Is there anyone here studying at Full Sail University?

Uh, that does not match my experience. This kind of thing may be true to college level, but shouldn't be happening at university level.

Honestly, I would expect anyone learning programming to automatically pick all those abilities. Also, I would expect them to pick those abilities faster if they're receiving formal education. Although it is possible that my expectations are a bit unrealistic.

 

@neginfinity it absolutely does from what I've seen in several universities. A lot of the time I think it's hard to recognise rote memorisation as such, you firmly believe you understand the material - and since there's a severe lack of practical reinforcement you never realise it until you land a job and have to actually do something.

The big problem is that it primes you to expect a problem to have a defined scope, a clear solution and a clear way of finding out whether it was the best answer (i.e. whatever your prof defines it as). When you're on the job and you have to scrabble around, no one's there to give you feedback and you've got your managers breathing down your neck, and your solution mysteriously seems to work in some cases and not in others and you don't really even know if it was the best way to do it, suddenly you find you've been living in the 'university fantasy'.

Mind you, I'm talking averages here. Not all universities are like this, and not all areas of university life function this way, but it's the norm for undergraduate study in my experience.

 

Find a program you like in a non-profit college/University. Full Sail is not bad, but the cost is outrageous compared to the costs at a public University or college....or even most private schools. I have met people who went to such schools and have 100k in student loans when they get out. They can't afford to make games because they need the money immediately to pay back their loans so end up working retail.

Consider getting an IT degree in software development, security, or networking (or whatever) or a computer science degree if you are good with math. If you want to be an artist, consider a digital art degree or graphics art. Technical art is a big area now so talk to a college and see if you can put a custom degree program together if they don't have a TA degree.

Game development degrees are very narrow and/or very broad, meaning you will not get enough classes to get a job in other areas AND you may not get enough programming classes to actually get hired to be a game programmer...or enough art to be an artist. Might work for a designer, but there are probably a zillion designers out there looking for jobs.

On the side, make games and build up a resume.

 

I learn new thing everyday.

I'm sure 90%+ of programmer are self leaner(I mean hungry for knowledge), especially including everyone here.

I like both programming and game development. Perhaps I should just stick with my relative, expand our business into gaming industry(Currently we focus much on hotel and services) and hire people to make my games.

 

I graduated from Full Sail back in 2006 (10 years ago ). And while I loved it, I can't recommend it to anyone, ever. Back then, there weren't a lot of resources for making games, and there certainly weren't friendly engines like Unity. These days you can make games so easily, that spending 2 years making lots of little games, and maybe some decent ones you can sell, that it doesn't make sense to go to school for it.

If you want to go to school, that is probably a good decision. But don't go to school to learn how to make games. It is a waste of your time and money. I pay $600/mo for my student loans in a low payment program. Once I start making more money, they will start charging me even more. It is a burden I wish upon no one. You will not get paid $600/mo more than anyone else just because you went to Full Sail, much less the $1200 they want me to pay every month. If anything, you'll make less than your peers that got a traditional education. This is my experience, YMMV.

My advice: Get a traditional education (optional), make lots of really polished games/prototypes, and get an internship at a local game studio.

 

I am so sorry this happened to you, Ayrik. My heart goes out to you.

 

I knew there was a good reason I ignored you. I haven't read or responded to anything you've written in months and there's still that attitude.

What gets me is: why? Why do you insist on bugging me?

 

Imo @neginfinity has gotten friendlier
not saying he wasn't a great member of the community to start with

 

Hitting show ignored content never works out well. Sometimes cultural or personality differences make communicating between two people not worth the effort.

Note: Not meant to be a specific comment on individuals. My ignore list is different to yours. But keeping up the ignore list is important.

 

I am not interested in bugging anyone specifically.

If you can't stand me, my advice would be to keep me on ignore list. Sometimes there is just an unfixable incompatibility between people (attitude, beliefs, characters, whatever), meaning they'll be at each other's throats every time they start talking to each other. If that's the case, use "ignore" feature.

 

At first, I thought you were talking to me!! Then I realized...I have that person on ignore as well.

Absolutely. Another reason we don't want the new forums.

