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This report uses data from the 2022 SNAAP survey to provide insights on the most recently measured employment outcomes for alumni of arts and design postsecondary programs and alumni reflections on their work and careers, including satisfaction with different aspects of their work and careers.

This report focuses on providing insight into arts and design graduates whose work is — or before the pandemic was — in the arts, design, or creative realm by examining their working lives, economic lives, and the skills that they needed to attain or update during the first two years of the pandemic in the United States.

This report provides insights stemming from the 2022 SNAAP survey data on alumni reflections on the quality of their postsecondary arts or design experience.

SNAAP research scientist, Angie Miller, at Indiana University Bloomington, used SNAAP data to explore whether exposure to creative coursework during one’s time at their institution was able to predict several different career and arts involvement outcomes for alumni with undergraduate degrees in the arts.

Happy New Year! As we move into 2023, SNAAP would like to take a moment to thank our collaborators, partners and colleagues for an amazing year. Also, a look at what’s to come in 2023. For the first time, SNAAP will offer a portion of the SNAAP data to participating institutions via Tableau dashboards.

SNAAP is pleased to announce the 120 institutions participating in the 2022 survey administration. This is the largest and most diverse group of institutions to ever participate. For the first time, several community colleges and HBCUs will take part in the survey. 

2022 SNAAP Research Fellows, Jihee Hwang, Clinical Assistant Professor and Junghwan Kim, Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development at Texas A&M University, published their article entitled, High-impact educational practices in the arts and post-college community engagement, in the Journal of Local Development and Society. 

Shanita Bigelow, Ph.D, will be joining the College of Fine and Applied Arts as a Postdoctoral Research Associate Fellow for the Arts Impact Initiative. Bigelow is a recent graduate of the doctoral program in Educational Leadership at DePaul University. As a poet and educator, Bigelow brings expertise in research about educational programming and pedagogy in the arts with the unique perspective of being both a creator and educator. Bigelow’s work as a postdoctoral fellow will focus on analysis and interpretation of data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), an institutional partner of the College of Fine and Applied Arts. 

2020 SNAAP Research Fellows, Amy Whitaker, Assistant Professor of Visual Arts Administration at NYU Steinhardt; and Gregory Wolniak, Associate Professor of Higher Education at University of Georgia had their article, Social Exclusion in the Arts: The Dynamics of Social and Economic Mobility Across Three Decades of Undergraduate Arts Alumni in the United States, published in the current issue of Review of Research in Education.

Researchers at Vanderbilt and Arizona State University recently won a two-year, $25,000 National Endowment for the Arts research grant to support a mixed-methods study on the prevalence of arts internships and their role in students’ transition from college to careers. In particular, the study will assess trends of inequalities within arts internship experiences. The study will draw on SNAAP data. 

SNAAP is hiring an Assistant Director, Research Services to produce the institutional reports for schools participating in the 2022 survey, and to develop programs to help schools/colleges better understand and use their alumni data. This is a FULL TIME, REMOTE position with a $60-$63k salary. This new hire will be a UT Austin employee, while leading the research efforts of the 501(c)(3) that is Arts + Design Alumni Research aka SNAAP. Continuation beyond the 2‑year appointment is contingent on funding.

SNAAP is pleased to be partnering with Dr. Jennifer Novak-Leonard at the College of Fine and Applied Arts at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Dr. Rachel Skaggs at The Ohio State University who have just received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts to use SNAAP data from the 2022 survey to better understand whether alumni did/did not experience an inclusive environment and sense of belonging during their college education, as well as how the careers, lives, and needed skills and abilities of arts and design alumni have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and by the changing nature of creative and other work environments. Quantitative survey data will be weighted to the general population to support the generalizability of the findings. 

The Arts Impact Initiative (AII), housed within the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, seeks to hire a Postdoctoral Research Associate Fellow. The full-time fellowship will be a 12-month appointment during the 2022 – 23 academic year, commencing in mid-August 2022. The AII seeks a fellow to help advance its approaches in part through analysis and interpretation of data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project. Can be remote! Apply by November 17. 

Aaron Flagg, SNAAP Board member, and Chair and Associate Director of Juilliard Jazz Studies at the Juilliard School, awarded the Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for his outstanding article in the concert music field, ​“Anti-Black Discrimination in American Orchestras”, featured in Symphony magazine.

Learning from Arts Alumni: Supporting Careers and Addressing Inequities — October 20 – 22, 2021

A video recording of the ​“Informing the 2022 SNAAP Survey” session from the 2021 AAAE Conference. 

Lee Ann Scotto Adams will be joining the staff of the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin as the executive director of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). In her new role, she will oversee the planning and administration of the 2022 national survey of arts and design alumni, with her position funded in part by a three-year award from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.

Steven J. Tepper gives the commencement speech at Penn State University’s College of Arts and Architecture using SNAAP data.

Readers suggested more support for faculty development and for new approaches to broaden how we think about the value of college. SNAAP board member, Robert Sabal, suggests alternative data collection as a means of broadening the conversation around the value of college.

For a potential early understanding of this impact, this fascinating paper assesses the impact of graduating during or shortly after the recession relative to graduating shortly before this period on educational choices and career outcomes for college graduates majoring in the arts.

