Data, Pressing Needs, and Biggest Challenges: Insights from the Field

One of the most prominent information needs expressed by participants was for better insight andforesight into market demand for the skills, training, and experiences that their institutions provide, and might impart to their students. Participants described using market-demand data for multiple purposes, including:

• Demonstrating the value and relevance of current programs to higher education administrators, educational governing authorities, and policy experts
• Providing evidence in support of program innovations within the institutional approval procedures
• Communicating with prospective students and their families about the value of arts, design, or media degrees
• Examining career choices and outcomes of alumni
• Illustrating large-scale shifts in education and career paths for a wide variety of creative professions

Focus group participants discussed using several sources that could provide an array of relevant data on market demand in creative professions, many of them publicly available data sources and reports. Namely, these sources include public, federal data sources, such as the Current Population Survey, the American Community Survey, and datasets provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. State-level and regional-level studies drawing upon these federal sources, as well as regional sources of data, can also provide insights on the creative economy and creative sectors. Regional and institutional studies, such as the now long-standing Otis Report on the Creative Economy¹ that focuses on California, were noted for their usefulness both inside and outside of the area of their geographic focus. Participants emphasized how imperative these data and related studies are for providing vital macro-level insights and a compelling evidence base to inform program design and advocacy. Professional publications such as The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education, along with alternative sources like The Creative Independent, were also named as important sources of information.

The need for micro-level information about market demand was also described as a pressing need in order to better shape post-secondary arts and design education. Direct input from current employers is vital to revealing immediate pathways for students’ early career advancement. Such input can be used to improve direct placements through informing better ways to train, advise or otherwise connect students to future employment. Some participants reported taking stock of employment trends by scanning, aggregating, and distilling job postings and related resources, a service provided by private consultants. Importantly, participants noted the importance of investing in and developing direct relationships with potential employers, as well as larger-scale industry collaborations through standing advisory boards or other means of communicating with prospective employers. Participants use insights from potential employers for refining and evolving curricula, in both a reactive manner responding to demonstrated market needs, as well as a proactive manner, forecasting future employer needs, newapproaches to work, and new types of jobs that draw upon the skills and perspectives of arts and design alumni.

Some administrators, notably those from community colleges, highlighted the value of state and local labor data for revealing regional trends that allow curricula to be aligned with employer needs. Alongwith monitoring large-scale job posting websites, administrators rely on advisory committees that inform their institutions on what employers in their region are looking for in the next generation of employees.

Active alumni networks were also discussed as vital to micro-level information about market demand. Though participants readily identified the challenges of activating alumni networks, they emphasized that any level of authentic activation — meaningful engagements with alumni beyond simply soliciting donations — can result in critically valuable and actionable ​“anecdata”. Participants discussed the importance of anecdata to informing curricular offerings and placement efforts, especially during our current period of dynamic social change.

Administrators described the focus on career outcomes as a relatively recent standard of success among arts and design institutions. In addition to using SNAAP data, researchers and arts school administrators who do want to know about alumni outcomes primarily turn to two federal data sources, the American Community Survey² and the National Survey of College Graduates.³ The American Community Survey includes data on undergraduate majors, as well as general information on graduate degree attainment; the National Survey of College Graduates includes data on undergraduate and graduate majors, including the visual and performing arts.

It was noted in each conversation that few departments and institutions use systematic strategies to track alumni career trajectories. There is a notable shortfall in detailed data available to artsadministrators and researchers. Participants reported relying heavily on SNAAP data to understandcareer outcomes of their graduates. SNAAP has proved integral to revealing substantial institutional detail about student outcomes, as well as providing context for institutional data by comparison with national-level, peer institution data. The Gallup Alumni Survey, which is not specific to arts and design,was named as another resource used to capture broad data on alumni.

When institutions themselves are collecting data, common forms include the following:

• Exit surveys that are typically organized by a central university office that tend to focus on macro insight about the university or college. While some participants shared that their own institution collected useful student outcomes data, many commented that accessing the data and workingwith central offices has become harder as support staff have been steadily reduced.
• First-destination employment placement surveys, run either on an ad-hoc basis from individualdepartments or programs, or supported by institutional research or alumni offices
• Alumni surveys sent at key milestones post-degree — 6 months and 1‑year to 2‑years post-degree, but typically not after two years — run on an ad-hoc basis from individual departments or programs, or supported by institutional research or alumni offices
• Word of mouth, alumni townhalls or events, or annual solicitations to alumni about current career and happenings for magazines, newsletters, and other alumni communications
• Internal efforts to track alumni through their social media profiles, namely on professional platforms such as LinkedIn

In reflecting on the information needs and data available, participants stressed the importance of understanding career outcomes in terms of traditional measures, such as employment and income. In contrast to other fields, however, many participants noted that there is a tendency amongst some within arts and design fields to see employment outside of these fields as not a successful alumni outcome.