 

I disagree with that a bit. It seriously depends on what your goals are, but being a technical person with business chops can be very valuable; especially if you're starting / running your own business.

That being said, I completely agree that a college degree isn't necessary. Be prepared to work hard and live on scraps for awhile though. I went to college, changed my degree to BMIS (Business Management & Information Systems) and learned some valuable things, especially around the area of Business Law. However, I got my dream internship, got hired out of it as a developer and quit school without even taking most of my IS classes.

The job pay was poor. The employer required me to have a degree to be full time so I got a little experience there while also working a full time Construction job... then I moved on... took me 6 months to find another development job but I stayed with that one for 5 years... again for pretty horrible pay ($35k with no benefits and I had to pay for my own parking). But, once I had the experience, which I had to work hard for and learn a ton on my own, I moved on to a new job and more than doubled my income. That was 6 years ago and now I have a 6 figure income and amazing benefits and a really fun job, and I have my own stuff on the side.

If you're willing to grease up your elbows and put in the hard work you can forego the degree and just be aggressive, passionate and achieve great success.

 

Or you can go with a degree (from a public or non-profit school) and work in IT or as a software developer rather than construction, work hard, get promotions, save money, and start your own company.

Either works.

 

Agreed. I did a mix of both... some college... the construction was my job while I was in college because I was paying as I went instead of racking up loans (plus my boss was my landlord so it made rent convenient), and worked my way up and started my own business as well.

I wanted to throw one more option out there as well. There continue to be more and more trade schools popping up for design and development and in my opinion, trade schools are awesome. Here's an example of one we have locally...they are pretty new but growing and successful.
https://interfaceschool.com/

 

Depends..some are for-profit and not worth the money. We have a public trade/vocational school locally that starts teaching kids at 16 through mid-twenties and includes computer technology, graphics art, etc. Very good school and many young people I know have succeeded at these schools. Also, remember, in the US, when you turn 24, you are entitled to financial aid without using your parent's income. Grants could easily cover the cost of a community college, which offers many great 2-year degrees in technology and trade skills. If you do well, you may be offered scholarships to continue your education in case you want a 4 year degree. My son took this route.

Unfortunately, the for-profits use more of their money to advertise than to teach so more young people are drawn to them, in spite of the enormous costs. Beware...high cost does not mean better.

 

Even public Universities do this. Unfortunately many of them invest their money on high dollar professors who spend 75% of their time writing textbooks and grant writing since achieving tenure often requires a certain level of successful grants. Then there are TA / Student Teachers that are "teaching" the classes, some of which don't have a firm enough grasp on the native language of their target audience to teach effectively. This was an issue I ran into in multiple classes.

 

True. I had a math TA for calculus and all I could understand were the numbers. lol Luckily, we formed a study group and helped each other pass the class.

Also, I was a TA for a few years and I believe I have a good grasp of English...that can't be said for any of my other language skills. lol I did have a few of those absent professors, but more so in graduate school than as an undergraduate.

My emphasis above was on 2 year public schools that do not use TAs...since those imply a graduate program. Many community colleges hire full professors, and they are focused on teaching rather than research.

 

Don't get me wrong... I had some really good TA's in undergrad classes as well and have nothing against TAs... the problem was that in many cases they didn't have a support system behind them and the actual professors didn't have a grasp of what was going on in the class. I took a CS class that had a lab associated with it that counted for half the grade. We had a TA that was from China I believe. She constantly called Unix "Unit" and even spelled it incorrectly... I was fortunate enough to have some experience while some others were taking the class to fulfill science requirements. By mid-terms over half the class had dropped, and by dead week the class average was 70%. It was horrible.

 

Yeah, I remember those days. My husband was offered a full ride as a TA without even applying just because they desperately needed English speaking TA's in the engineering graduate school.