Longtime SNAAP board member Steven J. Tepper, Dean at ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts compares higher ed to the music industry 20 years ago in a piece entitled, ​“Higher Education in a World of Singles”

SNAAP board member, Aaron Flagg, Associate Director, Juilliard Jazz The Juilliard School talks to Aaron Dworkin about effective racial equity work in the arts and his sources of strength and inspiration in Arts Journal

Science News features a new study that uses SNAAP data in examining labor market factors as a driver of the wage gap between men and women in the arts. The main finding: gender-based income inequalities persist within the arts just as they do in other fields. The gender wage gap is comparable for artists and nonartists.

Wicked Local of the Danvers Herald promotes an upcoming art exhibition of Endicott College alumni. The article references SNAAP findings regarding the development of entrepreneurial skills at arts institutions and their use in the workplace.

The Indiana Daily Student features key results from the SNAAP DataBrief: Spotlight on First-Generation Artists.

This article written by Katia Savchuk and published in Forbes, quotes statements from SNAAP Senior Research Scholar, Jennifer Lena, as evidence for arts alumni’s preparedness for success in the workforce.

This Vail Daily article summarizes Steven Tepper’s findings, based on SNAAP data, on how arts graduates can build a successful career.

Jerry Cianciolo of the Wall Street Journal refers to findings from the 2011 SNAAP report ​“Forks in the Road: The Many Paths of Arts Alumni” as a counterargument to the misconception of parents who stear their children away from pursuing careers for fear of unemployability.

David Hoppe writes in Nuvo: Indy’s Alternative Voice about the misconception that a degree in the liberal arts leads to unemployment. He uses SNAAP data to make the case that ​“a liberal arts education neither as airy-fairy, nor as soul-crushing in outcome as some would have us believe.”

Purdue University’s The Exponent publishes an article summarizing how results from the SNAAP survey challenges the perceived notion of a lacking job market for arts graduates.

Alexis Clements cites SNAAP data in a piece published by Hyperallergic that focuses on challenges faced by arts graduates.

Based on data from the latest SNAAP Annual Report, Jared Keller, Director of News at News.Mic provides the following takeaway: ​“If the goal of going to college is to earn a high starting salary, you may want to consider leaving the paintbrushes at home to study engineering instead. But for aspiring artists who pass over arts school in favor of something ​“more practical,” rest assured for that arts degree actually pays off.”

Smithsonian.com highlights SNAAP findings that ​“recent graduates of arts degrees report high job satisfaction and employment numbers.”

Inside Higher Ed features results from the 2014 SNAAP Annual report, highlighting especially that arts graduates report ​“decent preparation” for the workforce.

Tom Jacobs of Pacific Standard covers the latest SNAAP Annual Report, drawing attention to how the study ​“suggests universities and other institutes of higher learning are getting better at training arts graduates in the more practical aspects of pursuing their craft.”

SNAAP Research Director, Steven Tepper published a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education in which he explores the difference between ​“me” and ​“bigger than me” experiences and how arts education can provide opportunities for fostering creativity beyond individual expression and voice.

Scott Carlson writes about the return on investment as well as the constraints/risks of attending art school in this piece published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. He highlights Sammy Hoi’s (SNAAP Advisory Board Member and current MICA President) use of survey data to ​“turn the conversation about the value of arts school toward the quantitative.” Carlson cites SNAAP results of high job satisfaction and involvement in the arts well past graduation.

A thoughtful piece about the perils of rankings from the website Majoring in Music.com — it refers readers to SNAAP data for a ​“composite picture of what an arts education looks like after the fact.”

Published in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, Steven Tepper, SNAAP Research Director and sociologist Danielle Lindemann use SNAAP data to suggest that arts graduates use multiple lenses to view the worth of their education.

On the Art F City blog, Whitney Kimball compares the results of SNAAP’s Annual Report, Making It Work: The Education and Employment of Recent Arts Graduates, with another recently released study about arts graduates published by BFAMFAPHD.

Commissioned by a research grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, this report explores the thesis that the arts are essential to a high quality of life, using SNAAP and two other datasets.

Philip Kennicott discusses the tendency of opera singers to fear failure in the reality of ​“a vast imbalance between the numbers of young people who enter conservatory or university training programs and the limited numbers of jobs that await them in the professional opera world.” He encouragingly points to SNAAP data which paints a more positive outlook on the careers and institutional satisfaction of artists-and how success can be defined more broadly.

In honor of the 100th birthday of the U.S. Department of labor, Kristy Callaway, Executive Director of the Arts Schools Network, interviews Sally Gaskill, Director of SNAAP about the value of an arts degree in the current economy.

Raymond Tymas-Jones blogs about how SNAAP findings shed light on the benefits of skills acquired through arts education.

Steven Tepper writes about artists in the workplace for Fast Company (with apologies to Daniel Pink re the title).

About three million college students will approach graduation day wondering what the future holds.

Budget crises force decisions that either improve a state’s economic future or compromise it.

Parents who are worried about the viability of their child’s arts degree can now officially breathe a sigh of relief.

A national survey of 13,581 arts-school alumni found that almost three-quarters of those who intended to work as a professional artist had done so at some point since graduating, and 90 percent of all respondents rated their educational experience as good or excellent.

What makes or breaks an artist? And is there a typical career path?

SNAAP will be a long-term longitudinal survey of arts alumni to show, among other things, ​“how students in different majors use their arts training in their careers and other aspects of their lives.”