The Art Insitute of Las Vegas Review: Policy Changes

On Friday, July 18th, 2014, I attended the first week of Portfolio Preparation.  In this class, one is suppose to have his/her portfolio critiqued and worked on to get ready for graduation (or at least that is what the name of the class makes it sound like).  I would have a more detailed description of what this class is, but the school's course catalog is missing from their website.

Instead, last Friday, it was announced that each student needs to essentially be ready to graduate by Week 9 of Portfolio Prep.  I do know the previous couple quarters required that a student's portfolio essentially be ready for graduation, but now each student needs to have everything in order to graduate.  This includes the logo, resume, designs for the student's table at the portfolio show, and designs for all the take-aways at the portfolio show.

The change is so students who are suppose to graduate don't have people flying in be disappointed when the student doesn't graduate.  I can see the point of this argument; however, I don't agree with it.  I, for example, still have a handful of classes to take that are project classes that could greatly add to my portfolio (classes where I am suppose to learn things, but that can be argued against).  Why am I being set up to graduate when I still haven't taken Sophomore level classes?

It was also brought up that other majors at the school do it this way, so we're going to do it this way now. Essentially... "They're jumping off that thing over there, so follow me!" (blindly, by the way).

The main point I don't agree with here was the immediate, unannounced change to the way graduation occurs.  This put all of us in Portfolio Prep this quarter in a tight situation.  I, for example, was going to use this quarter to get everything I need to do either done or a good start on.  Now, I need to have everything done in the next couple months, cutting my time down by half.  Even worse, it was kind of hinted that if we aren't close to ready to graduate by Week 5 (four weeks from now), we probably aren't going to pass the class.

If I don't pass Portfolio Prep this quarter, I don't get to graduate in December.  This also means Senior Defense/Portfolio is going to be used to polish our individual pieces (this is backwards - why am I trying to build a house when I haven't laid a foundation? Saying - why am I putting pieces of full projects that aren't polished together for my portfolio reel?)

This is how this school operates.

List of all the posts I have about my experiences at AILV