 

No, no no and no again. I'm going to say do NOT go this route. I say this not because of the school's reputation or anything like that. I say it for the student loan aspect. You will become in debt for student loans for almost $100,000 USD (maybe more today), with tuition, costs for hardware or software, living expenses, etc. I am a Full Sail graduate from 2007 and luckily I attended when the student loan debt was more like $45,000 or so. I work professionally with multiple Full Sail graduates and the most common thing I hear in our industry is this: huge student loan debt with Sallie Mae (their lender) and how ridiculous the monthly payments are. Most working industry professionals I know struggle to repay these loans. The repayment monthly these days is somewhere around $900-$1400 per month. Your starting salary leaving Full Sail as an animator, designer or game artist might be anywhere around $35,000 to $45,000 per year in the US (a bit more if your opt to become a programmer). You do the math! I also want to mention the really important factor for this: Student loan debt like this is one of the only types of debt you can never erase with bankruptcy, etc...and it's one of the few debts that they can intercept all of your tax refunds and your paycheck each week. I myself have avoided garnishment of paychecks so far, but have had my tax returns taken every year and the money sent directly to Sallie Mae. You will be stuck with that student loan debt, most likely, the rest of your life.

Note: I was also a Unity teacher at a competing school in Orlando called DAVE School. These schools churn out hundreds of game degree graduates each month (DAVE School far less than Full Sail though). They get sent out into an industry that's already overflowing with talented game artists with years of experience working on AAA titles. Most studios want experienced artists these days, not inexperienced grads that are a real risk to a project. If a studio does take you on, most likely it will be a very small indie studio that you will work an unpaid internship or you will work for entry level pay. Sallie Mae doesn't care about your salary, they will still want their $1,000 payment each month too.

 

GTHell is not an US resident and he said in the first message that he's interested in it because there's an international scholarship.

 

Yes, but the school is US based and it's lenders are US based. Doesn't matter in which country he signs up for the school.

 

Scholarship means you get it paid for you, or at least part of it

 

This is a valid point. I forget that the US still has an archaic student loan system. Half of my comments on this thread are worth reconsidering in light of the reminder.

Where I was educated in NZ, student loans are interest free. And your payments don't start until you are making money, and they scale with income. So taking on student debt in NZ is really a non issue. As long as you are studying something that will increase your income after leaving school, you end up better off.

 

Similar in the UK except it's not interest free, just extremely low interest
The way to it works though is you can't ever be screwed over by it

 

Australia where I'm living now does the low interest thing too. My wife has just started her masters. If she never works after getting her degree, we won't pay a cent for it. If she does work, she will pay the loan back on a sliding scale depending on how much she earns. Either way we come out better off for doing the education.

The whole concept of going into real debt for an education is abhorrent to me. Education should be available to anyone who is inclined. Not reserved for those who are wealthy. An educated population benefits everyone.

 

20% or so interest rate for me with average credit rating. Sallie Mae is pretty notorious for that. I also got a scholarship for Full Sail called the Platinum Dreams scholarship. It was $800 bucks towards my $40K tuition. Full Sail scholarships don't work like traditional universities with a full ride scholarship, etc. They are smaller and usually help with purchasing software you'll need to work. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, consider the student loan debt heavily. Also consider what you are taking away from the school for $65,000 or so, a degree and some student work. Firstly, no one in this industry will ever ask to see your degree or even ask about what you did in school. The most important factor is this : Your portfolio. It = your resume, your education, everything that is you to an employer. The other important thing is to bring a good personality

 

Ah, I stand corrected
Ignore my previous comment, I was thinking more along the lines of "you're super smart? Okay we'll pay it all for you" kind

 

I bet that scholarship only pays a fraction of the school's fees. This is how for-profit schools pull people in.

 

If scholarship is only partial, then it is probably a good idea to either search for something with full scholarship or for something with a better degree.

I mean, $100k is kinda too expensive for "travelling while young".

 

Here I was thinking the student debt in Australia was bad, considering that quite a few other countries have free universities.

All in all, I don't think it gets much better than the HECS system, you really don't even have to worry about it since it never makes much of an impact.

 

Nah, Australia and NZ have it pretty easy in terms of student debt. A high student loan means "My wages aren't as high as I would like". As opposed to "I can't pay for food because of this debt".

 

It is very bad here. Sooner or later, something will have to be done or we will have an entire generation of college graduates who cannot support a consumer economy and aging parents paying back Plus loans, which are loans taken out by parents for the student if the student cannot qualify for financial aid. A substantial portion of the middle class here cannot qualify for anything but loans. Prior to age 24, all student must qualify based on parent's income. This seems fair until you consider that a 4 year degree at a public school can be $40K and that doesn't include room and board, books, etc., just tuition. We have two girls about to start college and it is very scary.

