Pseudo professor Mark Simon. All images courtesy of Mark Simon.

Students, welcome to the School of Hard Knocks (SHK). I’m Principal Hytuition and today’s lesson plan includes straight talk about the value of higher education and if it can help you get a job.

As you decide whether or not to enter the doors of our colleges and trade schools, I thought it was time to have a frank discussion about the birds and the spelling bees. Will getting a higher education help you get a creative job? Will it help you earn more money?

I’m sure a few of your friends are foregoing a formal education to jump right into the marketplace. Some think it’s risky to wait for a few years before joining the workforce and incurring huge school debt while others think it’s risky to brave the uncharted waters of production without a degree backing you up.

I’m here to tell you that both views can be correct, but maybe not for the reasons you might think.

Our belief here at the School of Hard Knocks is that your best bet is a mixture of work experience, a formal degree and art schooling. If you would care to follow along in our curriculum guide, we’ll discuss the benefits, negatives and results of your different options.

Creative industries do not hire their creative workers because of their education. Creatives are hired because of their skills and their credits. Our pseudo-associate professor Mark Simon has worked on over 1,800 productions as an art director, storyboard artist, animator, producer and director and was never asked if he even had an education until he was approached by a corporate headhunter to be an animation studio executive.

The obvious assumption is that you don’t need an education for a creative position. In fact, having a bachelors or masters degree does not guarantee employers anything about your creative abilities. It just shows that you can complete something, which is, in itself, of some value. If two people apply for the same creative position and one has a degree and the other doesn’t, the job will always go to the one with the better portfolio regardless of his or her education.

Some naturally talented and ambitious artists are able to develop outstanding portfolios on their own. These talented folk are likely to get jobs. During the same amount of time that a student is in school, a working artist can gain a number of production credits. The downside to jumping right into the marketplace is a potential lack of understanding of the industry, naiveté of business and potentially not having as good a portfolio as they thought they had.

Generally, only executive positions require degrees. The easiest way to determine whether your dream position requires a degree is to simply look at the requirement of job listings.

The School of Hard Knocks.

Even when you do need a formal degree for a potential career move, your grades rarely matter. Employers are more concerned with the fact that you have a degree than whether you had any Bs, Cs and Ds on your transcript. That permanent record doesn’t look so frightening now, does it?

This doesn’t mean that you should slack off and not care about grades. The main purpose of higher education is to learn and become a better artist. When your purpose in school is to learn, the grades will easily follow. The more you put into your education, the better prepared you and your portfolio will be to advance in your career.

Another important aspect of education is where you get your degree. The top schools in any industry carry the strongest cache. Some schools are known in any industry as being strong and some are known as being weak. The trick is determining which is which. You can ask experienced professionals in the industry about the schools they consider to be the best. You will find that some are more highly regarded for gaming and others are respected for character animation, illustration or special effects. Here at SHK, we specialize in belly button lint still-lifes.