Open Forum

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a piece I wrote for the February issue of Dramatics on student loan debt as it relates to young people who have degrees in theatre and are trying to make a living in the arts.

Shackled by Debt
Four years of actor training can provide everything you need to start a career -- except the ability to repay your student loans.

I wanted to know : are your students talking about student loan debt? Have you yourself been part of conversations on this issue? Do you have students who are looking at careers in theatre and are they concerned about paying for college and/or their debt load when they finish?

Would love to hear about your experiences with this issue and the discussions you've been part of in your own theatre communities.

------------------------------
Harper Lee
Associate editor, Dramatics magazine
Cincinnati OH
------------------------------

I've had several of these conversations with my students in the last few months, a couple of them have read the article and enjoyed it: it gave them some extra perspective and confirmed things that had cropped up in our conversations.

What I do with the college aptitude conversation, as I call it, is strongly recommend college, talking about the value of the degree over the lifetime of the student (great example in the article about buying a car versus 'buying' a degree, and the difference between them; definitely something I will use going forward). I stress to them, from my own experience, that to 'make it' as a performer requires a great deal of sacrifice, one of which is weighing up the potential debt burden they'll have versus what they are likely to earn (i.e. between nothing and not a lot, for performers). I also try to steer them toward thinking about a couple of additional options: doing the BA in Technical Theatre, as this career path tends to have more job options (from what I'm told, they can't graduate technical theatre students fast enough to fill positions), or, alternatively, to consider an education degree with a concentration in English and theatre. As a theatre educator, this is the most theatre work I've done in my life in under three years, and I'm getting a very reasonable living wage from it. Granted, it's not 'professional' theatre, and working with students in this age of top-down-accountability-and-mandated education is very challenging, but teaching theatre is on its face a career with lots and lots of opportunities for dramatic expression. I have about three students who are working through high school and are planning to follow the education route so they can become theatre teachers. So proud. :)

I share this with them because as a teen I was absolutely pig-headed and believed sincerely that I would be the one to make it as a successful theatre actor. I thought very little of theatre teachers, and considered them to be just 'failed actors' and I think I even vowed that I would never, ever become a theatre teacher. Ever. God has a definite sense of humor.

Yes, my students are aware of the debt. I think they have a rough idea of what that could mean, but like your article posits, there's nothing like the reality of living it to understand it. My students are aware of what pursuing a theatre career means, and we talk about quality of life: it's entirely possible to eke out a living on a performer's wage, but it is difficult. Of the friends in my high school and graduate program, who were all equally pig-headed enough to believe we would be in the top 1%, only one has had some degree of 'professional' success, but that came more through their writing than performing. The rest of us have happily married, and have children, and thus the reality is different. And this becomes a part of the conversation with the student, because it becomes another choice they have to consider, along with what type of degree they should pursue, alongside what track in theatre they should pursue: ultimately, will they want to marry? Have children? Much will depend on how they answer these questions.

Thank you, Harper, for a great piece. It's helping us to continue the conversation with my students.

------------------------------
Phillip Goodchild
Theatre Arts Instructor/Assistant Department Head of English
Ruskin FL

Original Message:
Sent: 02-04-2016 08:25
From: Harper Lee
Subject: Dramatics article on student loan debt

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a piece I wrote for the February issue of Dramatics on student loan debt as it relates to young people who have degrees in theatre and are trying to make a living in the arts.

Shackled by Debt
Four years of actor training can provide everything you need to start a career -- except the ability to repay your student loans.

I wanted to know : are your students talking about student loan debt? Have you yourself been part of conversations on this issue? Do you have students who are looking at careers in theatre and are they concerned about paying for college and/or their debt load when they finish?

Would love to hear about your experiences with this issue and the discussions you've been part of in your own theatre communities.

------------------------------
Harper Lee
Associate editor, Dramatics magazine
Cincinnati OH
------------------------------

Hi Phillip,

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I'm really glad the piece is useful to your students. 

I've been wondering about a couple related issues.

In my reporting and in the piece, lots of folks talked about just not understanding what it meant to have $50,000 to $100,000 in student loand debt -- what that could mean for their quality of life and the possibility of having a family and owning a home and retiring -- when they took out their student loan at 18 or 19. Some even said they would make different choices if given the chance. 

In your experience, do students have an understanding of what this debt could mean for their daily lives and career after college? Do you think it's possible to understand what that is like before you have actually lived through it? Do these issues come up for students as they are applying to college?

------------------------------
Harper Lee
Cincinnati OH

Original Message:
Sent: 02-05-2016 07:28
From: Phillip Goodchild
Subject: Dramatics article on student loan debt

I've had several of these conversations with my students in the last few months, a couple of them have read the article and enjoyed it: it gave them some extra perspective and confirmed things that had cropped up in our conversations.

