"No observable talent is required to gain admission to AAU"
August 20, 2015 12:38 PM   Subscribe

Black Arts: The $800 Million Family Selling Art Degrees and False Hopes: The Stephens family has amassed an impressive fortune - the kind of fortune where you name your yacht after yourself - through their for-profit art school The Academy of Art University. Headed by "Doctor" Elisa "The Princess" Stephens, the AAU is being increasingly criticised for leaving students in debt (an estimated $45 million in 2013-14) and exploiting loopholes in funding requirements. posted by Gin and Broadband (74 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
"The Academy of Art University"? Seriously? That's not a name that some sitcom made up for a patently ridiculous endeavor led by a moron? Say what you will about the Derek Zoolander Center For Children Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too, at least he's trying to give it a real name.
posted by Etrigan at 12:48 PM on August 20, 2015 [11 favorites]


Heard their minister of propaganda on NPR today on a show with the reporter, and all mouthpiece could do was offer weak anecdotes and deflection. It was pathetic, but then, these people have no shame.
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:51 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


No, it's a very real going concern. I've both bummed cigs and loaned cigs to students at their Mgmt. St. campus. Hearts are going to be broken. Parents weep.
posted by mrdaneri at 12:52 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


We also heard from people involved with the theatre company that AAU had purchased the building that had been leased by the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (the oldest African American theatre company in SF) and promised to continue the lease. Instead, they repurposed the building as a dormitory and kicked the theatre company out. Thankfully, community support has allowed the company to continue in a different location but jeez louise.
posted by janey47 at 12:53 PM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


It would be easy to accuse AAU of being a diploma mill, except the school doesn’t manufacture many diplomas.

Oh, snap!

Ortberg's right, this is one of the best-written hit pieces I've had the pleasure to read since a memorable Sports Illustrated profile of Baltimore Indianapolis Colts owner Bob Irsay that quoted the man's own mother basically calling him a liar.
posted by Gelatin at 12:57 PM on August 20, 2015 [7 favorites]


They are a shoddy real estate business that does educamation on the side.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:58 PM on August 20, 2015


As to being a "university" they now have sports teams. With a sports team logo. Living in San Francisco they are a blight. They own churches too. The really awful thing is that the city does not seem to enforce the laws regarding their use of buildings.

Federal student loans + for profit school = scam

in my book.
posted by njohnson23 at 12:59 PM on August 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


“This industry was the darling of Wall Street,” says Trace Urdan, a research analyst for Credit Suisse. “But you have a federal government that for the last six and a half years has been very hostile to this sector. The re-regulation of this space has depressed valuations.”

Damn regulators regulating everything. If it weren't for scamming people out of their money, where would we be?
posted by maggiemaggie at 1:01 PM on August 20, 2015 [21 favorites]


having worked there i can say that not much in this article was a surprise to me and the family is indeed as insane as they sound and ugh i am just so glad i don't have to feel guilty about getting a paycheck from them anymore, and that's coming from someone who worked in one of the few decent applied-arts departments there
posted by burgerrr at 1:01 PM on August 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


the work culture there is so political and toxic by the way especially once you get to higher-up positions. it's so refreshing to be in a job now where i don't have to worry about kissing ass to further my career

also i actually have windows in my office now, so that's another bonus
posted by burgerrr at 1:03 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am glad they are getting use out of their car collection, instead of simply letting them sit in a garage.

People put a great deal of work into designing and engineering cars, and it would be a shame to just see them sitting still.
posted by Hicksu at 1:07 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


It would be easy to accuse AAU of being a diploma mill, except the school doesn’t manufacture many diplomas.

