Opinion | Lucas Verweij
Higher vocational education in the Netherlands is increasingly streamlined to international standards. This has advantages, including less dropout and uncertainty for the institutions, and more flexibility and rights for the students. But there are also disadvantages. Is it at the expense of the specific uniqueness and quality of design education?
Recently the ‘Revision of professional and educational profiles for art education’ was presented.[1] In a Utrecht business park, education professionals from all over the Netherlands met to exchange ideas about the profession of designer and the profession of artist. If you think of an art academy as a car, this is where the development engineers sat together. People who adjust the valves and can invent new types of models. I had a great time there with the mechanics from all over the country. Everyone was there. We had drinks afterwards and ate pieces of celery with horseradish. The question that brought us together was: what do the design profession and the artist profession look like now and what will they look like in the future? Consensus on that is necessary before we can start educating designers and artists. In educational jargon it goes something like this: ‘Updating professional and educational profiles to make graduates entry-level competent.’
Designer or artist?
Let me first dispel one myth: artists and designers are no longer subject to different requirements. Five years ago, it was still recognized that the process of making art and the process of making design are different (as are the final products). The current proposal is the complete equalization of the two disciplines. The process of making a design should be considered the same – during education – as the process of making art. And the requirements for both end results are also the same. Let that sink in for a moment.
To everyone who has argued for years that there is no difference between design and art: congratulations, you won. The difference is now also formally erased, smoothed out, and evaporated. I myself am not among those celebrating, because I have never been convinced that the art-design boundary is as thin as it is often presented. I still see skepticism toward design in all galleries and museums. I see separate curators, budgets, and awards. Different networks and funds with different forms and sometimes hard, exclusionary conditions for design’s access to arts funds. Granted, at the local art center around the corner, they don’t discriminate. But the closer you get to the top of the profession, the larger the gaps and cultural differences become, and the harder it is to get rid of the misunderstandings and incomprehension. Maybe it’s the same as with cycling and skating: at the amateur level, everyone mixes just fine. Pounding the ice one week and stamping on the pedals the next – both hurt the legs. But at the top level this no longer works. From an educational point of view, it is understandable to no longer make the difference between art and design. As an entry-level qualification, the difference is not relevant; after all, everyone starts out with ‘stamping’ in art or design.
The pillars of standardization: Bologna and credits
Back to design education, which over the years has come to look more and more like regular college education. It started with the bachelor-master structure, which was obediently implemented in art education. Was it compulsory? No, several German academies were never bachelor-master accredited. They had no need for it and relied on their own stature. The introduction of ‘Bologna’ (the nickname of the bachelor-master structure) ‘cut up’ and shortened many five-year programs. All teacher training programs went down from five to four years and so did several design programs, for example at the Design Academy in Eindhoven.
Then came ECTS,[2] a credit system that defines the workload required to earn one unit of study. A student earns thirty credits per semester, which may be done in any way imaginable: in a few large units, in many small ones, or a combination of them. ECTS turned education into Lego blocks; it deprives subject contents of its individuality because it is separated from context. This modularization operation also brought leveling: it allows students to ‘scrape points’ and take only easy subjects. Monitoring the development of individual students is more difficult in a broad modular landscape. It makes it easier for a student to stay under the radar.
Of course, modular education also has advantages, such as the possibility of flexibility or studying in a different order. A student can take thirty or fifteen credits elsewhere, which is called a minor. By the way, minors also de facto lead to subject-specific leveling. By freeing up minor space (such as at the HKU University of Arts), a curriculum can be as short as 3.5 years. Thus, through Bolonga and ECTS, we have already gone from five to 3.5 years in art school, a shrinkage comparable to Nicaragua’s inflation.
More pillars of standardization: student rights, examination boards, funding
Academies also followed higher professional education in unison when introducing examination boards (1993) and expanding their mandate and independence (2010). Slowly, student rights increased. At most schools, for example, you can only be ‘expelled’[3] if you don’t earn enough credits in the first year. Once on board a program, you cannot be forced to quit. This was very different in my school days. One in six students were allowed to start, half of whom did not make it through the first year. After that, more people dropped out here and there, so eventually only a quarter of those starting (five percent of those applying) graduated. The ‘throughput’ at academies, which used to be dramatically low, is still only slightly below that of regular college programs.
