Fine art degree: employment prospects

[EpsomSalted]

My child is predicted A in Art, A in history and A in Spanish at A-level. She is leaning towards doing a Fine Art degree but her other option is History with Spanish. Her heart is with the art option.

How employable is someone with a Fine Art degree nowadays? What can you do other than be an artist, an art teacher, an art therapist or a designer? I know nothing of the creative industries.

Also, do you wed to do an Art Foundation before the degree? Her school says she does but uni requirements seem mixed.

and finally where is good for fine art that’s NOT in London?

all advice very gratefully received.

Lack of transferable skills from art students is nonsense! One of the main skills you learn as an art student is identifying what skills you need to learn and working out how to acquire them quickly and efficiently. They learn research skills, presentation skills, IT and graphic skills, essay writing, marketing and varied practical skills. Problem solving and project management are a given. They also put in longer hours than humanities students.

@PhotoDad How does all that relate to standing on your own two feet though? How does she plan to leave home when not earning much? I’m assuming you will have her back at home - for how long? It’s a bit of a luxury to say you don’t want the stress of earning money.

@Wbeezer From any sensible research, fine art students struggle to get jobs with decent pay. Some clearly don’t want them and undoubtedly that means they alter the stats. However fine arts grads sit below most degrees in terms of earnings post graduation so that indicates employers are looking elsewhere and so are the grads themselves.

@OhDear111 She definitely wants to earn enough to support herself living away from home. At the moment she is back with us, and looking for work; she applies for multiple things a week, and rarely even gets an acknowledgement let alone a proper reply. I agree that we are in a privileged position to be able to support her for a while.

Graduates from very many disciplines are in similar boats at the moment. I think it that a lot of it depends on what you mean by "decent pay" here, and on the person's expectations in life. I suppose I have a lot of sympathy as it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do, and I've never been a 'high earner' despite a lot of educational qualifications.

I know three adults aged 50+ who have fine art degrees from art schools and a twenty something who graduated from art school.

All three of the older cohort became art teachers. (I’m not a teacher btw - that’s not how I know them). A fourth who also graduated from an art school but with a specific art discipline rather than a fine art degree works part time making and selling their art, partly helped by sharing the use of a tiny gallery within a family member’s multi-purpose venue.

The twenty something fine art graduate is a nail tech. She would echo pp’s comments about not being taught technical skills.

I also know two twenty somethings with degrees in specific art fields from art schools. One works in a shop and sells bits and bobs of her artwork.

The other makes a reasonable living from selling her artwork. Supported by her arty family who also sell art and who gave her a lot of financial support.

@PhotoDad Decent pay in my world is enough to live away from home and, mostly, pay your way. Clearly that’s a different salary depending where you are. London will need more than Stoke on Trent.

It’s very hard for grads and it’s not easy to get a job! I hate the modern bad manners of not replying to applicants but employers seem to drag our recruitment processes and you have to get lucky. Hence my great concern about anyone choosing fine art or similar over other possible subjects. It’s important to have a reality check.

@OhDear111 the graduate employment figures are a snapshot of employment and earnings relatively soon after graduation. I do not know of anyone from art school who even tried to get a graduate job of that type straight out of college.
i do know lots of people who have had very interesting careers and a surprisingly large number who earn very well. My husband had several years earning 6 figures ( in the creative industries) without anyone even asking him if he had a degree!

@Wbeezer I think IFS did 5 years after and it was looking at the value of degrees.

I know some people get lucky and definitely make their own luck. DH is now a retired engineer but had his own consultancy. He earned multiples of 6 figures for several decades. However one swallow etc. Most engineers don’t earn at this level and few arts grads do either.

They are both about as unemployable as each other.

Having said that I have met quite a few art grads working in tech. I think art is about ideas, trying and failing lots of ideas, taking criticism, collaborating etc and so will have more useful transferable skills.

In a sea of 2:1s in humanities a fine art degree might make you stand out a bit more as well.

It’s clearly not the case looking at the IFS stats. Earnings are higher for history grads and if it’s a top university, the odds are much better than a fine art degree in terms of earnings and job prospects. If dc can wait until late 20s to forge a career, great, but it’s a luxury and depends on parents helping out financially for years. However ambition and work experience will also matter for all graduates! Many arts graduates aren’t that bothered about earning well but obviously some are. The ones who aren’t clearly bring down earnings for those degrees. English degrees have the same problem now. Both degrees are girl heavy by the way!

"Both degrees are girl heavy by the way!"

At the risk of being shot down, that may be at least partly due to romantic notions that they will never need to be a breadwinner. Old traditions die hard.

@zeezaw Ha! I suspect the A levels in these subjects are girl heavy too. Especially English. Not sure earnings are factored in at A level. Nor finding a rich husband - that’s very hard to do.

Art suits people who know the right people. A girl on DDs MFL degree course left to do fine art in Florence. Her family runs a very well known furniture and lifestyle brand as well as interior design. You can buy her pictures from them. It was easy for her to make money but look at the huge advantage she had! Others just don’t get that lucky.

