Thursday, December 11, 2014

I don't get it:

I am looking through ads in the Chronicle and saving and printing things and I ran across this ad, and have spent about 20-30 minutes clicking all over their website trying to in any way get it.

Not that I'm trying to apply for it; it should be clear from 5 minutes of knowing me or reading me that there is no way I would "fit."

I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. Is this really a thing? A thing that people pay insanely expensive tuition for and then get a paying job at the other end? Is it woo? Is it a scam? (Dude, SF Art Institute, you are totally a scam. Unless you can produce placement lists of more than half of your graduates straight into Pixar or whatever other high-paying job you've got, you are totally overpriced for your degree field and in one of the most expensive cities ever.)

Anywhoo, at least I get what an art school or a culinary school is. This thing ... Hmm.

5 comments:

Bardiac said...

The Cal Institute of Integral Studies does look a bit scammish. On the other hand, they have a Council of Sages! Who wouldn't want to be part of a Council of Sages!

SF Art Institute, is, on the other hand, an expensive private art college, which, if I recall, is reasonably well-respected in the Bay Area.

Sisyphus said...

I know! It's all Lord-of-the-Rings up in there!

As for the art schools, I understand what they are but I think this one and the CUlinary institute topped that Chronicle list for highest debts and highest tuitions of all the for-profits. If you are training people for a job that will never ever pay enough to pay off those loans, then you are (IMO) a scam.

Then again, maybe CIIS grads make good money as journeymen sages!

Notorious Ph.D. said...

Some sort of new-age university? Like Deepak Chopra U?

What are you looking for people to teach?

We don't believe in confining minds; you tell *us*...

heu mihi said...

Apparently transformational scholars don't use apostrophes.

That's all I've got. I'm sorry: *Thats* all I've got.

Oh, wait, one more: They provide "an extraordinary education for people"! Remarkable!

Susan said...

Oh, it's real. I didn't look at their website, but at my former employer there were certainly students who wanted something like that. And we required a personal development project as part of the ph.d. Transformational leadership sounds like an MBA without the finance.