Middle-class families spend millions of art students to study abroad, but they can't train Wang Shiling and Enli

Letsight

2024-06-03 09:00Published in Beijing

This year, Ouyang Nana, known as the "Curtis Genius Girl", finally graduated from Berklee College of Music, but because she only got a Professional Diploma instead of a Bachelor Degree, it caused ridicule from netizens.

On the other hand, Yi Nengjing's son Enli graduated from the directing department of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with all A's grades a year ahead of schedule.

Art study abroad accompanied the two child stars into everyone's sight again.

Regarding art study abroad, some people think that it is a shortcut to further education, while others think that it is a bottomless pit that burns money. With the increasing volume of domestic studies, art study abroad has attracted the attention and favor of many families studying abroad.

So is art study abroad a shortcut or a bottomless pit?

01

Spend millions to study abroad and return to China with a salary of 7,000

According to the report of Kantianxia Lab, Alex studied high school, college and graduate school in the United States, and studied architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, the world's top design school, and spent about 5 million yuan in the past 10 years of studying abroad.

After returning to China in 2020, she went through three rounds of interviews and joined a state-owned enterprise in Shanghai as an engineer, with a monthly salary of only 7,000, plus a year-end bonus to barely reach the average salary level in Shanghai.

Some netizens in the comment area ridiculed: In the past, studying abroad was gold-plated, but now only the film remains.

According to such a salary, if you want to return to your education capital, I am afraid that you will have to work for 60 years without eating or drinking to earn back 5 million.

Working hard all his life to earn back his tuition fees made Alex wonder if studying abroad was worth it.

Alex's experience is not unique, as the study abroad fever heats up, more and more families choose to send their children to study abroad, and more and more international students choose to return to China for employment after graduation.

Related reading: This class of international students chose to "run" and returned to China

In recent years, there have been frequent news of spending huge sums of money to study abroad and returning to China with a salary of several thousand.

Some people attribute this phenomenon to the "depreciation of academic qualifications", and the status of returnees is no longer popular.

However, academic qualifications are not the only criterion for determining salary, it is only a small part of it, and salaries can change dynamically.

As the real estate industry continues to be sluggish, the construction industry has also been hit hard and has become an industry that is going downhill.

When Alex was studying for his bachelor's and master's degrees, the real estate and construction industry was booming, and he didn't expect it to be today, and architecture was also the most popular sunrise major at the time.

In the cold environment of the construction industry, there may be more construction graduates from non-prestigious universities who are unemployed, and Alex got an offer after three rounds of interviews, which is enough to see the value of studying abroad.

Although Alex's current salary is not high in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, he will not always maintain such a salary level.

The experience of returnees is more conducive to salary increases and promotions, and it is also possible to reach hundreds of thousands or millions of annual salaries in the future.

Many international students who have just returned to China do not have obvious advantages in the early stages of their careers, but they will gradually show in their future development that the value of studying abroad is not directly reflected in their income.

02

Art study abroad has become a favorite of middle-class families

Some netizens think that Alex can't earn back his tuition, will it be because he chose to major in architecture, and it is also a particularly expensive art study?

When it comes to studying abroad in the arts, there is actually a huge change in the attitude of Chinese families towards it.

A teaching director who is engaged in international art education once mentioned that only a handful of parents came to consult about art study abroad around 2015.

There is a lot of concern that those are informal colleges and universities, and that they will be unemployed after graduation, and most traditional Chinese families think that it is difficult to make money as an artist.

However, in recent years, the national aesthetic has improved, all walks of life have begun to pay attention to product packaging and product image, and the employment field of art majors has become more and more extensive.

The director found that hundreds of families now come to consult art study abroad every year, and 5 or 6 of the more than 20 children in the class want to apply for art majors.

For children who study art or love art, studying abroad is an excellent pathway.

In China, "art students" are synonymous with "poor students" to some extent, and they can be admitted with low literacy scores when they are admitted to universities.

