Dismantle, Build or Repair?
Re-thinking our capitalistic education.
During my time at MICA, the school was re-structuring due to enrollment based financial shortages. As a result many faculty & staff members’ jobs were on the line, students were anxious about continuing their education and tension was strife along different groups.
This thesis was developed from evaluating this crisis, and exploring tensions between different groups — delving into some of the deeper underlying problems often swept under the rug at many art & design universities.
Designer, Researcher, Motion Designer, Facilitator
What’s this enrollment cliff?
However, these shifts are affecting students now — pointing to the larger problems of the higher education world, that have remained across decades.
Student, staff and faculty responses
It was imminent that the enrollment cliff was leading to many changes at MICA (and other universities) but the response to these changes told a story that’s age old — lack of transparency, exhausted faculty, anxious students — all of them wanted accountability.To delve deeper into these responses, I interviewed across different people including student, staff and faculty through different methods;
- Activity sheets tracing their educational journey to + at MICA
Informal group discussions
Discovering problems and making sense of them
After all my information gathering — I was able to map out everything into:Stories — Things people mentioned had happened
Observations — Things I observed during my research
Quotes — Direct quotes from people I spoke with, or read about
Themes are underlying, repeating patterns in research. Through all the data points I collected, these 5 were the most prominent themes I noted;Insights
Connecting themes together — from an inequitable structure, to lack of community and sustained stress from university — I was able to see a larger story unfold. A space of education was seemingly no different than the definitions of capitalism.This is why the design challenge here became;
How might we dismantle the capitalistic structure of art & design university education?
Reversing the insights — I formed open questions that were used to generate ideas on how to tackle the design challenge. The questions had overarching themes of Care, Learning & Decision-Making powers.Bringing student, faculty and staff voices together
Impact & Next Steps;
This project will be showcased along with a parallel workshop at the AICAD Symposium at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.