The SCAD community is enthusiastically relieved by our Dear Leader’s modest, and eloquent response to recent reports ranking Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) as the university having the worst value for money in the United States. SCAD’s peers in academia have long ranked SCAD program in the lower tier (We suspect that is due in part to unfair allegations by the tenured  elite of SCAD’s abusive treatment of its faculty).

With the mid-Georgian modesty of which she is renowned, Dear Leader proposes that parents of college-age children consider loan repayment statistics when choosing a school for their children rather than peer-reviewed academic rankings. SCAD Secrets agrees that the ranking of a university’s academic program like those reported by the New York Times and other Northern publications, is passé and outdated.

With an average loan debt of between $135,000.00 and $153,000.00, SCAD graduates have risen to the challenge of making their estimated $1,325.000 a month loan payments. Dear Leader is justifiably impressed with these numbers, and here is how Dear Leader  prepares students to replay their loans.

(1) SCAD actively pursues public private partnerships. By courting employers like Chick-Fil-A, and the Candlewood Suites in Mobile Alabama, SCAD offers students the opportunity to build their portfolio and their resume.

This experience provides SCAD students a competitive advantage over competing art school graduates who spend their time in university focused primarily on developing their craft with professors who are expected and provided resources to continue their chosen areas of expertise. At SCAD it is private industry (from fast food to hotels) that provide its students the knowledge and expertise to succeed.

(2) SCAD offers opportunities for students to be photographed with Hollywood celebrities. SCAD’s annual Film Festival features as many celebrities as the SCAD entertainment budget can afford to pay. The presence of these Hollywood stars provides the SCAD film students the opportunity to be photographed with the celebrities (which looks good in one’s portfolio) as well as the opportunity to say in job interviews that the student has met the celebrity (SCAD understands the importance of name dropping in the entertainment industry).

(3) Not to be outdone by the film department, the SCAD Fashion department has handed out more ‘lifetime achievement’ awards to aging fashion designers than any other art school in the United States. These events, like the Film festival, offer students the opportunity to be photographed with the fashion industries greatest practitioners.

(4) Finally, and most importantly, Dear Leader draws our attention to the opportunities that SCAD’s unique study abroad program offers students. SCAD’s Hong Kong campus, located in the poorest district of Hong Kong, provides SCAD students the opportunity to experience first hand, what real poverty looks like. This life altering experience helps the SCAD student to appreciate what little money will be left over after paying their student loan each month.

Those who know Dear Leader know she is a modest women who does not concern herself with the minutia of academic standards and quality ensured by a solid academic ranking system. That minutia is better handled by those elitists in New York.

From her porch at The Landings, Dear Leader spoke to the importance of the SCAD community’s disregard of Northern newspapers ranking systems by saying: “The highest and best use of a front porch is to enable and encourage the art of conversation. We entertain ourselves with stories on the porch. We invite people in. We sit. We visit.”

All stories on www.SCADSECRETS.com are parodies.  All content on www.SCADSECRETS.com is fictionalized and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. This site and the content contained within it are not affiliated with the Savannah College of Art & Design, a University of creative careers founded by Ms. Paula Wallace who is practically perfect in every way.