Many years ago, a friend’s son got accepted into Cambridge to study French.
I asked him if he knew what he wanted to do when he graduated.
He said he wanted to work in film.
I said “Making films in France?”
He said no.
I said “Translating French films into English?”
He said no.
I said “You’ve lost me, why are you spending 3 years studying French when you know that’s not what you want to do?”
I’ll always remember his reply, he said “Because a degree, any degree, is a very marketable commodity”.
A couple of years later we had a young intern at the agency, waiting for his A level results.
I asked him what he was going to study at university, he said Geography.
I said “Do you want to be a cartographer?”
He said no.
I said “Well what do you want to do when you graduate?”
I’ll always remember his reply, he said: “Anything but geography, I can’t stand geography.”
I asked him why he was going to spend three years studying something he hated.
He said his teachers told him he’d get his best A level results in Geography, so that’s the degree he should apply for.
Around the same time we had a young account man who told me that he’d done a one year foundation-art course at St Martins, before dropping out and going to university.
I asked him why he dropped out, he said art school was too unstructured.
That intrigued me, I found out roughly 50% of the kids that do a foundation year at St Martins art school drop out and go to university.
I asked a lecturer at St Martins why this was.
He said that, after school, some kids can’t take the lack of supervision, face-time and regular feedback, they feel abandoned and rudderless and need direction.
They need constant attention, and university is more like school that way.
So it seemed to me, art school is about discovery, university is about memory.
At university you sign on for a subject and three years later pop out having learned everything about that one subject, only then do you start to think what you want to do with your life.
At art school you start at foundation trying everything creative: from film to fashion, from typography to digital.
Then you specialise, year-by-year, until you major in one discipline in the final year.
When you’re finished you’ve tried everything, trained in your speciality, and you leave with a portfolio to get that job.
So, at art school you’re already trained when you leave, at university you start training when you leave.
Because university is about getting a piece of paper to say you’re clever, while art school is about discovering and training for your future.
That could be why Phillip Pullman said “I got a degree from Oxford, but I really wanted to go to art school and I always regretted that I didn’t”.
I was in a cab in Istanbul, with designer Stefan Sagmeister, we’d both just been on stage giving speeches.
I asked him where his head office was, he said New York.
I said “That must be great, New York is the creative capital of the world”.
His answer surprised me, he said “Surely you mean London”.
Maybe that’s why one in seven designers, worldwide, went to a UK art school.
At my daughter’s school the headmaster was asking students which university they’d be applying to, obviously he was most impressed when they said Cambridge or Oxford.
When my daughter said she didn’t want to apply to university, she wanted to go to art school, he said “Ah yes, the loser subjects”.
Which explains the dichotomy we find in our business.
And why everyone in marketing approaches advertising like writing a thesis.
Maybe that’s why Rory Sutherland said “Creative people have a fear of the obvious, but they must sell their work to people who have a love of the obvious.”
Always such a shame. My classmate was an amazing illustrator but his parents said, “no you need to go to the university.” Which he did, a general degree. So he became a teacher. Respectable, fairly secure job but he wasn’t happy. One day, someone got him to be a visualiser/ storyboard artist. What he made drawing 2 TV commercials in a few hours was as much as his teacher’s pay but drawing isn’t a job parents can brag about. So he had to remain in teaching.
Went to art college & bloody loved it. Most of my mates stayed on & did A levels but being arty farty & loved drawing/ideas since i was a kid, i knew exactly what i wanted to do.
Probably made easier for me coming from a working class background to make the choice cos i had no pressure or influence to do anything else.
I was a head of sixth form for many years. Used to tell all students and parents that getting into St Martins was at least as good as Oxbridge
The main issue with this is that it’s based on an outdated understanding of what happens at universities today. What used to be called ‘Art Schools’ in the 1950s-90s are now part of UK universities, where those creative ‘art school’ subjects still successfully teach forward looking skills. Students can’t go to what you refer to as ‘Art Schools’ because, as standalone organisations, they don’t exist any more (and haven’t done so for 30 years). The very real danger of this post, and many others that you have written that continually say that universities are not worth it, is that you add to the narrative that studying creative subjects after secondary school is a waste of time. It simply isn’t true and the success of the UK creative industries demonstrates it time and time again.
I’m 66 and want to go to Art School, wonder if godgers are accepted?
I bet the art teacher loved what your daughter’s headmaster said.
This type of outlook is perhaps why I found most of my teachers taught me whilst most of my art tutors inspired me.
I think the late (Great!) Sir Ken Robinson would have had alot to say about ypur blog Dave.
Having ‘pemission’to explore beyond the boundaries of what is deemmed the accepted norm.