Another excellent article, Colleen. So many parts of it resonate with me, but my favorite part is: "And let’s just call this out: the arts is blue collar. It’s working class."
Same. Brilliant and accurate.
What's amazing is not the bullshit but your ability to cut through it while still so young.
In 2011, the wife and I were unemployed and unemployable in Atlanta- no one would hire her as an experienced art director, and I couldn't find QA or CS work anywhere. So we were convinced to go to cosmetology school, which taught us everything you just laid out here.
Neither of us got good jobs from the experience and we still owe permanent student loan debt. I wish I'd read all this back then, because "It was all a scheme to rip off the government loan programs and the taxpayer got stuck covering the defaults."
ACCURATE. Thanks for sharing, sing it from the mountaintops.
Also, I laughed out loud and quite a lot at "Behold, many years later I draw even more like an old dead white arting dude."
My god, I don't even know where to start with all of this. From the outside looking in (I'm Australian), the United States is pretty much a wall-to-wall disaster zone, where everything is designed to benefit the privileged and morally bankrupt while keeping everyone else under the heel. And there's that insidious lie, "The American Dream", which promises that anyone can make a success of themselves, no matter how "humble" their beginnings. America's self-mythologizing as the greatest country in the world is a stark contrast to the reality.
This is a succinct, cool, brutally honest assessment of the endemic structural poverty and debt in this country. A lot of my GenX and GenZ friends accumulated this type of debt, after years of university education. Their standard of living contrasts sharply with people I know who grew up during the baby boom. Lower middle-to-middle class backgrounds, first generation to university, and good engineering positions characterize both groups. The older accumulated wealth, savings, retirement, property, and sent their kids to university. The younger, weighed down by crippling student debt, will be barely able to afford retirement. The glaring differences are blinding.
I only escaped this through dumb luck: Serving in the military after high school, in the timeframe I did, made me eligible for two sets of VA benefits that carried me through graduate school. And it galls me how you can easily find people in any generation opposed to student debt relief.
For example, you've found me. I have no formal education, while my wife paid her way through a bachelor's degree. I would be in favor of debt relief for people who drop out of college, for whatever reason--hey, I'm a bleeding-heart liberal. And if there is a way to forgive these government loans without negative effects to the taxpayer--magic?--I'm all for it. Being at a relative disadvantage due to somebody else's windfall doesn't bother me; some people are just born taller, for example.
But if there are knock-on effects from paying off these loans, like higher taxes that I'll be paying, or additional inflation eating into my savings, then I'm against it. Why would my wife and I subsidize a higher standard of living for degreed strangers, instead of putting that money into our own childrens' education?
Can you explain it?
I think there is something to be said for relief from this fraudulent school loan system, as the degrees are worthless and the students were lied to. The majority of people who got these art school degrees derived no benefit at all. I can understand your position though. What needs to happen is hard core loan and higher education reform.
I didn't lie to these students. But I completely agree that the entire system needs to be reformed. It's bizarre to me that the "fix" takes the form of a retroactive lottery--what about new students?!
My city recently instituted a 4-year pilot program, making community college tuition free for the high school class of 2024. I'm definitely footing the bill--CC is the second-biggest line item on my property taxes, after the school district--but I'm pleased to contribute to something forward-looking.
Suffice to say, economics are in this exceptional nation are very screwed up and monied interests pay our elected officials (both parties but one much more than the other) good money to keep it that way.
Suffice to say, we get the kind of government we’re allowed unless we fight for— I was going to say better but really just good. But this isn’t the place for that discussion so ‘nuff said.
As for higher ed, suffice to say it’s magnitudes worse than Colleen says — as I hope many here do not know but probably do.
Very well said. A friend of mine with 30 years experience can’t get a job in digital art right now because she has no piece of paper. Younger people I work with are strapped with debt and sometimes have issues understanding how their education relates to their work role. There must be a better way.
Yep. Another acquaintance of mine, an executive for years at a major pop culture company which cut back is having to go back to school to get a degree despite being an artist with deep dive skills and experience. No degree, no job.