This seems like a huge mistake. A good scam stays as close as possible to the appearance of legitimacy, and an education scam is helped immensely by being able to say things like "The vast majority of our students graduate with a valuable degree in their chosen field, and statistics show that people with degrees tend to make more money please don't look at our graduates in particular thanks."
posted by Tomorrowful at 1:09 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


not to babble too much in this thread, but i worked in the building where the car (and a couple old motorcycles, and sometimes boats) museum is housed, and it's very cool until you remember it's pretty much all paid for by student tuition and then you bide your time in seething resentment until you can quit
posted by burgerrr at 1:11 PM on August 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


please don't look at our graduates in particular thanks."

More like, "Please just look at these few selected ones we're pointing to who succeeded in spite of us."
posted by Mental Wimp at 1:12 PM on August 20, 2015


I have seen firsthand that they really are good at convincing those who want to be convinced that the degrees they offer mean something. One of the hardest things in the world for me is keeping my mouth shut when I see people getting ready to jump off a cliff, when I know good and goddamn well that they don't want to hear that it's a long fall.
posted by janey47 at 1:13 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've met a few fresh (and rare) AAU design grads out in the wild, and every single time they've been totally unprepared for the real working world of visual design be it print, web, production or other.

Worse, they've been total prima donnas that expected to be catered to, who apparently cared more about looking like an art student then they did about their work.

Yeah, we really don't care if you have blue hair, wear zany stripes and alt-culture t-shirts and have enough piercings to set off metal detectors. No, no, you're totally unique and quirky. For fuck's sake, have you even been back in the press room? Our main print tech is shaved as bald as a eunuch and nearly completely tattooed blue like some kind of Studio Ghibli caricature.

No, what we care about is if you can wrestle a hundred and fifty pages of beige khakis through ID without mangling the pagination flow and DB inserts and get all those full color pictures of beige to trap and bleed correctly through the RIP server for a proof before that really important meeting with the client this afterno... Damnit, are you really going out for another moody cigarette and Facebook break right now?


Anecdotal: I also had the misfortune of working at an even worse diploma mill of a school, one of those cookie-cutter for-profit places that they shove into an industrial park. They had something like a 75% "drop out" rate.

After working there for a few months I started to realize the turnover was so high because the school was incredibly aggressive about recruiting, financial aid packages to people with bad credit, who often worked multiple jobs while having children and living in poverty - all capped off by an insanely strict set of arbitrary rules and standards that made public high schools look liberal by comparison, that would never fly at a real university, because the entire system was set up for intentional failure.

Because then the school got to keep the money from all those fat Pell grants and self-served student loans without any commitment on their end to provide a final product.

By the end of each compressed quarter the classrooms were often a ghost town of the few who didn't get weeded out, and even then they didn't receive a full or quality education equal to the money they were now in debt for.

It was fucking terrifying realizing that this school was training medical assistants and technicians and criminal justice majors and releasing (some of) them into the wild to actually go to work.

I'm still bitter about working there and supporting this kind of unbridled fuckery. I hope it never happens again.
posted by loquacious at 1:13 PM on August 20, 2015 [37 favorites]


yeah, i have a few friends who've tangentially worked for them in various capacities at various levels and basically ran away screaming, their eye sockets a ruin, trailing thin vapors of mist, etc.
posted by mrdaneri at 1:14 PM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


speaking of bucket lists? I highly recommend that anybody who has the opportunity to work for a family business run by the debased scions of the insanely wealthy founding generation, do so

the job will suck but you will be paid in priceless memories and wack anecdotes

I could have peed next to an actual goddamn Warhol if I'd asked to use their bathroom that one time
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:14 PM on August 20, 2015 [18 favorites]


Which reminds me, whatever happened to that lawsuit in which administrators claimed that their pay was dependent on recruiting new students?
posted by janey47 at 1:15 PM on August 20, 2015


I almost went to AAU. I saw a sign on one of their buildings while on in SF the year after high school, and found that their New Media degree advertised a combination of motion graphics, web design, audio production, and other skills that were the exact mix of things I'd been teaching myself in highschool. It was honestly exciting at the time - the degree seem like it had been written with me in mind.


