Vince Pitelka on thu 13 jun 96
I agree with Sam the Cat Lady. If ceramics programs are to remain viable
within larger art departments, they must not be more of a drain on the
departmental budget than other media areas. If this means that ceramics
students must pay a higher studio fee, so be it. In art programs where the
painting area does not provide ANY supplies, it sometimes means that ceramics
has to charge pretty stiff fees. I have seen studio fees in excess of $100 per
semester for ceramics classes. I prefer to keep it below that, but I think
that the secret is to have all students pay for their own clay, so that at
least to some extent they are paying in proportion to how much they are
using/making. Anyone in academia today is sick and tired of the word
"accountability," but unfortunately, in today's academic political climate, it
is the name of the game. Some universities carry accountability to terrible
excess, to the point where everyone in the university is paying someone else
within the same university for every service, paying rent to their own
administration for every square inche of space used, etc., and the accounting
costs for accountability become a monster. It often seems to boil down to an
acute academic paranoia about who is getting a larger slice of the pie. What
a sad miscarriage of the noble goals of academia
- Vince
Vince Pitelka - wkp0067@tntech.edu
Appalachian Center for Crafts, Smithville, TN
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