I think it totally depends on the aspirations , career interests and aptitudes of the young person.
I am a product of the Scottish school system where you take five subjects at Higher so that it’s not that uncommon for children to study Maths as well as Art (and Humanities) for university entrance. I noticed a pattern emerging over the years that the art school graduates who were the top earners were the ones who had Higher Maths passes ( my DH included) As a previous poster also noted moving into tech or the tech/creative industries interface wasn’t unusual for them. I couldn’t do that, or a corporate job for that matter.
i really feel that some posters are trying to fit Fine Art graduates into a career template that they just don’t fit.
i will say that if a big pension is important to you don’t choose a creative career. Even the well paid people I know ( apart from Professors) have worked mostly freelance all their careers and do not have good pension pots but them some of them are happy to keep working because they are interested in what they do.

I wonder whether you can apply for graduate scenes like the civil service, NHS, police with a fine art degree. Does anyone know?

Well 5 mins on Google has told me yes for Civil Service and police. Not checked the NHS.
No degree type is specified, just class of degree (eg 2:2 and above) (except for some of the civil service streams, where numerate degrees are required, for which a history degree would not allow an application either).
Fine Art is still a degree. It is not 'worth' less than a History degree. Statistics may show poorer earning outcomes, but it is still as valid a degree as any other.
Then like with any application it is fitting skills and experienced gained in the degree and elsewhere into what the role is looking for.

One thing I like to tell all Fine Arts graduates: "I'll have fries with that"

Of course they can, yes, along with the armed forces, the prison service, social care, and general management and administrative roles with many employers. However, if it is a graduate-level role then they will be competing with thousands of other "any degree" graduates. Or if competing for a non-graduate role then their degree won't count for much. Either way, they will need work experience that makes them stand out.

The Civil Service recently announced that their summer internship programme will only recruit from "working class" backgrounds, and it is a feeder for the Civil Service fast stream.

@zeezaw I suspect that CS internship is an attempt to address the balance. This year stats show that applicants who identify as lower socioeconomic class have almost half the chance of an offer compared to those who do not identify.

I'd say for competing for general grad jobs then making sure maths, verbal reasoning and relevant situational judgement up to speed. Might help to have down some "office" type work as they sometimes have work simulations. I'd imagine a fine arts grad would excel at the creative work simulations.

@Wbeezer You describe what the issue is. Art grads don’t want the higher paying jobs. Probably don’t want civil service or police either. These are some way from an art training as is armed forces. Totally not what most artists would want. That isn’t to say they cannot apply of course but, realistically, how many do? Few I suspect.

It was reported yesterday, as the government talked about work for NEETs, that graduate vacancies have reduced by 1/3. The idea that grads will get suitable jobs all round is now for the birds. We can clearly see who is missing out and even dedicated good grads are. It’s very challenging at the moment.

Many of the roles that would have previously been available to graduates are now taken by apprentices who have been trained specifically for those roles.

I think that if I had a DC interested in Art &/or Design, for the best chance of future employment, I would encourage them to take it alongside maths and physics at A level then do a Civil Engineering & Architecture degree, e.g. https://www.southampton.ac.uk/courses/civil-engineering-architecture-degree-meng or something like Landscape Architecture.

... e.g. https://sheffield.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/2026/landscape-architecture-ba

These are vocational courses that need art skills, and are directly relevant to forecast areas of demand and the Government's industrial strategy.

Yeah, a lot of art A level types aren’t interested in that though (taught it for 25 years)

They’re more interested in Grapgic or Textiel design. They design degrees have a reasonable employment rate.

App design is a huge growing area.

Most art A level students tend towards humanities or psychology type stuff. Some do physics etc. But the number that do is quite small.

Engineering degrees don’t require art A level. Although Dentistry like it.

"Engineering degrees don’t require art A level."

They don't require it, but they like it. Engineers need a broad range of skills. If they all only have maths and physics they are less creative than if there's some (for example) art and history and economics and other knowledge thrown into the mix.

Digital design already has a lot of competition and many people doing it for pennies or free in order to build up their portfolio.

OP, a lot of this information you could find out yourself if you took a few minutes to actually research.

In my experience, people who succeed in the arts industries are generally from wealthy backgrounds. Ie they can afford not to have regular/stable income because their families will cover their day to day costs and generally their family has connections that will help their work get exposure. This helps them build a reputation as an artist easier and gets them established.

So more importantly, you need to ask yourself how rich you are, can you fund your daughter for the foreseeable future? Cause ultimately in creative industries, it’s not really about how talented you are but who you know. Given you have no experience in art, it’s unlikely you have a network to tap into that will help her succeed. The arts industry isn’t really about securing a stable, salaried role. So if that’s what you think her future looks like, an art degree won’t help.

Not quite. Engineering and design are completely different skill sets. I don’t believe having an art background supports engineering to any notable extent, it’s largely irrelevant to success.

In practice (I work in the digital industry), software engineers and eg web designers have completely distinct roles where an engineer would be stepping on toes if they attempted creative/design work. Developers just need to fulfil a design brief someone else has made, and designers have nothing to do with engineering code. Hence, it’s not really an area where someone is expected to do both, you aren’t simultaneously going to be amazing at coding and amazing at designing, and having both skills doesn’t really make you any more competitive. Yeah, there might be a way to spin transferable skills - but not to a notable extent.