> There is a place for encouraging students to go to art school... the catch is that they need to have obvious signs of world class talent.
Maybe, but you have to be careful with this kind of thinking. I know a couple of really gifted guys with degrees from Berklee College of Music who still have student loans to pay off. The truth is, world class musicians working good jobs still take considerable time to pay off loans that big. It's not a high-paying profession.
There's a category of artist, the superstars, who don't have these sorts of problems but its population is vanishingly small.
On the other hand, the guys I'm talking about don't really question the value of their excellent education. It's not all about money for some people, which is good. It's just wise to know what you're getting into.
"World class talent" is hard to define in art. Was Jackson Pollock's work as an art student clearly "world class"? What about color field paintings? Anna Karenina was dismissed on its release as trifling. Art, perhaps by definition, is subjective.
An objective criteria might be to pursue art if you don't have to pay tuition. I knew someone who decided as a teenager that he wouldn't pursue music unless he didn't have to pay for it. This worked out mostly - his undergrad and graduate programs were full ride scholarships, he really was extraordinary. Except when he was auditioning for orchestras at the end, he spent almost a year unemployed and flying back and forth across the country on his own dime. He had to buy a separate seat for his instrument because he couldn't trust it being checked as baggage. He was incredibly good, but he told me that 80% of the people who auditioned were just as good, and past a certain level of ability, it was basically random who got picked. So this guy was perhaps "world class," but even at the end it was a dicey period where he was not sure he could be employed.
The world we live in is capable of providing a living wage to artists (and writers, and sculptors, etc.). It’s not common, and its not always the most comfortable living, but it exists.
Pixar, Riot Games, Marvel, and XKCD would not exist without full time artists (even those with above-average-but-not-world-class talent).
XKCD is created by a guy who is ... not exactly an "artist". Well, he's an artist because he draws, but he is foremost an engineer, and he went to school for a STEM education. He had a tech job at NASA in his past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Munroe
Because not many people go to art school and pursue that route.
You'd be surprised how many high-level creative positions are available, especially in games. It's kinda political to get a position of course. But being an artist is pretty sustainable if you're willing to put out work for a studio of that sort.
