Quote:
Originally Posted by AeroGuyDC
According to the stats, it's a useless venture except for the very select few that land a good job at one of the fashion houses you mention. The rest? They get to wallow in their debt in their parent's basement and behind the counter at 7-11.
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Not so, even if money is the sole criteria as to what defines "useless".
The most advanced technological companies these days are learning that if they want to keep ahead of their world competition, hiring creative people who can think outside the box is the way to do it. Really a lot of jobs that pay the best salaries these days fully depend on someone's creativity.
The creative may not be able to be the best techs, but their ideas can be taken over and perfected by technicians who lack creativity. But the techs cannot innovate like those with trained creative minds.
Interestingly, what the particular creative area may be doesn't make all that much difference, especially when it comes to the computer and software industries. A highly trained theater major, for example, knows how to script a much better computer game than a graphic designer.
An art history degree assures the same computer game's visual details are all on the mark. A music maker can score a theme background that enhances the same game. A fashion degree can be used to make all the costuming look great. Good photos make for good backgrounds.
All this has spread into other industries as well. The auto industry, packaged food industry, and even heavy industries have all been hiring creatives right and left because they freshen companies that have gone stale and are falling behind the world competition.
The arts degrees hold another advantage to business; the creatives have turned out to be great small team leaders, especially in fields where production demands attention to detail and high quality work that is repetitive.
In addition, there are some degrees, like industrial design, that are half art, half engineering.
One reason why the arts degrees haven't kept up with other wages is not due to the lack of jobs for them, it's the people themselves. The arts majors fresh out of college don't think of looking to apply for jobs in fields that aren't closely related to their degree and what they learned in college.
But this is changing too, as increasingly more colleges are developing employment offices that give students the ways and means of finding a job after graduation. All colleges are facing the problem of increasing costs of enrollment. They are having trouble enrolling new students, so offering them employment skills has been an area that is now receiving major attention.
One of the facts of life that is overlooked now is: A happy life is more than just money. The arts majors tend to live happier lives at all income levels because their strongest skills make them happy, even when they aren't making a lot of money.
I've made a pretty good living in the arts all my life. And I'm far from being as good at what I do than some of the folks I know. The thing about creative people is simple- they are compelled to do what the do in ways that less creative people are not.
The satisfaction they get from what they do is more intense than non-creative work is, and it drives them on to do even better and better.
It never stops until the person is either physically or mentally incapable of continuing. And even then, a creative who can't do what they once could tends to turn to another area that is also just as creative.
And for a poor kid, the creative arts are often the only way they have to a better life. There's enough demand for them that a poor creative kid doesn't have to become famous to have a better life than the one he grew up in. And one creative child can pull an entire family out of deep poverty.
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