Complaint Review: The Art Institutes

Like many people with artistic skills, I had come to a place where I decided I would get professional instruction to develop the necessary skills to enter the work force. The Art Institute of Houston has a descriptive catalogue of the entire curriculum that is supposed to be part of your training. The advertise they have smaller classes and hands-on training and charge from 50k to 75k depending on transferable credits you may have already attained.

The classes are four hours long and I would expect to get bombarded with quality instruction that would prepare me to enter the workforce. However, most of the classes are devoted to work-in-class time a very little instruction at all. There are no books which are a core structure to any program. The instructors claim "they will teach you what you need to know" and that the curriculum is set up so that you can be gainfully employed in the area locally. Although nobody can guarantee employment, you should at least "get what you paid for"....at least I thought. My favorite part is when the instructor goes to the library and brings back books of digital art work and says "see....this is your competition...this is what you need to become capable of doing". Okay instructor, How about giving us the necessary tools to get us to that point? The instructor said "go spend time with the tutors... that's what they pay them for". Are we not "paying for" instruction from the teachers?

The instructor (Norm) even said "you won't learn anything at this school", and that's no surprise because he spent more time telling stories about his past 40-something years he spent on this earth, than he did lecturing. The first 2 hours of class time is dedicated to critiques and storytelling. Maybe if you're lucky, there might be some lecture time, not much. Sadly, this instructor corners the market and is set up as the instructor for most of your classes in the entire catalogue. However, often you just come to school and work on your projects. Is he the only one? Sadly, no! My color theory instructor would take roll at the beginning of class, give out the assignment, critique art and then send everyone home within 45 minutes to an hour 1/2 later after roll call. Problem iswe are supposed to be there for four hours.

Then, there are the transferable credits from local colleges. They make you take classes that you have already had; just so they could charge you for something that you don't need to take. It's all about collecting more money out of you. Want your transcript? It costs 5 dollars, while local colleges like San Jacinto have this service for free. I could spend hours blogging about all the foul things they actually go on at this school, but seriously......you don't always "get what you pay for"...it certainly applied to this institution.

RECAP: They don't use books, they hardly ever lecture, and the only placement assistance is a woman who searches the same websites I already search like Indeed.com, careerbuilder...etc. Now I have a BFA from an accredited school (how they got that is a mystery) and a year has passed and I'm still unemployed. What is the biggest problem? It's a Media Arts & Animation program. They introduce you to a variety of media arts but don't focus on any one of them. You get introduce to web design when you are about to graduate, because you need a website to showcase your work; but you don't know how to do web pages or CSS or HTML or anything that is of value that could get you a web designer job. You get introduced to some graphic arts, but they don't train you to use In-design and other necessary design programs. Photoshop and Illustrator they teach, but what about the other design programs? You get introduced to Flash, but they don't teach action-scripting. It's a terrible program that does not prepare you to enter the work force.

Stay away from this school and their chain of schools. - Media Arts & Animation graduate of 2008