But it was a little pricey. I can still remember the moment I was sitting in my community college art class and thought "What am I doing?", that is, what was I doing signing up for a degree that would cost me close to $250,000*. I ended up staying in community college for computer science, my other passion, realizing that it probably paid better and I'd likely be more interested in playing around with art as a hobby. I incurred zero debt, got a full time job before I graduated, and am making substantially more than I'm sure I would have ever earned working as a webdesign freelancer in the midwest.

It's always been morbidly fun to read about AAU. The bullet I dodged seems have been so much bigger than I ever realized.

*That's a crazy number, but it's what I remember. That would have included food allowances, housing, books, and other miscellaneous costs.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 1:17 PM on August 20, 2015 [9 favorites]


Loquacious, for 6 years, I walked to work past their dorms through packs of them every damn day. Sutter is the worst, but Bush and Post are no treat. Imagine what these "students" are like on a sidewalk waiting for their little bus that takes them around the city. Talk about entitlement UGH
posted by janey47 at 1:18 PM on August 20, 2015


...on the strength of her J.D. she now asks to be called “Doctor”

Of course she does, bless her heart.
posted by Floydd at 1:21 PM on August 20, 2015 [19 favorites]


Loquacious, for 6 years, I walked to work past their dorms through packs of them every damn day.

You'd think they'd give them a rooftop deck or courtyard or something (maybe they do) but when I was in SF it was like wading through an accidentally displaced aggregate of especially surly Hot Topic clerks, complete with clove cigarette smoke and way too much shiny neon cybergoth PVC to be suitable for broad daylight.

When I first moved to SF, I kept wondering if there was some after-after-afterhours industrial/fetish nightclub hidden in the Civic Center/Market area that I should know about.

Nah, it's just AAU students huddled outside the building trying to figure out how to look cool and gloomy at the same time.
posted by loquacious at 1:26 PM on August 20, 2015 [12 favorites]


loquacious - the snark is strong with you today. do go on...
posted by jmccw at 1:27 PM on August 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


If they shut down can their campuses be turned into affordable housing?
posted by Apocryphon at 1:37 PM on August 20, 2015


If they shut down can their campuses be turned into affordable housing?

More like "If they shut down, how quickly can their campuses be turned into luxury tech-industry housing?"
posted by a halcyon day at 1:43 PM on August 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


MetaFilter: Damnit, are you really going out for another moody cigarette and Facebook break right now?
posted by Gelatin at 1:48 PM on August 20, 2015 [12 favorites]


Unrelated to the article. I like that "Ortberg" is a singular title like "Trump" or "Gates" now.
posted by Dr. Twist at 1:52 PM on August 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


Yeah my very first encounter with AAU crowd had me thinking I missed a Meat Beat Manifesto show or something. Then I remembered I was hideously old and it was 8 AM on a Tuesday.
posted by mrdaneri at 1:52 PM on August 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


(on the strength of her J.D. she now asks to be called “Doctor”).

As a fellow J.D. holder, GDIAF.
posted by Lemurrhea at 1:53 PM on August 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


another thing that wasn't really touched on in the article but that i noticed while working there, at least in my department (not sure how true this was in more of the fine arts departments), was that many of the students were extremely wealthy young adults from asian countries who seemed more interested in living in san francisco than actually being in art school. some of them did really well, but plenty of others barely hung on just so they could keep their student visas (and, if they made it through, have a diploma from an american school), and it seems like the school probably makes a tonnnnnn of money off of that.
posted by burgerrr at 1:54 PM on August 20, 2015 [7 favorites]


As a fellow J.D. holder, GDIAF.

"That's 'Go die in a fire, Doctor'!"
posted by Gelatin at 1:54 PM on August 20, 2015 [10 favorites]


I used to teach there too. There are some high-quality, caring staff members there. There are also some very talented artists that learn and flourish there.