 

We'll likely have a huge shortage of qualified workers for those fields that demand a degree too.

 

More than likely they will hire more people from other countries. BTW, I hear that Germany has offered free tuition to Americans. Other countries seem to value their young people more than we do unfortunately.

I just read that 47% of Americans have college degrees. If that continues, in about 10 years, we will have a large portion of people with degrees who can't pay their bills. That means they won't be buying cars and houses and electronics. Not a good thing.

 

The trend I see in IT is junior positions get offshored, senior positions we hire H1B's, it's a bit of a lose lose unless you acquire some in demand skills not easily filled by one of those two options. This has nothing to do with Full Sail

 

Unbelievable. I'd definitely head off to Germany.

 

In some ways it does. Getting a degree at a for-profit school puts you deeply in debt. Many companies do credit checks, especially ones that want to protect their products/secrets/etc. If you have defaulted on loans, it might hurt your chance to get a job....and if jobs are outsourced, their are fewer jobs.

If you get your 2 year degree at a community college and have no debt at all, then you can live on less and survive at the very least.

 

"Full Sail students are still among the most indebted in the country."
https://news.vice.com/article/a-for...en-the-soaring-price-of-college-isnt-worth-it

The Game Development program is about $77,000 dollars in tuition.
https://www.fullsail.edu/admissions/tuition

Your rent would run on average about $10,000 per year, so for the (3) years would cost maybe $30,000 dollars. You could cut that amount in half with a roommate. $2,000 or so on average for food each year ($40 per week allowance). So that's about $6,000 for (3) years. They don't have housing or dorms, so you live out in town and pay rent. They don't have a cafeteria (small cafes where you can buy snacks), so you pay for your own food. Now you can see why the average overall amount in student loan debt can come out to about $130,000 dollars. Now these are tuition loans and living expense loans combined.

Hard to pay that back efficiently when the average median income for a game artist coming out there is making about $34,000 per year!

The school has about a 20-21% default rate, which translates to the amount of students who graduate with student loan debt and cannot pay their student loan debt. If you google the default rate for the school compared to others, you will find that it's quite a bit higher. What this means at the end of the day is : students graduating cannot find well enough paying work to pay bills to live and pay their student loans or that 21% are students who object to paying student loans and refuse to pay the debt.

 

I graduated, being somewhat slow and lazy, from University (2 of them because I started in one of the pre-majors that require you to transfer universities) after 6 years, 3 years at each, owing 14K in student loans because I was frugal. That was 1991.

I talked recently with a fellow that I graduated with whose son is now going to the same university we graduated from and is taking the same major and that university is charging that boy what it would have cost me to go to Harvard or such an Ivy League school back when I went to University. I could not believe it, 24K and more per year. At that price, I think I would start looking for more reasonable options if you don't get a scolarship or Pell and other grants that cover all the costs. Even if your parents make a good living you should apply for those grants and scolarships as they are based often on how much your parents are in debt and not how much they earn. eg, I was not eligible for any grants because my parent didn't owe any money even though we were very poor.

So, if you aren't getting grants & scolarships I'd think long and hard before taking out student loans. I paid mine back but, for example, those loan repayment bank agencies are often jerks that don't properly do their jobs. eg, when I was in Basic Training and AIT I had to repeatedly send them the same information that they could not collect that money was I was in training for the US military for less than a dollar an hour as the federal, state, and local laws stipulate. The rules they made up, not me. That was very embarrassing to me to be humiliated by those student loan banks in front of those drill sergeants.

 

<< similar story to goat.. graduated in 92'.. 10k in loans that are now paid off.

I have one son who has just graduated... has loans, and in addition I sank in close to 20K$ to help him get his degree.

I have another son in his 3rd year.. and his room (8x10, floor.. no furniture at all), costs as much as my mortgage. It's ridiculous. Hopefully he will graduate with only a small loan like i had, and I can't really help him pay as I've been out of work for a while (IT industry job off-shored).

