Slightly off topic on my part, but I graduated with Art History in England, and no, you are not asked to paint, or draw, or create any artistic work. What you are asked to do is write essays on the cultural, social and political impact/influence of a piece of visual culture of a particular era related to the module you're taking. If you wanna make your own art, what you're looking for is perhaps Fine Art, or a whole host of other art degrees, for example Decorative Art, Theatre Studies also involves some design work, Graphic Design I suppose. But Art History? It's about politics, society and culture, mostly. Those who think it's about making art are wrong. As for studying the techniques of an artist and their biographies - I understand Art History in the Czech Republic does focus on this, but not in England. Certainly not at my uni anyway
Wow. A lot of people take this very seriously. I have a film degree. It didn't help. It was an absolute waste of time and money. Do you need a degree? Fuck no.
I posted something saying exactly this, then totally forgot about this thread. For some reason, your post flagged this thread back up to me and I've had the chance to read it since I posted. ... holy shit guys.
Most of your post seemed to be about non-school learning, though. I mean, I totally agree that we should all be learning new stuff, every day, forever. Learning is great, new experiences are important, etc. But there's a distinction between formal, degree-earning education and informal, life-based education. Formal education is, for many, a luxury, but we can all enjoy informal education. So if someone has lots of money and time and wants to be a writer, great, formal education makes sense. They'll have someone to guide them through the learning process, someone to evaluate their progress, and someone to give them a nice piece of paper (maybe even in latin!) and the end of it all. Excellent. Nothing wrong with this. But if someone has limited money and/or time and wants to be a writer, that person needs to question whether formal education is going to be a worthwhile return on their investment. They should accept that they're going to have a hell of a time making a career in creative writing, and that it's therefore probably not a good idea to invest a lot of money and time into formal training for that career. They could do as you did and invest in a career-related degree, a way to earn money while they write on the side. Or they could skip formal education entirely. TL;DR - education is important for everyone; formal education is primarily a way to earn a degree that will help people get jobs. Non-job-related formal education is lovely, but it's a luxury.
Well it wasn't. I have four degrees if you count my two AAs. My experience as a recipient of a formal education leads me to recommend it to everyone who is able to go. Apparently I had the opposite experience as @Selbbin had. It's not a luxury. It's a worthwhile, very important thing one can do if one can. I get it not everyone can afford college. Believe me, I just put my son through grad school and you don't have to tell me it was a big chunk of change. But it was some of the best money a parent could spend on their child. There are two issues in this thread. The OP is asking if a degree necessary for a writing career. The answer is no, it's not required, and not the only path to being a successful author. But then the discussion went from there to somewhat dissing the value of a college education, suggesting it might or might not give a writer writing skills. You seem to be insisting formal education is mainly useful for employment. I don't agree. You can get so much more out of a formal education than just economic return on investment. Yes, it's expensive for some of us. No a person shouldn't feel inferior because they don't have a degree. But of all the things one invests time and money in, a college degree is a well placed investment for more reasons than just a job. And as for that job, a college degree correlates with future earning power.
That assumption is a usually-valid description of most elementary, junior high, high school, and to a large degree undergraduate education. I think that when you get to postgraduate degrees like a master's, it stops fitting. Edited to add: At least for large swaths of the subjects in which you can get a postgraduate degree; I'm not arguing for all of them.
The other thing about a university education - as opposed to home study - is that it gives you experiences beyond the classroom that you wouldn't otherwise have had. My years at university were among the best I ever spent. I met some great people, had some fantastic times, learned a lot about living independently, got work experience I would never otherwise have had (my university had co-op programs), and so on. Those years were a hugely important time of my life. You don't just go to university for the degree so that you can get a good job. You also go for the personal growth experience. I just thought somebody should point that out. And no, I didn't study creative writing; I studied engineering. I didn't learn to write at university, but as someone who writes science fiction, the training helped a lot on the technical side of my stories.
If someone wants an education, they can get one with or without a degree. If someone doesn't want an education, they can get a degree while having learned very little. So, yeah, I think the main purpose of a degree-granting education is job-related. Of course you CAN get more out of a formal education than a return on investment, but as Will Hunting says, you can also drop 150 grand on an education you could have gotten with a library card and a few late charges. I'm not against formal education, at all. But, yup, I think the main reason to go formal rather than informal is the degree, and the main reason to get a degree is to get a job.
Or you could have spent those four years and the tuition money travelling the world to meet people, getting work experience through volunteering, living independently, etc. Again, I have nothing against going to university. But people who DON'T go to university have their own personal growth experiences, right? ETA: I think the thing about university is that it's a socially sanctioned personal growth experience. At US schools in particular it seems like university is a sort of half-way-house to the real world, where students are given SOME independence but not that much, etc. Which is fine, but, again, a luxury. A lot of kids become independent at 18 because their parents aren't going to pay for them any more.
Having done both, gotten a master's degree and traveled the world, I'd say they were completely different learning experiences, one could not have substituted for the other. As for usefulness in writing, definitely both are that. I'm drawing on a wealth of knowledge and experience writing this novel.
And if you'd done something else, like, say, joined the military, THAT would have been a completely different learning experience, too. Hell, going to jail would have been a hell of a learning experience. Getting married, having kids, writing a book, directing a movie, spending a summer in the wilderness - they're all learning opportunities. I'm not sure why going to university would have elevated status over any of the rest of them.