But the article is spot-on. The management is a bureaucracy wrapped in a quagmire wrapped in a clusterfuck. And 80% of the students have zero business being admitted to that school and have literally zero chance of succeeding in their chosen discipline. It's a predatory lending scam.
posted by gnutron at 1:59 PM on August 20, 2015 [9 favorites]


They must be so proud that they made this all themselves, with help from anyone, especially not the government. I really wish there was a TMZ style news outlet dedicated to rich people, instead of famous people. I want to see hit pieces and drama all day long.
posted by Arbac at 2:10 PM on August 20, 2015 [7 favorites]


Interesting. I know someone who studied video editing there and, as near as I could tell, got doodly squat out of it. I was shocked at the super basic stuff that this (very intelligent) person didn't know. They ended up learning all that stuff on the job, so yay? But AUU always seemed weird to me.
posted by brundlefly at 2:10 PM on August 20, 2015


Jeez, there are a lot of us who formerly worked for a for-profit school. (Mine was not AAU, but it did have the word "Art" in the name... I'll give you one guess.) Maybe we need to form a support group.

I'm beginning to think having that place on my resume is poison, but that sucks for me since I spent 15 years working there.
posted by litlnemo at 2:12 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


it sucks for people who live in san francisco who like arts and culture, who enjoy the city's reputation for arts and culture, and not rapacious exploitation of young people who wish to learn to produce arts and culture
posted by mrdaneri at 2:16 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Mine was not AAU, but it did have the word "Art" in the name... I'll give you one guess.

The one (chain) that's pretending like it's SAIC or something?
posted by atoxyl at 2:22 PM on August 20, 2015


I see their signs around town constantly and always wondered how this art school that nobody had ever heard of managed to own so much prime San Francisco real estate. I guess this explains it! Crazy.
posted by phoenixy at 2:24 PM on August 20, 2015


atoxyl: I cannot confirm or deny that.
posted by litlnemo at 2:26 PM on August 20, 2015


This whole federal school loan racket has to be shut the fuck down, even more than Obama's recent work to affect it.
posted by rhizome at 2:43 PM on August 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


No, what we care about is if you can wrestle a hundred and fifty pages of beige khakis through ID without mangling the pagination flow and DB inserts and get all those full color pictures of beige to trap and bleed correctly through the RIP server for a proof before that really important meeting with the client this afterno... Damnit, are you really going out for another moody cigarette and Facebook break right now?

I cannot favorite this hard enough. Loquacious, have you been watching my interns?!
posted by culfinglin at 2:46 PM on August 20, 2015


This whole federal school loan racket has to be shut the fuck down

I should say: the for-profit schools' presence in same.
posted by rhizome at 3:08 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding things.

If the welfare payments a family receives from the state is less than $50,000 per year they are to be derided and shamed.

If however the welfare payments a family (or corporation) receives from the state is >$1,000,000 they are to be praised and thanked.

Amazing!
posted by nikoniko at 3:11 PM on August 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


Mine was not AAU, but it did have the word "Art" in the name... I'll give you one guess.

This Place?
posted by ThreeCatsBob at 3:37 PM on August 20, 2015


But exactly how many of AAU’s grads actually land a job in their field of study is a bit of a state secret.

I have strong negative feelings about for-profit art schools, especially after having taught for one and seeing how utterly unprepared many of the students were. But in fairness, selective art schools struggle with job placement too.
posted by ducky l'orange at 3:40 PM on August 20, 2015


I knew someone who told me in 2002 that his degree from Academy of Art was basically worthless. It's a shame that more than a decade later they can still entice students into this school.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:51 PM on August 20, 2015


I know someone associated with this place and I thought I had to grudgingly respect them for having went to school but I guess I don't now?
posted by bleep at 3:56 PM on August 20, 2015


but so much real estate. one can only wonder.

this is going to effect real estate pricing in san francisco

it's like when they discover a new flavor of quark at CERN or something.
posted by mrdaneri at 3:57 PM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