... these are "public" universities in the US. it's pathetic and disgusting...

 

This isn't already the case?... sure seems like it.

 

Don't know. Our state is doing pretty well right now so can't complain. Probably depends on your field, how saturated it is, and where you live.

 

There's an interesting paradigm (not sure if that's the right word) here...

If 47% of americans have college degrees and that number continues to increase, and somehow competition for jobs gets fierce, then what can be said about the labor market today (or in the future)?

Could it be that there are too few jobs to get everyone a job? Even with a college degree?

IMO at some point we need to stop automating away jobs. I don't see a point to it except to increase efficiency and line the pockets of the rich (the less you pay your workers, I mean robots, the more you can claim in profit).

Of course who in their right mind is going to say no to progress?

People complain that immigrants are taking their jobs here in the USA (and elsewhere). Its a power thing. Really its the robots and the engineers who are automating away your jobs.

As for the argument that automation removes boring and tedious jobs, the fact is not everyone wants to or can do jobs which aren't tedious or boring. That's why some people historically have gotten factory working jobs.

 

I remember after I graduated university I moved to Texas and there I took full load of graduate level course after I established residency requirements in the University of Texas public system (not TCU or other private universities which are almost always expensive) for less than $600 a semester! Wow! That was in the mid 90s though. I'm not sure what that would cost there now.

When I lived in Zurich I could have attended ETH free but I did not want to grapple which figuring out my course work when my German was so poor. I think it's the norm in continental Europe that public Universities are free but you must be 'deemed' capable they still have a 'vocational / apprentice' style schooling system which seemed so quaint to me but actually is very practical and guides people much better then in US where the attitude is you must buy everything.

Well it is true that immigrants do take away some jobs. As a boy and teenager I could easily find agricultural work. Even adults could. That is no longer the case and it's a shame because those jobs never did pay living wages, they were jobs we took on seasonally for a few extra dollars spending money or more honestly to help out neighbors as $16 for 16 hours work in the hot sun is not very rewarding even then when things were cheaper. So those immigrant workers that come here now to work such jobs for a living must rely on welfare instead. Also the safety regulations and conditions of the farms are substandard because the illegal immigrants are afraid to report those conditions for fear of going to jail. If a business cannot pay a legal wage with all the attendant health and safety considerations for it's worker people and farmed animals those businesses need to go bankrupt and not supported by a secret labor force that no one has any records of and government subsidies.

 

At the point where society becomes automated to the point that there are no jobs for humans to do, the society will have to change it structure and switch from traditional model (where you work to earn money) to Basic Income or something similar.

I think it is a good idea.

---

Also if "47% hold college degrees"... does that mean that the other half only has school level education, or that they hold university level degrees?

 

That means 53% have high school educations or less. It wasn't that long ago that high school was considered not needed for people once they reached working age without automation their labor was too valuable. They'd go directly to work as apprentices in whatever jobs were indigenous to there location.

 

college and university here are easily transposable... i know in some ways it would seem college = associates level, whereas university = bachelors+

but they're mixed often.

 

College actually has the meaning her of area of study while university has the meaning of the organization that runs all of those colleges. E.g. College of Medicine, College of Nursing, College of Arts & Sciences at the University of State. Nobody graduates from the College of Texas. They graduate from the College of Medicine at the University of Texas with a degree in whatever the fancy terminology they'd use know-a-days for their particular field of study they got their degree in.

 

Well, some of those 47% are going to retire so new jobs will open up. Baby boomers are starting to retire now and that is a huge chunk of the adult population.

Jobs are always fierce in certain areas. As a geologist, I never had trouble finding a job because there are just not a lot of young people going into science. However, I imagine jobs in IT, while growing, will be more competitive than science. Law and psychology are saturated but chemical engineering and biotech are begging for people. There are jobs, just not always what we want.

True..but then I am third generation American so my Swiss immigrant great grandparents took someone's job as well. America is a country of immigrants and every generation we complain about them, even though our own families were more than likely immigrants at one time. Kind of funny.

In the US, College is simply a smaller University, often without graduate programs. However, we use the terms interchangeably. When I say college, I mean University more than likely. I realize in other countries they have very different meanings.