This is right, I picked up some great stories while at university and met some great people too. I grew as a person at university into the monster who writes these posts. They are good drinking stories, some stories that are pretty dark, some sad, many are fun and irreverent in a Pynchonian sort of way. I learned other things outside of just what my degree required, I met people from around the world, and I learned what it was like to be a bohemian - sleeping until mid day only to roll out of bed, smoke - even some weed, and then write and drink until the early hours of the next day. However, you don't need a degree to be a writer - but a good education and tuition in literature will really help you along. You will not be able to write good poetry without learning the rules of poetry. It is very rare free verse is good poetry in my experience, and slam poetry too, being perfectly honest. Sometimes, travelling just isn't enough either. I didn't appreciate my childhood spent partly in Greece until I read Classics. I didn't appreciate Amsterdam until I read Anne Frank's diary. I would never have fell in love with Florence if it wasn't for Petrach, Dante and Virgil. My home country was enriched by Beowulf, Robert Burns and Robert Frost. What you know, how you know it, and how deeply you experience things counts far more than the paper of a degree certificate and the letters after your name. University is a very good place to become enriched as a 'soul' for lack of a better word. What was it that Keats said? Experience develops an intelligence, and makes it soul? Something like that?
Of course you can have personal growth experiences without going to university. They'll be different, but just as valid. You could join the military right out of high school. You could travel the world, as you said. You could start a business. BTW, I could not have gotten the work experience I received by volunteering. I was working in engineering departments at high-tech firms. Those jobs were only available to engineering students. You say you have nothing against going to university, but you sure seem to fight against it. You're always coming up with reasons not to. Why?
As I said up-thread, I spent eight years in university. It was a great path for me. So I'm not at all coming up with reasons to not go to university - if people can afford to go and are interested in going, I think they should go, (not that they need my approval!) But I think there's a class issue in the assumption that university is somehow unique in the world of learning opportunities. I had the luxury of going to university, and I learned a lot while I was there. Other people might not have had that luxury, and they probably learned a lot doing what they did. University is unique in that it is set up as a formal learning-recognition-program, and the primary reasons I can see for someone needing external recognition of their learning are job opportunities. That's where this discussion started.
I always assumed college was a way to keep children of upper classes above children of lower classes (as a general rule). Sorry, but if you go to a private high end college, you're learning elevated crap like Plato and Keats and modern art, etc.,etc.,etc., and you're also learning how to critical think, and you only have to do it 2/3 of the year. The other 1/3 you're traveling abroad, visiting Spain or Japan, to get more cultured. Or, you're using that 1/3 to do an internship at a medical research university or a high end firm. You're also at some point meeting the son or daughter of some CEO, in case you can't get a job the hard working way. How is the average low income young adult, who can't afford to go to college, spending those same four years? Maybe they're gaining valuable insight scanning the same three hundred items over and over again at the checkout counter? It is a terrible system. edited to add: It's great that schools like MIT have put all their course material online for free, and that you have all sorts of tutorials for people who can't afford an education. However, if the student can't afford to go to college, and he wasn't able to land a full tuition scholarship, will he be able to afford an environment suitable enough to learn by himself, and will he have the ability to actually go through with it? I think it's much, much, much easier to learn in an interactive environment, with a professor (or at least graduate students who act as professors), to communicate with other students, and have your work evaluated.
My learning experiences came on the job. I left school and did a YTS, (in this country, in those days it was something in between an apprenticeship and college, more college but you were paid £30.00 a week for doing it, circa 1990) where I scored highly in Photography. After that, I was told I was too stupid for university and to get a job. At 18, I moved out of my parents home and began learning. I worked in hospitals (putting dead bodies in a fridge), first as an admin person and then as a porter. You may laugh but I was the only porter in that place who could change the gas canister on the trolley in the Day Theatre ward which led to them requesting me to do the job every time it came up. From their I've had admin jobs, secretarial jobs, running offices, teaching embroidery, invigilating exams, running my own business selling cosmetics and making bedding (separately), I've worked in kitchens, I've been a big part of a PTA, adopted kids and now I write. It's taken at least three years for people to even start to take me seriously as a writer (many still don't, it was even harder when I was trying to run a business) so I can't help feeling that people would have taken me seriously from the get-go if I'd had a degree under my belt. And yes, in the UK having a degree/master/BA/whatever you want to call it, is also quite a class thing.
I hate conceptual art, and I don't mind saying that in public. Modernist art is good, I like that, but most Modern art I just find soulless trash. Having a BA is not that much of a 'class' thing, surely? A lot of people I know who came from n0t-particularly-affluent backgrounds have BA degrees. Having an MA, maybe, since you have to pay for that yourself. I am, but as of this year you can apply for loans from universities to do MA degrees.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/05/02/poor-students-are-the-real-victims-of-college-discrimination/ "Some statistics: While 79% of students born into the top income quartile in the U.S. obtain bachelor’s degrees, only 11% of students from bottom-quartile families graduate from four-year universities, according toPostsecondary Education Opportunity. Put another way, about 55% of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in the U.S. went to students from top-quartile families with 2010 income above $98,875; 9.4% of those degrees went to students with family income below $33,000. " "The problem gets worse the more selective the school is. At elite law schools like Yale and Harvard Law, 60% of the incoming students tend to come from the top 10% of the socioeconomic spectrum, Sander says, while only 5% come from the bottom half. Similar studies of competitive undergraduate schools have shown that three-quarters of students come from the top economic quartile, while less than 10% come from the bottom half."
I think a lot of it boils down to money. If you/your family can afford it, you go to university. If not, you work your way up from the bottom and very few reach their goals. Some get stuck halfway because they haven't got the magical piece of paper rolled up with a red ribbon while the ones who do have it, get a pass to the managers' bathroom. OK, I'm being a bit sarcastic there but I'm sure you know what I mean.