I FELT this. My partner Cassie was also at an Art Institute in 2006 (may that miserable chain rot in pieces) and the *damage* that system has done to so many of our peers is, ironically, extremely calculable because we've had to live with the millstone of debt. I went the private college route to escape the "closeted in Catholic school" life and being told that my family made "too much" for more aid while we were on food stamps was, uh, radicalizing. Ended up working full-time for the college while I was an undergrad and living two miles off-campus for the privilege of "only" graduating $13k in debt. Never once have I worked a job that paid what one year of my college cost let alone my degree, and working in the same field as my degree is unthinkable. To advance in counseling nowadays you need to be comfortable with six figure debt (or have generational wealth, something the 08 crash wiped out), or pivot to social work and work in the social welfare system for a decade until it's forgiven (my kudos to those with the fortitude, I'm not cut out for social work). I'm so glad you and my partner both dropped out of that school system before they could wring another cent out of you. Supreme Court nixed my own student loan relief but I am immensely glad for everyone who has received much delayed relief from that scam.
My brain is struggling to find the words to say. Wow, but bad wow! I knew the American system was rigged but ‘that’ rigged?! Just wow. And the injustice from having to resist classes as a kid to teaching the colour wheel for thousands. Just wow! I’m going to go and let my brain explode now.
Well, while I did eventually "make it" and occasionally deal with the hilarity of people telling me how my rich family must have had it handed to me on a platter, I will be the first to say that getting out of poverty is crazy hard.
This was fascinating, thank you so much for sharing this. The American system is really invested in keeping the poor as poor as possible, isn’t it? I’m also from generational poor, my parents and grandparents were renters. I inherited nothing, but now own my own home, after decades in the very turbulent entertainment industry. I only just got a degree in creative writing at the age of 53, because despite being a senior writer for television, I was technically unqualified. Fortunately, I make enough for the degree to be affordable, but it’s still a significant amount of money. Also, I haven’t really learned anything I didn’t already know, so I empathised with the colour wheel tale. (In one final year uni class, I had to read Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which was a set text more than 30 years previous, when I was in high school).
I was willing to be humble and go back to the basics and was kind of amused about the color wheel at first, and then I realized...that was it. That was about as deep as the course was going to get. And when I said something about it all in class, other students acted like they were in a fricking cult and started ragging me for not being "committed" and not being "dedicated" to my art! It was both sad and hilarious. I assumed that maybe if I got a degree I could qualify to teach or something, but screw it. I'd rather not.
Although I am happy with my college education, both undergrad and graduate degrees, the truth is I really get what you are saying about the way people are sucked into "college education." I was fortunate in having a middle class upbringing, but my Dad was a frugal man (he was very much a "do it yourself" house maintenance man, but professionally an Electrical Engineer who designed power stations). But after finishing high school (where I did well), I was tired of SCHOOL. Besides I didn't know what I wanted to do in my future.
In 9th grade we had been given an assignment to write a report on "a career" -- what the education was required, how one started in that field, the prospects for advancement, the types of salaries to be earned. At the time, my ambition was fashion design: but learning what lay ahead was discouraging to me. Up to six years of art school, starting at the bottom in a fashion house doing illustrations of other people's designs, and maybe working up to making my own designs? I realized I didn't have the temperament to be chained to the drawing board day in and day out, so not only fashion design but also commercial art was not my calling. I wanted to do art when I wanted to art. I've tried to keep polishing my art skills, but I still do it mostly to please myself.
Instead after high school, during a year off, I realized I wanted to WRITE. I had been writing for some time already, but I came to realize I wanted to do it well. Yup, I wanted to write *literature*. And to do so, I needed to study literature.
I attended the University of Houston, at the time the cheapest in Texas, because it was designed as a commuter campus, serving people who were also holding down jobs. Tuition was a flat rate per class (plus a few other minor fees, I think). I was living at home, which satisfied my Dad as he could declare me as a dependent. I had some funds of my own (a long story for here, so I'll skip over it), and I and my siblings had a deal with my Dad: he would pay half our college, but we had to come up with the other half, by jobs or scholarships. But those scholarships had to be gotten without his providing his own financial information: basically *we* were totally responsible for our half.
In any case, the student oversight at UH wasn't particularly intense. The counselor would basically okay one's class choices, assuming that curriculum requirements were being met. So, I was free do design my own course of studies. I arranged it so all my curriculum courses addressed my intention to be writing fantasy and science fiction. And the English classes were about the literature.
