UK Actors: Too Much Study, Not Enough Work?

On the eve of the Conference of Drama Schools’ annual actor showcase, Lyn Gardner of the UK 'Guardian' detects some rifts in drama education. Gardner asks, “how well prepared are these young actors to succeed in a profession in which 80% earn less than £10,000 a year, and is three years at drama school still the best way to enter that profession? It's a question worth asking when it increasingly seems that the entirely untrained can just stroll up for an audition and get a shot at stardom in a reality casting TV show.”

Interviewed was Jonathan Holloway, a director for over 25 years who had experience of the higher education system when he was head of performing arts at Middlesex University. He says "There is now a real tension about the way actors are being trained, because the industry has entered a new era. Actors can't just act any more. If they want to work they have to be entrepreneurial: they have to make work, build companies and find spaces for that work. The graduates from universities are good at this. They are able to make context for the work, not just work itself."

Read the full article here.

Money + Education = Greater Arts Attendance

According a recent study conducted by Statistics Canada, the more money one makes and the more education one has, the more likely that person is to go to plays or concerts. The report suggests that the type of job a person had influences their choice to attend cultural events.

Those whose parents had advanced education, such as a university degree, were much more likely than those whose parents with lower education to attend most cultural activities. Mom's education had more of an impact than did dad's schooling, according to the report.

For those in a romantic relationship, their partner's education had an even greater effect than their mother's schooling on their likelihood of participating in cultural activities. But factor in a kid or two and the time they spent going out declined, the study found.

Statistics Canada researchers based their report on data from the 2005 General Social Survey which contains details on how nearly 10,000 Canadians aged 15 and over spend their time.

Putting Art Back in the Arts

While chair of the National Endowment for the Arts (1998-2001), Bill Ivey dreamed up an unofficial Cultural Bill of Rights, which he fleshes out in his book Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights . Now director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, Ivey argues that arts policy has long targeted two issues, arts education and increasing funding for nonprofit organizations, that aim to “bring more fine art to the American people” without encouraging more people to actually create. Here he answers some questions from the Utne Reader talked about why we’re making less art and what public policy’s got to do with it.

U.S. Colleges - Not So International

This is the entirity of an article by Scott Jaschik published on insidehighered.com.

College presidents boast these days about how international their institutions are — and many indeed are opening campuses abroad, promoting the study of foreign cultures, and sending more and more students outside the United States for a semester. But a study being released today by the Center for International Initiatives at the American Council on Education finds plenty of evidence that at a large number of institutions, borders very much exist.

Among the findings:

At 27 percent of institutions, no students graduating in 2005 studied abroad.

The percentage of colleges that require a course with an international or global focus as part of the general education curriculum fell from 41 percent in 2001 to 37 percent in 2006. Less than one in five had a foreign-language requirement for all undergraduates.

Less than 40 percent of institutions made specific reference to international or global education in their mission statements, although that figure is up from 28 percent in 2001.

Most institutions do not have a full-time person to oversee or coordinate internationalization.

The survey found different international strengths at different types of institutions, with doctoral institutions more focused on including international education in strategies and having full-time personnel to work on the plans. Bachelor’s institutions have the highest participation rates in study abroad. Community colleges were more likely than other sectors to create professional development programs for professors, focused on global issues.

The survey results appear in Mapping Internationalization on U.S. Campuses: 2008 Edition.