But art is a serious subject abroad, and art students are offered a B.F.A. in Fine Arts and a B.A. in Arts at the undergraduate level.

Art majors can be roughly divided into six categories: fine arts, visual arts, fashion, performing arts, architecture and design, and influence and digital media.

The application for art colleges varies greatly from country to country, from school to school, and from major to major, and in addition to language scores and high school GPA, you also need to submit a portfolio.

The United States attaches more importance to students' artistic activities and practices in applications, while the United Kingdom pays more attention to students' insights into art and requires students to submit an Artist Statement.

Different countries have different artistic atmospheres, and art teaching is also different.

The United States is a multicultural country and a country with extremely developed creative industries.

The collision and exchange of different cultures and art forms will generate new sparks, and in a free country, students can be encouraged to express their creativity to the greatest extent.

Art education in the UK is more academic, France is a paradise for artists, Italy is a fertile ground for all inspiration... It can be said that art education in each country is unique and has its own style.

From the perspective of schools, art study abroad can choose art majors in comprehensive universities, such as Carnegie Mellon University, New York University, University of California, Los Angeles, etc., whose art majors are among the best in the world.

You can also choose art colleges, such as Savannah College of Art and Design, Rhode Island School of Design, London College of Art, etc., which seem to be relatively niche in the outside world and are indeed the vane of the industry.

If you want to develop in the art circle, then "network resources" are more important, and only in top art colleges and universities can you have the opportunity to contact the big names and celebrities in the circle.

Only these "network resources" can bring a lot of help and opportunities to students in their future careers.

03

Studying abroad in the arts should be mentally prepared

But studying abroad in art is not so easy, and "once you become famous and known to the world" may just be a good wish.

As we all know, studying art itself is very expensive, and it needs to burn money all the time. Art study abroad is even more expensive, the return on investment period is long, and the future benefits are uncertain.

Alex's architecture major is already a technical major with more employment opportunities and a higher salary in art study abroad.

If you are studying pure art, if you don't have the resources or talent, I'm afraid it will be much more difficult to develop in the future.

Think about it, Wang Shiling's grandfather is a famous painter, and her outstanding painting talent is inseparable from the careful cultivation and artistic edification of her family.

Her 8-year-old painting "Peacock" was auctioned for more than 100,000 yuan, opened an exhibition at the age of 9, and her 12-year-old work "Garden" was qualified to participate in the Louvre Museum in France.

Another example is Enli, although Yi Nengjing has repeatedly emphasized that his son does not rely on the resources and fame of his parents, but with the aura of the second generation of stars, it is an extremely rare resource in itself.

In the future, no matter whether Enley wants to go to the screen or before, the return on his investment in art study abroad is a sure win.

Ordinary families simply regard art study abroad as an investment behavior, but in fact, it is close to gambling.

After all, there is no high-yield and zero-risk investment in the world, and even if there is, it is either a scam or it is not the turn of ordinary people.

It is true that studying abroad in art requires a certain economic foundation, but it is not only the super-rich who can engage in art.

At present, many art majors in schools are cross-integrated with other majors, such as Yale University's Computer + Art, MIT's intelligent construction major integrating artificial intelligence into urban planning and architectural design, etc.

If you are really interested in art, it is better to save the country with curves, and choose these art + other majors to learn the art you are interested in, and you can also have a technology to support yourself.

The purpose of studying abroad can be to see the world, it can be to experience a new environment, or it can be to go to a prestigious school to realize your dreams, but don't hope for gold plating on studying abroad.

The idea of finding a good job by studying abroad is about to fall through this era.

The value of studying abroad is not only measurable by money, but also reflected in students' life values, lifestyle, thinking pattern and network.

This is especially true for art study abroad, where you must have a keen insight into the world, the ability to think deeply, and the ability to create great works.

These things that cannot be seen or touched, and are difficult to measure with money, are the gains and values of studying abroad.

A phrase from a netizen is very appropriate here: the purpose of mountaineering is not the summit, but the mountaineering itself.

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