"The Academy of Art University"
that's an institution that could only be properly accredited by the Department of Redundancy Department
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:12 PM on August 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


these kids + techbros = an explosion of assholes in downtown SF, every damn weekday
posted by Ragini at 5:35 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


These guys paid me 9 grand last year to lay out a catalog that was a thousand pages of photos with (charitably) 500 words total in the whole book.
You got the sense that they were pushing the Cool Dorms more than the curriculum.
Easiest $9000 I ever made.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 5:59 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


"The Academy of Art University"
that's an institution that could only be properly accredited by the Department of Redundancy Department


Not quite as bad as our own University of St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto.
posted by grouse at 6:21 PM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


culfinglin: No, what we care about is if you can wrestle a hundred and fifty pages of beige khakis through ID without mangling the pagination flow and DB inserts and get all those full color pictures of beige to trap and bleed correctly through the RIP server for a proof before that really important meeting with the client this afterno... Damnit, are you really going out for another moody cigarette and Facebook break right now?

I cannot favorite this hard enough. Loquacious, have you been watching my interns?!


Better yet, could this be translated into English or some approximation thereof for the benefit of U.S. civilians? I know khakis only as pants.
posted by dr_dank at 6:32 PM on August 20, 2015


I see the same AAU students on the sidewalk waiting for the bus and you know what?

They look like art students in SF forging an identity like so many other college-age students do everywhere else. I say this as someone who has taught at three universities in three states.

So what's with all the antipathy in the above characterizations of students doing what students do between classes?

My understanding, according to the article linked in the FPP, is that these students are being taken for a ride, that they are victims.

Additionally, one of the graduates of AAU is a co-worker of mine and she is saddled with enormous debt, sends money home to her mother and father (who is on permanent disability), and she makes somewhere in the neighborhood of $25/hr.

And some of you are talking shit about them based on how they look?

ON HOW THEY LOOK?!
posted by mistersquid at 6:33 PM on August 20, 2015 [29 favorites]


ThreeCatsBob: again, I cannot confirm or deny... ;)
posted by litlnemo at 6:38 PM on August 20, 2015


dr_dank: yes, that's what they mean there. Beige-colored khaki pants. Talking about laying out a catalog, probably for some depressing retail outlet like American Apparel or (god, why, you were great back in the 80s) Banana Republic.
posted by mephron at 6:52 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've got both the prestigious Art Institute of Atlanta and SCAD in my 'hood. I get to interact with many of their esteemed graduates, usually at Starbucks or one of the excellent cocktail bars around town.
posted by kjs3 at 7:17 PM on August 20, 2015


NASA, NASA, NASA!
posted by clavdivs at 9:06 PM on August 20, 2015


I was a victim of AAU. I was in the vast majority who didn't make it.

I particularly enjoyed their attendance policies of dropping a letter grade no matter your work quality after three absences, and auto-failing the class after four. Homework assignments of charcoal drawings at a recommended rate of 40+ hours per, assuming you're talented. More if you have to work at it.

There were good teachers there, wrapped up, as has been said, in terrible bureaucracy. They taught solid techniques and art study skills that I still retain.

What really got to me was the pressure and insecurity. The idea of pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into some vague, amorphous idea of, "Sure! You'll make money off this art... somehow!" With no tangible reassurance, planning, real world skills or job search assistance. The pressure was immense, explosive. No matter how much I improved (which I did quite a lot in hindsight), it never seemed quite good enough for the teachers or myself. I put too much of myself into trying to get good grades and teacher praise -- because that's how you know you'll make it in the real world, how you know school is worth it, how you avoid becoming A Dropout, or worse, Starving [degree-holding] Artist, right? /s. I got crushed by the mountain I was trying to move all at once.

Later, I discovered from teachers who had moved on that the foundation classes at minimum were rigged. It's said that teachers are only allowed to give a single A each class, and maybe an A- or two if warranted. Any more and they get disciplined for being too easy on students.

