So, You're Thinking About an Art Degree:

Watch: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions About an Art Degree

You love to create; you've been sketching; you've been making videos since you got your hands on a camera; painting is your bliss; design is thrilling; you love the triumph of a finished piece at the end of the journey. You can't imagine any other major as a fit. You want to make creative work your career. You're in the right place.

1. The Jobs

Everything you look at and interact with was designed by someone. From your smartwatch apps to the numbers on your traditional watch, the printed ads in the subway to the webpages on your devices, commercials, animated films, and movies—this industry is not going away. The way it gets made is changing as technology advances. Commodity work is getting squeezed, but genuine creative work that requires judgment, taste, perspective, and needs a human in the loop is even more critical.

We've seen an explosion of visuals as the way we communicate and interact with the world changes. More people are making visual content than ever before, but many of those people are visually illiterate and aren't making a meaningful contribution. That's where professional training steps in and makes a huge difference. We give you the tools, but also help you develop something important to say.

The good news? We train for creative problem solving and adaptability, and our employment rate after graduation is higher than average at 88% (higher for some majors).

2. Transferable Skills

What if I can't find a job? This is a top concern we hear from our freshmen (and their parents).

We have seen countless grads develop successful careers, but each individual and situation is different. Our goal from day one is to foster independence and an entrepreneurial spirit. We provide students with an environment that promotes strategic thinking and curiosity. While we have high standards for quality craft, the core of the degree is about critical thinking, problem-solving, and staying curious. These are the tenets of creative jobs, but they are also highly sought-after skills in business, product development, tech, and more. We are building visual problem solvers who can also solve any creative problems.

We give students the tools to take charge of their careers.

In addition to traditional creative jobs, our alumni have successfully started businesses and even switched careers after working in their field of study. Their skills have been transferable to careers in project management, Industrial-Organizational psychology, product development, law school, interior design, photography, ministry, and more.

Think of it this way. Creative and visual problem-solving is an important skill, but it also provides a framework for thinking that sets you up to tackle almost any problem.

3. The Investment

How can I justify the cost? Can't I learn this skill with some online videos?

There are hundreds of resources online. Never in history have we had this much access to information. And we actually love having so many resources from YouTube to Skillshare, Animation Mentor, CGMaster Academy, AnimSchool, FilmSchool, Domestika, and the list goes on. What makes us different? Why should you attend an in-person school?

Knowledge vs Information. Knowledge is the practical application of information. It's the connection between all the pieces. Knowledge can't be learned; it can only be experienced. Knowledge is the space between all of the information.

Collaboration is the industry. Film, animation, design—these are team sports. Learning to give and receive critique, to hand off files, to solve creative problems with other humans in real time? That's not optional. It's the job.

Information isn't the same as formation. You can learn about animation from a thousand tutorials. But becoming an animator—developing your eye, your instincts, your resilience—that happens in relationship. In higher education, we are in the business of 1. long-term relationships, 2. wisdom.

Real-time mentorship changes everything. A YouTube tutorial can't see that you're rushing your spacing because you're impatient. A professor can. They'll catch the habits you don't even know you're forming and redirect you before they calcify.

Deadlines with stakes. Online courses have a 90%+ dropout rate for a reason. When you're accountable to faculty, peers, and a cohort moving through a program together, you finish. You push through the hard parts instead of clicking to a different video.

Equipment and infrastructure. Render farms. Sound stages. Camera packages. Edit bays. You'll have access to tools that would cost you six figures to own.

The network effect. Your classmates become your first collaborators, your first referrals, your first crew. Faculty become references and advocates. Alumni open doors. Building that in-person trust is critical.

And at SVAD specifically: Integration. We're not just teaching you to make things. We're asking why you make them, who you're making them for, and what kind of person you're becoming in the process.

4. What About Machine Learning and Generative AI?

AI is fundamentally changing the nature of intellectual and creative work. Think about the history of technology in the arts and humanities. You used to have to grind up lapis lazuli to make blue or collect 10,000 tiny sea creatures to make crimson. The access to materials fundamentally changed what and why you would paint. After the development of pigments, so many more people could use them in so many more ways. A book of the Bible used to take hundreds of animals to make vellum and then months to copy, and was treasured by the entire village. And now we can write and share ideas and carry all of that wisdom in our pocket. Computers opened up desktop publishing. Digital cameras opened up photography for everyone. And we embraced those changes—because in every case, they made the medium or the elements or the process easier. This is known as Induced Demand. Increased accessibility and lower costs lead to higher usage.