‘Staying down a year’ or ‘failing a year’ are terms of the past. As is customary in college, students may retake whatever subject they fail. Students have the right to add their missing Lego brick to their collection at any other time, unless it is explicitly arranged that this is not allowed. No one repeats a full year, even though everyone who works in education knows that this wasn’t such a bad idea. Probably a majority of teachers are in favor of reintroducing the old ‘repeating a year’. But yeah, rights are rights.
Besides, the schools and the government have the same interest here as the students, their paying parents, and the study grant providers. Everyone wants a student who starts an education to finish it successfully and smoothly. WITHOUT DELAY, PLEASE. This is called ‘to study nominally’ and that is the holy grail. It is financially rewarded by the government and produces satisfied students and parents. Low dropout rates and little delay is the consensus but naturally leads to a drop in standards. Schools flaunt low dropout when in my opinion they should be flaunting high dropout because the level is so high. All parties mentioned want all students to just graduate, even mediocre ones. After all, this prevents financial damage to the program and complaints from parents and students or cause any other disappointments. A diploma works like a pacifier: it satisfies and keeps everyone happy.
Subject contents and assessment
And then there is subject contents. Students have the right to know ahead of time what is required of them in the educational offerings. The contents must be accessible before instruction begins. There are also rules about who is allowed to assess the students and it must be clear in advance how this will be done and what the assessment criteria are. In the latest wave of bureaucratization in my workplace, it has been prescribed that assessments can only be given by people who are certified in assessment.[4] So you can no longer just fly in a great artist to teach a course and have her assess the students’ performance; she can only do it if she is certified to do so. And she must tell in advance what she is going to teach and what she will assess. A shared, exploratory journey with an unknown outcome and unknown goals or criteria can no longer be offered to students; it is simply forbidden.
Portfolio assessments
In case you are thinking, this is old-fashioned nonsense, this does not apply to our school, because we have ‘portfolio assessments’ – we don’t even have subjects anymore; students evaluate their own learning goals and performance. I won’t elaborate on what the differences are, but the fact is that with more progressive assessment methods, the moving up ratio is even more increased. On balance, there are even fewer students who drop out, fail something, or have to redo something. Students can compensate more easily in holistic assessments, meaning, ‘I may have failed this subject, but you can see in that other class that I can do it.’ More progressive assessment systems are nicer for all involved, but they do easily lead to leveling in terms of subject contents, because there is no longer a definitive bar to jump over. Again, it’s reminiscent of the effect of a pacifier: it’s pleasant for everyone involved but does it benefit the quality of education?
Safe space
A few years ago, there was a heated debate in art education about ‘safe space,’ i.e., a safe learning environment. There were students who loudly demanded it and others who found it detestable. Arts education has already become enormously safer, more reliable and predictable in recent decades. From a student wellbeing standpoint, this can certainly be legitimized. But does it also align with the professional profile of creative professionals? Every textbook on creativity and artistic processes says that creative professionals must be able to deal with more than average uncertainty. Less clarity and more loose set screws are inherent in our industry. Shouldn’t teaching have that professional characteristic as well?
At every open house, I meet a few anxious parents who share with me their fear of art school. It is it a fear from days gone by. If you manage to pass the entrance exam and don’t perform extremely poorly in the first year, you’ve taken the most challenging bumps. What comes after is not fundamentally ‘unsafer’ than training as a social worker or German language teacher. As a German language teacher, anything and everything can happen to you during your internship.
So are art academies ‘normalized’?
Let me summarize. The difference between art and design is no more. Bologna and minors have shortened courses. ECTS has splintered them and knocked out the invisible connections. Exam boards have facilitated students being calculating in doing their studies. Increased student rights, holistic assessment methods, and the study finance structure have virtually eliminated dropouts. Subject descriptions and transparent assessments by certified assessors make results predictable.
Can this be called ‘normalization’? The synonym list for the term includes words such as ‘conformation,’ ‘bureaucratization,’ ‘mediocrization,’ and ‘conventionalization.’ This describes the development of art academies in recent decades to the fullest, but possibly it is in line with the current social role of artists and designers. In any case, it is in line with what we demand of our education. The academies have fully adapted to mainstream college requirements. It’s time to become a bit more autonomous once again. I’m going to drum up my mechanic friends with lots of horseradish to see who’s up for a counter-revolution. Maybe it will just be the boomers among them. Well, then so be it.
[1] By Visual Arts Education Consultation.
[2] European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System.
[3] Binding negative study advice.
[4] Certificate BKE (Basic Qualification Examination).
Photo: Maaike Ronhaar
Read Bob Verheijden’s reaction to this article: ‘Normalization’ of art education is different problem than fusion of art and design.