In a way, I am glad now that I only got half way through before I fell apart from the enormous, unmitigated stress. Even though I'm still in debt with no job prospects, I saved quite a lot of money as opposed to finishing with no job prospects.

It took me several years to even lift a pencil again, as if the idea of creating after that mire triggered something akin to PTSD in me. My gut is tight with dread and mouth tart just writing about those dark times.

I did meet my boyfriend there, though, which has been the best thing to ever happen to me, so there's that.
posted by equestrian at 10:21 PM on August 20, 2015 [17 favorites]


wow equestrian
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 11:10 PM on August 20, 2015


I hope you share your story with regulators (if you want to)
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 11:11 PM on August 20, 2015


Stephens insists that graduation rates are a “red herring” at a place like AAU. “If a student can get that portfolio built before they finish all their requirements, and they get a job in their field of study, then we don’t want to keep them here,” she says. “The diploma won’t make one bit of difference.”

Shameless
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 11:12 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


They were sending me things in high school, but even then with little to no knowledge I thought they looked kinda scammy. I remember how young "The Princess" looked in the marketing materials at the time too.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:12 PM on August 20, 2015


ThreeCatsBob that article is so sad/brutal
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 11:26 PM on August 20, 2015


Plus a collection of 250 classic cars worth around $70 million, which Elisa often drives in city parades, to the opera or when heading to lunch.
I'm very impressed by Stephens's ability to drive all 250 vehicles at once. Is this something Google/Alphabet is collaborating with her on, perhaps? A massed formation of driverless classic cars pulling up to a posh San Francisco restaurant must be quite a sight.
posted by Sonny Jim at 1:18 AM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


> A massed formation of driverless classic cars pulling up to a posh San Francisco restaurant must be quite a sight.

Oh god, don't go giving them ideas.
posted by contraption at 3:38 AM on August 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


A friend of mine actually graduated from AAU. She said it was pretty brutal and most did not graduate. She valued the techniques she learned there, but it was more out of survival than through guided instruction. She ended up getting a decent job doing CAD design for a jewelry company in NYC, but that was after going to two jewelry arts schools, both after AAU. I'm pretty sure her family paid for her tuition, otherwise she would be more bitter about the money involved.
posted by krinklyfig at 4:10 AM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


My partner went to AAU for awhile, and I am friends with someone who worked there in an administrative level, so I have had a pretty good view into the whole AAU experience.

First off, even though anyone can join AAU, it is not some sort of phony education.

It is VERY demanding. Some of their students start off at a fairly high level of skill, considering, though most are rather green. The required basic courses and amount of coursework can be very grueling... but it does, in fact, have talented students, and helps to develop some good artists, and they do have some very good teachers.

The problem being: both the students and the faculty tend to be exploited, while Elisa Stephens flaunts her wealth, spending their food money on her latest shiny new thing.

For the students, tuition prices are *way* too high, and the course load is really grueling... my partner was doing *very* well there, but ultimately couldn't handle the combination of stress, wondering how they'd secure the $$ for their next semester, the tedium of the coursework, and, for those classes they liked where they cared about the work and felt they could express themselves, the insane coursework demands, where they were driven to do the best they could, but simply could not do so because of the time limits and workload. She created projects she loved... but couldn't execute on properly. Frustrating!

Sure, you can enter at any skill level, but even the basic courses are really demanding... and oftentimes, soul-crushingly tedious.

My partner passed the basic classes with A's and B's because they were already at a rather high skill level and were able to really focus on their classwork, but many, many students fail them and have to retake them multiple, multiple times.

To top it off, the requirements for attendance are very strict and very absolutist. You can be an excellent student, but if you miss a couple courses, you fail... even if you miss courses for health, family, or other important personal reasons. But hey, you can always retake the course, right?!

What that means is that anyone can learn to be an artist... if they have the $$ and the time and the total focus and the unlimited ability to absorb stress and tedium... and nothing unexpected happens in your life. Trying to work your way through college doesn't work well at AAU. It helps to have rich parents.

