Hi-- I’m Aron and I was tricked by the Art Institute of California San Francisco in attending their first graduating class of MFA-Animation students. I’m stuck with more than $90,000 of student debt inflated with interest from those two years.
I had graduated with a BFA from SCAD but was unable to find work in several months, I now realize that was partly due to my location in the Northeast. AiCA-SF was listed as one of only 3 schools in the country at the time that were offering an MFA in Animation. The recruiter told me I was not getting work because I needed more education and that I should go to their school. They pressured me to apply and attend, and I believed them. I believed them that I would not get a job in the industry unless I went back to school. I was accepted and in 2006, my mother and I drove more than 3200 miles from the Northeast all the way to San Francisco.
When we arrived there, the staff panicked. I had shown up as scheduled to start school, and they didn’t have anything in the program ready. They literally had nothing ready. None of the other students they had accepted had a background in animation, and they were scrambling to teach them basics like drawing, and Maya software.
To try to appease me and my mum, they said they would put me in two classes, and put me in the dorm. I sat through a number of months of refresher classes for what I had already learned and graduated from SCAD with. I was forced to live with 3 freshman undergrads in a crowded apartment that the school was calling their student living space. So EXPENSIVE and awful.
As time passed, I was trying to learn and it was hampered by inadequate facilities, and the fact that nothing was ready. Everything was ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ because the school’s administration HAD NO CLUE WHAT THEY WERE DOING. I was in multiple classes to build a flash website for a portfolio (which was foolish because Flash was outdated, and no apple mobile device would display flash based sites). The structure of the entire program felt soft, and unplanned.
I ultimately graduated after 2 years. Nobody would hire me, and I moved to Los Angeles, and started from scratch. I worked retail for 4 years while re-teaching myself art. My friend taught me flash animation, and I got my foot in the door of a small studio four years after getting to LA, and after another 7 months after that first studio job ending, I was hired as a designer for apps. I’m still working, but not a damn thing I do is the result of going to AI.
I was told job placement was excellent, I was told I would have support finding work. I was told getting that MFA would get me a job at Pixar, or Dreamworks, or Disney. None of it was true. I had to teach myself everything and I only got a job because of that.
Ai lied to me. They lied to the other couple of people in the program with me. They incessantly called and called and called trying to get me to decide to enroll. Once I had been accepted they incessantly called me to get me to accept and send the fees. Loan after loan after loan was added on top to pay for this sham school. My mother cosigned, she’s on several of my student loans.
I’m currently over $90,000 in student debt from 2 years of craaaaap at AiCA-SF. Not one damned thing I do at my job is something I learned there. They tossed around phony baloney numbers, and tantalizing studio names and promised I’d have all the support I’d need and I’d land a high paying job.
I work full time at an excellent job, and I have to throw most of my paychecks at student loans where the interest isn’t even covered by payments. The interest piles on, and I can’t pay anything down. I’ve been working my good job for 6.5 years and I’ve made no student debt progress. Hundreds a month gets tossed down the bottomless pit. This needs to stop. I’m 36 and I’ve never been able to afford a car.
Ai gripped on my hopes and dreams and fears like a bear trap and never let go. They preyed upon my dreams and fears to manipulate me into going to their school AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN HAVE IT READY. They harassed until I gave in, and built me up with excitement, and then the rug was pulled out from under me. I was left woefully unprepared and all those loans they stacked up.
UPDATE: I looked through the government student loan site and found out why my student loans from my BFA were marked as “paid”- my mother had us go through consolidation. The $160,000+ falling under Ai years was due to that, so some is from my BFA elsewhere. It does not list the private loans taken out so the $90,000+ I know for sure is Ai is likely to go up past $110,000
I’m shocked that 2 years of Ai school still cost that much and the loans from BFA didn’t get that high in 3 years of attendance after transfer in from fine arts school.
Ugh.
