Death of An Art School

Brooks College is the walking dead. Teaching out the program with one semester to go. The question is how did it die? Who killed it? Was it really murdered by the corporate bean hoarders?

Back in 2001 Margot Dinardi hired me into Brooks College as the first Animation Department employee to help her start their new animation department. I had run a ROP animation program for 6 years so I had the skills she needed to help get her program off the ground.

Brooks College had a good reputation as a fashion school, they had started top notch graphics and multimedia programs over the years and now they wanted to move into animation.

Margot was a fireball and really put the effort into setting up the program in the way that it should be established. She went to industry events, she got industry veterans on her advisory board. She set up the programs the pros suggested. She fought for her program and her students in the staff meetings.

So what went wrong? How did this major art school with a good reputation, a great reputation in fashion, come to so ennoble of an ending? Classes taught out by a shrinking pool of teachers and the lease on the building sold off to Cal State Long Beach for dorms.

What went wrong was Career Education Corporation, a for profit education corporation that had bought Brooks College a little before Margot talked me into helping her set up the animation department. The key here is the term for profit. The most important thing to them seemed to be keeping the stock price up. We were getting memos all the time about why we should be buying their stock.

But Margot wouldn`t play the game with the new bottom-line make-a-profit-at-any-cost school president who was sent down from corporate to make sure the school made lots of money. So he had her marched off the campus under armed guard. Then guess what? Profits went up by the amount of her salary. And they got a great idea!

They fired all of the non-fashion department chairs and replaced them all with one wet-behind-the-ears kid. A new IT graduate with an AA degree from Brooks College, running the IT, the Animation, the Multimedia and the Graphic Design departments.

One day he is in the classroom learning from seasoned computer veterans the next he is in charge of them and everything else. Running art programs without a drop of art training. Doing what his president tells him to do. Saving money. Keeping the stock prices up. So CEC save lots of money at the cost of the quality of education passed down to the students.

It was half way throught the semester Margot was fired when they announced in one of their staff meetings that all teachers would have to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement promising not to tell the students just how crappy the Brooks programs were getting. That was about it for me. That was the end of 2001. I went on to teach at a number of other programs.

2003, I got asked to come back. I was not too sure about it. Still had the bad taste in my mouth. On the ground level Brooks was working a whole lot better than when I parted company with them back in 2001. The Career Development Office with Amy Chamberlin and her crew was second to none. The slimy presidents and know-nothing kid replacements were all gone. A lot of the other idiots were gone too by the time they ask me to come back. So I did.

But it is still a damage school. Damaged at the top by bean counters that don`t know that they are selling education. There are more corporate types on campus than teachers. Hundreds of people in offices doing who knows what that has nothing to do with teaching students.

Teachers were running the different programs from the trenches but not really getting paid for all their hard work. The students were getting their money`s worth again. The education was on the climb. Student job placement was up thanks to Amy. I taught a number of fun classes. Helped run the internship program. Used my contacts to get students jobs. But there is still a disconnect between the people doing the teaching and all those people in suits in all the offices creating all those reports and talking to corporate headquarters.

It was getting better went I returned but that crappy time had left its mark. First their accreditation was put on probation. Then they are hit with lawsuits for breach of promise because the freelance sales reps that sign up students were promising students anything to get the commission. That is when the 60-minutes story hit. Enrollment goes down. Their evil past come back to haunt them.

So what is the corporate response? Print a T-shirt that says We Are Brooks College and We Are Proud. I wouldn`t wear their shirt. I wasn`t proud. I was wondering why I was still teaching and it came down to the students. Two of my Brooks students got screen credit on the Simpsons movie. A number of others got great jobs at important studios.

But then the corporate play book is opened, where is our profit? Save money by cutting unneeded things like Animation History and the Career Development Program. Kill, kill, kill the patient as long as we get our gold.

It is all down hill from there. I`m still teaching at all these other schools during the week and only come in on Thursdays to doom and gloom in the teacher`s lounge. But I`m still turning out good students. I get to watch it almost from the outside as the whole school crashes and burns in slow motion. The question remains, why? I know how they killed this one-time top school but why, is still the question?

Here is one possible answer. This is teacher`s lounge gossip, I have no proof to back it up but it is the only thing that makes any sense to me. One of the teachers told be that the CEO of CEC, the guy who keep sending all the make-profit-at- any-cost school presidents in to mess up our programs and fire our top people. The guy who sent the presidents whose only goal was to keep the share prices up. That top guy by teacher lounge rumor was cashing out a million dollars of stock options per year during the whole time the education quality of the school was being raped. Is it true? Is that legal? Who knows?

I do know that Brooks College did make really big obscene profits in the short run. The bottom line looked great. The stock prices climbed and climbed and stayed way up there. But now they are down. So what does corporate do? Cut your losses and sell of the juiceless cadaver. Buy that new car and that new townhouse with all that stock options money. Nobody was there to sing I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night. No teacher`s union to fight for the quality of the programs. No one to stop them from killing a fine old school and turning it into personal gain. After all it is a for profit school.

And teachers, real teachers will do the best job they possible can no matter what crap is thrown at them from above. I heard one of the teachers last week, one of the guys who ran the Animation Department without the title or the money. He was gripping, not about how he was screwed over. No he was gripping about the quality of the teaching as they close down the school. He was worried that the last semester of students were getting short-changed . He was going on unemployment in less than a week and he was worried about the students. He and all the other dedicated teachers that kept giving their best to the students as the boat sank deserve better.