Many of faculty have been similarly put through the mill. The school does try to recruit some top talent to brag about, who are well-compensated showpieces, encouraged by the nature of the system to do their classes, but ignore the needs of the students outside of them. Mostly though, the teachers and faculty are exploited as badly as the students, with many talented people making not much more than S.F.'s minimum wage, with crappy benefits. No profit sharing, of course.

Meanwhile, Elisa Stephens is speding your money. Oh, how she is spending your money. Not just on the big, visible things, but also on the numerous little petty whims of hers.

The whole Forbes interview is a really good example of her excesses...

For special events, such as the spring show, Elisa Stephens sends expensive-looking personal invitations out to VIPs in the art and design world, and uses that corporate jet of hers to fly many of the attendees out, providing extravagant VIP treatment once they arrive... in fact, I believe she rents extra jets to pull this feat off. This, of course, gets really expensive in S.F. (The organizers of these events are put under the gun to pull them off, and, again, paid very little for doing so.)

Of course, the school uses this rather limited exposure by the well-heeled to the student's art as a way to keep the students paying. "This person *could* see your art, *if* you are lucky enough to have your work liked by Elisa and be chosen for the show, and *if* someone important sees your work, and *if* they bother to get in touch with you somehow, and if...

She gets a big party where she can hobnob with the VIPs and flaunt her wealth. The students get the bill. The workers at AAU get the shaft.

Here's the amusing bit... Elisa no doubt offered one of those luxurious, all-expense-paid trips to the reporter and cameraperson from Forbes, which, of course, is a very traditional, pro-corporate publication.

I can only imagine how happy "Doctor" Stephens was to know that Forbes was coming to do a piece on her, finally giving her the attention and status she so craved. So she no doubt brought Forbes' reporter and cameraperson out, most likely by flying them out from NYC in one of the jets, putting them up in an expensive hotel, wining and dining them on filet mignon, and then giving them a private tour of her car collection, before allowing them to take gratuitous, ego-boosting photos of her with her babies, and then letting her speak and speak and dig her own hole with her wasteful, vacuous, out-of-touch cluelessness...

And this is how they repay her? By actually being journalists?! Classic!

It was very surprising to me that Forbes, of all sources, would print this scathing article. I'm thinking perhaps that this is their way of being relevant, considering how much the general public mood is anti-corporate right now.

What they are actually saying to their core group of readers, though, is "the nouveau rich deserve to be ripped apart, not because they are rich, per se, but because they lack the common sense not to visibly flaunt their wealth and power." It's old money, rubbing new money's face in it.

Here are a few online comments from people who worked there who my friend knows. They are seriously digging this article, and sharing it widely.

"I mean...I just worked there. And a year later, I left. Because you see...when there's any sign of shadiness up top, it trickles down to the day-to-day...that day-to-day was felt by EVERYONE: department heads, students, instructors, staff, me. But I couldn't really complain because it was a job I adored. The individual departments were AWESOME. I was more outspoken than I should have been while I was there (about the way the organization ran operationally), but I was "doing it for the students," -as we all would say...even though they were bratty and felt entitled. I mean, they should be, spending all that money! Well, years down the line you read an article that exposes their real deal (as if this is any new news) and you're like...yeah. But they're not the only institution that does this. This is endemic of the capitalistc appropriation (or maybe exploitation is a better word) of art and the arts. Clever business architecture though, if it really worked."

"if it weren't for the students and my co-workers, I would have lost my mind. This article, of course, doesn't speak to what it was like to work there. . . Over time, I found myself NOT telling people where I worked and just getting more depressed about working there."
posted by markkraft at 5:03 AM on August 21, 2015 [8 favorites]


And some of you are talking shit about them based on how they look?

ON HOW THEY LOOK?!