I chose not to go the route of the "creative writing" courses -- except that I did take a playwriting course from the Drama Department. But the others I skipped over. At the time I was a student, they were still taking root. But a guy I knew from high school, and who I knew was actually a good writer, did go that route. A few years later, I ran into him at our high school 10 year reunion (the only reason I'd gone was to connect up with one special friend I'd lost track of). I chatted with him a bit and asked him how his writing was going. He rather bitterly said he'd quit it. I gathered that he'd become frustrated with the labor of trying to break into the market in any fashion.
I often wondered how much the "creative writing class" route had set him up for that disappointment.
In my own pursuit (while still a student), I regularly bought my own copy of Writers Market, and read it thoroughly. I had even submitted some short stories in that period, and still have my collection of rejection letters (not all of them discouraging, either). But WM rather prepares you to face the pursuit of a writing career with the bare basics. It's a rough choice. I made it with my eyes open, so, though I may fret about finances, I'd rather be working this field, hoeing it by hand, than whizzing by on the freeway with no creative life.
I'd like to offer a variation on your theme.
My dad actively discouraged my desire to make art. I didn't begin studying until I took night figure drawing classes in my mid-20s (Steve Rude was also a student in my first class- talk about intimidating!).
I let life get in the way of my art and my studies.
Eventually, I took a 2 year commercial art course at a community college. I learned about art mechanics, production art and craft- crucial lessons.
8 years later, I attended Minneapolis College of Art & Design, graduating from the relatively new program in Comic Book Illustration.
But I wasn't happy with my work.
Over ensuing years, I learned to embrace the tools, techniques and inspirations I was given in school and in life.
The work got better.
Maybe not great, certainly not perfect. But better. As Jefferson said about democracy, perfection is impossible, but better is always possible.
It's getting to a point where I can like my own work. IF I WORK AT IT.
Could I have reached this point without those schools? Maybe. But I don't want to live in regrets. Those experiences also informed my art. And spending 2 1/2 years (due to earned credits from that commercial art school) studying with and under people who shared my passion for comics sure didn't hurt!
Is art school necessary? Good ones are to those who find them of use. But ultimately, you live or die on the page.
I'm really glad you had a good experience at art school. I REALLY am. I know a lot of people who enjoyed their time at college.
But going to a good art school when you have the maturity to make the informed choice, money, and time, as you did when you were well into adulthood, is not the same thing as making that choice as a hopeful teenager or a lower class aspirant, and getting stuck with a six figure debt from a diploma mill that lies to you about what benefit you will derive from the curriculum and has you sign a predatory loan...which is the point of this article.
IF you get into a good school and IF you can afford it, and IF it works out, then great. I'm sure people who went to Harvard and got tony jobs afterward aren't complaining about how much it cost to go there now.
I'd have loved to have had the money to go to a fine atelier. Then I wouldn't have spent years trying to suss out how to paint in oils on my own.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the money.
But clearly, some schools are defrauding the public.
If art schools (or any schools) are willing to take anyone who applies, drain them financially, and give them no useful skills, then they're not doing anyone any service, either materially or spiritually. They are destroying the financial stability of the young people of this country via fraud.
Seriously, how many people taking photography courses, graphic design courses, and gaming design courses can expect to graduate from all the art schools around this country per annum and expect to be employed in their field when they get out?
Art schools claim over 70% of their students become working artists. But the reality is about 10% of those who study art become working artists.
And yet, only 16% of working artists have degrees. https://bfamfaphd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/BFAMFAPhD_ArtistsReportBack2014-10.pdf
Being able to go to an expensive school and not really have to get a return on the investment is a luxury many simply can't afford.
I taught myself more as a child by the age of 16 (and was a professional artist by that age) than anyone in those schools could teach me.
"Ultimately, you live or die on the page".
OK, but most of the people in comics of my generation, for example, had no higher education in this field at all, and were successful in it without $100,000 worth of schooling.
It is a fact you can create comics successfully without investing in expensive art schools, and art schools are a luxury item most people can't afford.
I'm glad you don't want to live in regrets.
But did you ruin your family's credit and future well being with a student loan that gave you no return on the investment in your education?
I'm thinking, no.
FWIW, I now go to an online school that I think is very good. Instead of costing me $100,000, I take all the video courses I want for about $550 per annum. And I learn more in a half hour than I learned in a year at The Art Institutes. https://www.nma.art/