Some participants articulated the reality that there is little unanimity, even within art schools, over what counts as graduate success. One standard is understanding success solely as employment as an artist or designer. Others understand success as the translation and celebration oftransferable skill sets from arts and design into other sectors. While others see success as the adaptation, integration, and innovation that surrounds applying one’s ​“artistry in unique ways outside of the primary sector of the arts” (Focus group participant).

Some focus group participants noted that it is important to understand how alumni are making and defining their own success. They observed students and alumni increasingly tending to define theirsuccess in terms of happiness, satisfaction, and positive impacts made on others or their contributions made to matters of community importance. Some participants referred to this latter measure of success as the ​“mission mindedness” of many of their students. One participant asked, how can we ​“measure the degree to which [graduates] can make an impact in the world with their education and their employment, both as connected and separate things, [how they] feel empowered to make impacts or change in the world”? (Focus group participant.) 

Another participant asked, ​“How do we guide our students to do the bridging with the other disciplines, and do it in a way that deepens and elevates the artistic practice, as well as linking to the other discipline?” (Focus group participant). While the challenges and feasibility of obtaining this information was fervently discussed, one participant astutely commented, that it ​“may be complicated to ask, but it would be good to not guess.”

Student outcomes evaluated in terms of employment and income are a vital measure of financial return on investment (ROI) for arts-related degrees,⁴ especially for degrees that may incur significant personal debt or public underwriting. However, many participants stressed the need to understand ROI more broadly — ROI as gains, benefits, and impacts beyond financial measures. Participants commented that it will be important to ​“measure the other capitals of employment,” those that are the sources of meaning and engagement in the world in addition to paid employment and to ​“account for nuance” when we think about employment — accounting for more movement in employment and nuance in how employment is configured (Focus group participant). Participants reflected on changes in work and dynamics expected around it, and the growing urgency of information needs related to these changes and dynamics. Some participants commented on the need to provide resources to faculty who don’t themselves have direct work experience in a rapidly changing and technology-disrupted labor market in effort to help them help their students.

Administrators stressed the importance of being able to communicate more confidently and credibly with prospective and current students about the range of plausible career opportunities following post-secondary study in an arts or design field. Participants mentioned the need to understand and communicate better the value of skill transferability across disciplines, especially into STEM fields, and the ways an arts-related degree prepares graduates for a multitude of industries and jobs. Participants noted that having data that speaks to how these arts-related degrees can be useful in myriad industries is needed and highly valuable. Arts and design schools are alert to standards and trends among their peer programs; these administrators expressed an interest inunderstanding more about what peer institutions are doing to actively encouraging students to broaden their career vision and preparation — or not. Some participants reflected on significant challenges within their own institutions around broadening the prevailing narrow vision of careers or employment opportunities in arts as indicators of success.

Many participants emphasized the need to change Eurocentric cultural assumptions and White supremist structures that underpin so much of the curricula and dynamics of arts and design schools in the U.S. One participant opined that academia is 20 years behind other industries in identifying and working to rectify racial inequities. It was also noted that arts and design faculty, administrators, and students in higher education are overwhelmingly White and that there is a ​“lack of lived experience within the system” (Focus group participant). Some participants commented that the overall structure of the academy will need to shift and that interacting with the new problems — such as decolonizing curricula, normalizing the increased use of technology in teaching during the pandemic — poses challenges when powerful senior faculty are wary of change. One participant commented that SNAAP data going forward will be important to helping them have ​“clear-eyed conversations” with faculty about ​“what the ethics are of their choices and giving them more information than their own expertise upon which to make those choices…when it comes to designing programs and building curriculum for students to function in worlds that [the faculty themselves] never lived in and many of us are having trouble imagining?” (Focus group participant.)

Although COVID-19 created and exacerbated several challenges and inequities, some participants shared that conversations surrounding equity, diversity, and inclusion were more open during the pandemic. Participants shared that Zoom capabilities allowed students and alumni to be more engaged in conversations and more empowered to share their perspectives and tochallenge their institutions. Participants also mentioned a need to better understand intersectionality and to expand equity and inclusion conversations beyond race and gender to include disability, sexual orientation, religion, and political ideology.