Yeah, I stooped there, but wearing a lime green and black, shiny PVC spiky turtleshell backpack with a few cubic feet of day glow plastic-tubing "cyberdreads" woven into your hair and clunky platform boots and is not only a bad career fashion choice even in the commercial design/art world, it's just plain bad design and aesthetics.

And I'm saying this as someone who used to own cartoon raver gloves and pants big enough for a small family to camp in.

There's having fun, which is great, but there's also the reality of working in the commercial design world in which you sometimes actually have to meet with clients who care about things like aesthetics and professionalism because they're doing boring shit like... selling khaki pants.
posted by loquacious at 2:59 PM on August 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


A surprisingly disproportionate amount of my time with my interns is spent trying to make them employable by actual design firms. Part of that endeavor is trying to hammer it into their heads that much of the design world is in-house corporate gigs. And if they would like one of these in-house corporate gigs, then no, they cannot have hair of colors not found in nature. Or enough facial piercings to set off a metal detector. Or tattoos that cannot be covered by clothing.

I also cover such arcane knowledge as:

- Showing Up On Time: Not Just For Suits
-Do The Funkyfunk: Demystifying Showers
-Trapping When You're Not Les Stroud
-All Printers Drink

Seriously, more than ¾ of my time is spent making my minions ready to be employed by non-artists. And if they want to pay off those student loans, that will be a necessary evil.

So yeah, loquacious isn't off the mark to mention the way they look.
posted by culfinglin at 8:11 PM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


And to be more clear: No, I don't really care how people choose to look or dress themselves. I've seen so much weird shit at this point it doesn't phase me. I mean, you'd have to have full face tattoos and huge nose/cheek gauges and a penchant for really kinky fetishwear as a work uniform to get me to start to raise my eyebrows.

What I'm really being critical of is what I saw as a trend of fresh AAU grads wanting to be considered and treated as special snowflakes because of how hard they were trying to be "unique" with really basic weirdo-wear like Hot Topic bondage pants, Invader Zim T-shirts and blue hair and how shocked or even offended they were they seemed to be when people weren't really phased by it.

And how this attitude also showed itself in their work habits, methods and production efforts, and how AAU's grads tend to be especially drawn to this kind of behavior compared to many other art/design schools or programs. I'm not sure if it's a product of rich art school kids coddled by (or in spite of) their parents or insecurity about the cost and quality of their education, both, and/or other.

And if their work, efforts, aesthetics and output were top-notch or at least better than average I wouldn't even be offering these criticisms and I would care so much less, but I've seen AAU grads through full blown hissy fits just because they couldn't contour-map some text to spec or because they got mad that the AD didn't like their choice of out of spec colors for some simple production piece that needed to get done.

Sure, I have a lot of pity on the students that get stuck in AAU's predatory loan practices. Sure, I think someone could get a quality education out of AAU, I know that's a thing that happens. Sure, I've probably even worked with AAU grads that I never noticed because they didn't behave this way and they knew what they were doing.

But my real world anecdotal experiences with AAU grads in the wild has been pretty bad, and it's through this vector of real-world experiences with the graduates from AAU that I can criticize AAU's practices.

Because they're not really preparing their students for the real world of commercial art and design. That I wrote above about "another moody cigarette and Facebook break" isn't really a joke but a real world experience that's happened more than once, and while these problems aren't unique to AAU, they seem to be far more common than elsewhere.
posted by loquacious at 9:10 AM on August 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


it doesn't phase me.

Ouch!
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:20 PM on August 22, 2015


In the little time I spent around arts administrators, AAU was considered a curse word and was scamming potential students who for some reason, are not looking at real art schools and universities. AAU targets students and families who are not exposed to larger names like RISD or MICA, and are not aware that there are specific scholarships for talented students. It really plays on the whole "your art degree is worthless, so you should take the first hasty option if you plan on doing it." It hurts me so bad to see AAU, especially because it's located between the Financial District and North Beach. It really shouldn't exist.
posted by yueliang at 7:26 PM on August 22, 2015


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