What is different now is that AI threatens to imitate the very creative nature that makes us human. If a machine made the work and I like what it made, is that ok? Is the work still valid? Does it matter that a faceless, soulless, unfeeling thing made a thing that made me, a face-filled and soul-filled thing, feel something?

HERE IS WHAT WE THINK:

We embrace AI where it can improve the medium, process, or work, but we want to keep the creation human.

Things that are real will have more value. The original painting, the hand-lettered design, the block print. People don't just want the artifact. People want to know who made it and why. The hand-thrown mug matters more when you've met the potter. In a flooded market of frictionless content, provenance becomes premium.

The world wants authenticity. That means real people behind the art and ideas. We think there will be a hunger and demand for authentic creative work. Story still wins. People want people. Brands still signal value through crafted products.

The process forms the person. Even if AI could produce an identical output, something irreplaceable happens in the making. The struggle, the revision, the breakthrough—that's not inefficiency to be optimized away. That's where the artist is shaped. We're not just producing work; we're producing workers, thinkers, creators to make things AI could never dream up.

AI can remix. It cannot mean. Generative tools draw from the ocean of existing human expression. They can recombine, interpolate, and imitate, but they cannot intend. Meaning requires a subject who has lived, lost, chosen, and believed. The work matters because someone meant it.

Curation is a creative act. Even when AI assists, someone must decide: this, not that. Taste, judgment, and editorial vision remain human. We teach students not just to generate but to discern.

We create because we're made in the image of a Creator. This isn't just professional development. It's theological. To make something from nothing, to bring order from chaos, to offer beauty as a gift is participation in something sacred. No algorithm shares that calling. God worked. God created. God said, "It is good." That's what we want to follow.

Presently, it's largely counterfeit art/film/design, and culture hates it. There is a lot of slop out there, and the masses are cringing at best or abandoning brands at worst because they don't trust their use of AI. People value authenticity. (Though we recognize it is rapidly changing, so stay tuned…)

Community and connection. Nothing can beat the in-person connection of friends and colleagues. "That unpredictable human element is where our art schools can shine." –James Gurney [Just read Romans 12:4–5]

5. Skills You'll Need to Hone and Develop: Both for College and the Job Market

Consistent hard work

The most important skill, both in and out of school, is hard work. No amount of cramming can improve drawing skills, develop a story, or magically make someone good at lighting a scene. It takes practice: consistently showing up day in and day out, trying, failing some, and trying again. Consistent hard work is the best predictor of success.

Reliability

Show up each day, be part of that group project, follow protocols, turn the work in on time. It's really that simple. And when the occasional problem pops up, professors and employers know that person can be trusted–and there is more flexibility when those situations happen for those trustworthy individuals.

Problem-solving

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the top skill employers are seeking is problem-solving. Don't complain, don't always rely on someone else to fix it: offer solutions, break it down, and try to figure it out.

Teamwork

Another chart-topper in the NACE list, employers want to know that their hires can work with people in a professional way that promotes a good environment and advances the work. It starts with teamwork on class projects, stretching and building those muscles for the workforce.

Initiative

Proactive self-starting is another important skill. Finding a project, continuing education, volunteering for a leadership role, fixing a problem before others notice it; these make an employee invaluable to a company.

Feedback

From grades 1–12, you were reliant on our grades as feedback. In art school and beyond, you have to learn a different kind of feedback. Critiques on our work help us get better and learn what works and what doesn't. You can either seek it out and flourish by making better work, or hide from it because it hurts. Hiding will cause you to stagnate very quickly. Being able to receive feedback and appropriately apply it will make a huge difference in your ability to grow and create trust when your boss tells you you need to change something.

"Those who wish for stronger minds can gain them by diligence. The mind increases in power and efficiency by use. It becomes strong by hard thinking" (White, 1999, p. 99)

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