What I do with the college aptitude conversation, as I call it, is strongly recommend college, talking about the value of the degree over the lifetime of the student (great example in the article about buying a car versus 'buying' a degree, and the difference between them; definitely something I will use going forward). I stress to them, from my own experience, that to 'make it' as a performer requires a great deal of sacrifice, one of which is weighing up the potential debt burden they'll have versus what they are likely to earn (i.e. between nothing and not a lot, for performers). I also try to steer them toward thinking about a couple of additional options: doing the BA in Technical Theatre, as this career path tends to have more job options (from what I'm told, they can't graduate technical theatre students fast enough to fill positions), or, alternatively, to consider an education degree with a concentration in English and theatre. As a theatre educator, this is the most theatre work I've done in my life in under three years, and I'm getting a very reasonable living wage from it. Granted, it's not 'professional' theatre, and working with students in this age of top-down-accountability-and-mandated education is very challenging, but teaching theatre is on its face a career with lots and lots of opportunities for dramatic expression. I have about three students who are working through high school and are planning to follow the education route so they can become theatre teachers. So proud. :)

I share this with them because as a teen I was absolutely pig-headed and believed sincerely that I would be the one to make it as a successful theatre actor. I thought very little of theatre teachers, and considered them to be just 'failed actors' and I think I even vowed that I would never, ever become a theatre teacher. Ever. God has a definite sense of humor.

Yes, my students are aware of the debt. I think they have a rough idea of what that could mean, but like your article posits, there's nothing like the reality of living it to understand it. My students are aware of what pursuing a theatre career means, and we talk about quality of life: it's entirely possible to eke out a living on a performer's wage, but it is difficult. Of the friends in my high school and graduate program, who were all equally pig-headed enough to believe we would be in the top 1%, only one has had some degree of 'professional' success, but that came more through their writing than performing. The rest of us have happily married, and have children, and thus the reality is different. And this becomes a part of the conversation with the student, because it becomes another choice they have to consider, along with what type of degree they should pursue, alongside what track in theatre they should pursue: ultimately, will they want to marry? Have children? Much will depend on how they answer these questions.

Thank you, Harper, for a great piece. It's helping us to continue the conversation with my students.

------------------------------
Phillip Goodchild
Theatre Arts Instructor/Assistant Department Head of English
Ruskin FL

My own experience is slightly skewed, coming through the English university system, where my maximum overall debt after both my bachelors and Masters degrees was just over 3,000 british pounds. (My Masters tuition was 3,842 pounds, which I was lucky enough to be able to pay before). Even that little sum (approx. $4300+/-) felt like a massive burden when starting out after college, especially living in London. I think I was able to postpone payment until I earned 'enough'; I never earned enough in England to be able to make even minimum payments, not until I moved to America (I paid them off in the last three years!)

So again, in conversations with students, I talk of that burden, and how stressful that was, and then we talk about multiplying that figure by 10, and trying to establish what that means. We talk and keep returning to that over the lifetime earnings versus no degree figure, but I think it's without question that college is far more expensive. With all the hoopla currently focused on folks campaigning for 'free college education', it is forgotten that college education was at one time much more heavily subsidized than it is now.

Generally, I think, as your article stipulated (where you talk of how college is the 'grand prize,' the end of a journey of testing and hard work etc), the excitement of just going to college and the way that college is still held up as the goal of a high school education, means that those conversations about cost, impact, and financial impact might get lost or minimized during the application process. When I have these conversations with students, I think it is difficult to grasp what that all means, though I try my best, not as me trying to talk them out of college (not by a long shot!), but more to give them as much information about what their choices might ultimately mean. I think the conversation needs to happen more often.

Something I also talk about is that in most cases, what actual degree you have may have little bearing on your ultimate vocational destination. The fact you have a degree is enough for many professions, though it makes sense to tailor one's degree to one's projected career path. Theatre (especially with Tech) is a pretty rounded degree program on its own merits, and can prepare students for a vast array of career paths. At least, that's what I believe.

------------------------------
Phillip Goodchild
Theatre Arts Instructor/Assistant Department Head of English
Ruskin FL

Original Message:
Sent: 02-05-2016 09:25
From: Harper Lee
Subject: Dramatics article on student loan debt

Hi Phillip,

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I'm really glad the piece is useful to your students. 

I've been wondering about a couple related issues.

In my reporting and in the piece, lots of folks talked about just not understanding what it meant to have $50,000 to $100,000 in student loand debt -- what that could mean for their quality of life and the possibility of having a family and owning a home and retiring -- when they took out their student loan at 18 or 19. Some even said they would make different choices if given the chance. 

In your experience, do students have an understanding of what this debt could mean for their daily lives and career after college? Do you think it's possible to understand what that is like before you have actually lived through it? Do these issues come up for students as they are applying to college?

------------------------------
Harper Lee
Cincinnati OH