 All right, you guys asked me to do it. So here I am. Why are we still here? Just to suffer. This is gonna be painful. Today we're gonna be talking about art degrees that are actually worth it. As always, make sure to smash the like button in order to win a $100 gift card. So I've made a ton of videos in the past talking about how certain types of degrees from a personal finance perspective are more worth it than others. Generally speaking, art degrees did not rank very high on this list, to say the least. They're low paying, they have higher than average unemployment rates, and on top of that, the job satisfaction or the meaning of the job itself is usually lower than other careers. Now in my video, the most useless degrees, for instance, I made fun of photography, fine arts, and of course, art history. And it's not that I have a problem with any of these subjects. I love art and I respect artists that create it. My only point here is that when it comes to actually making money from your career, many of these degrees aren't going to help you at all. In fact, they'll probably make it even harder for you to achieve that goal because you'll have to work two different jobs just to pay the interest on your student loans. In most cases, like let's take photographer, for instance. Let's say you want to pursue a career as a photographer. It would be much better for you to spend four years taking pictures, learning the craft, maybe working with a photographer, a local wedding photographer who's successful for free and having them teach you than to go to college, spend $80,000 on a degree that is not going to help you at all. And I would bet you that working as a freelance photographer would teach you much more than four years of college. Because when it comes to learning skills like that, the biggest thing is for you to just do it. Just do it! You can try to learn all the theory on the side and all that stuff and read stuff out of books, but at the end of the day, you really just need to go out there and do it. You'll learn so much more from in real life experience, going to weddings, taking photos at weddings, maybe doing food photography or whatever you want to get into. And you won't have to deal with $40,000 in student loans constantly on your back. Now as with all rules, there are a few exceptions. There are a few different types of art degrees that can be worth it. I don't believe you. And in this video, I'm gonna be going over the ones that I think are the best and by the end of the video, you'll have a much better idea of what direction to take your artistic skills. And by the way, throughout this video, I'm going to give some tips that will apply to you no matter what art related degree that you're going for. Number five on the list is going to be animation or 3D animation. So this one's becoming more and more popular as video takes over the internet and the entire world. Animation degree graduates can expect to earn $42,000 right out of school and then mid-career pay is around $84,000 a year. Now this data is from pay scale and the $42,000 a year means the first five years after graduation and then mid-career pay is going to be 10 years and beyond. Now this one isn't bad and I see it being good for many years to come. Now this is the most common degree for those that want to become 3D artists and they make around $66,000 a year. Now there are many different careers that you could pursue with this degree but one of them would be multimedia artist. According to BLS, they make around $75,000 a year. There's 71,600 jobs available and it's growing at about 4% which is around average. Now guys, I am making this video with the gloves on a little bit. I'm trying to be really nice here but I'm also going to be very honest with you as well because I want you to make a good decision for your future. The reason being is channels are getting demonetized left and right on YouTube for having the wrong opinions and I don't want the evil YouTube algorithm to do that to my channel as well. You can miss me with that. Number four on the list is going to be fashion design. Now this is the most common degree in order to become a fashion designer and they make around $73,800 a year. As a fashion designer, according to BLS, you're going to make around $73,000 a year. There's 25,000 jobs available and it's growing at 1% which is not that great. Now if I'm being honest here, this is one of the better art degrees but this is still a pretty bad one overall. Just kidding, Susan, this is an amazing degree that's definitely worth going $40,000 in debt for. On this channel, I make family-friendly content that YouTube approves of. Nice. No, but all joking aside, if you want to go for a fashion design degree, if that's your passion in life, by all means go for it but you're going to want to make sure that you add other marketable skills on there so that you make yourself more attractive to a business owner or a hiring manager. Now at the end of the video, I'm going to talk about how you can do that. Number three on the list is going to be interior design. This is the most common degree for those who become a design director and they make around $92,200 a year, which is really good. According to BLS, interior designers make around $56,000 a year. There's 75,000 jobs available and it's growing at 4% which is about average. Now one thing about interior design is a lot of people who get this degree end up going into real estate and then they specialize in doing stagings where they make houses look as attractive as possible for those who want to buy them. So if you're watching this video, you've gotten an interior design degree or you're already so far in that you can't turn back now, that might be one career path for you to look into. Number two on the list is going to be graphic design. Now this is the most common degree for someone who wants to become a creative director and they make around $96,000 a year, which is excellent. According to BLS, graphic designers make around $52,000 a year, which isn't that great but there's 290,000 jobs available which is excellent for an art related career and it's growing at about 3% which is slightly slower than average. So the reason I included graphic design on this list was just because of the fact there's so many jobs available out there and it makes sense because graphic designers basically do art but they do art in such a way that it can be used for business purposes. So it's kind of like combining art with technology. Now according to BLS, an art director is gonna make around $94,000 a year. There's 101,000 jobs available and it is growing at 1% which is not that great. Now the single most important skill that you can learn with a degree like this is to be able to Photoshop yourself flexing with Lambo. Guaranteed to get you a girlfriend although it's probably going to be an imaginary one. Now the problem with this one which is a very common problem with different art degrees is that you can learn a lot of the same skills on your own for a fraction of the price. Skillshare for instance, which is a really cool site where you can take a bunch of different courses on all kinds of different subjects has an entire section dedicated to graphic design. By the way, this is not a sponsorship. I'm actually just telling you about Skillshare without being sponsored by them. And the reason for this is because when I was trying to learn Photoshop in order to make my cringy thumbnails I took a course online in order to learn how to do that. It was fast, easy and cheap. Seriously, can we start a change.org petition that makes it mandatory for high schools to tell students that there's a lot of skills out there that they do not need to go to college in order to learn. I would say over half the majors in college fall under this category. Number one on the list is going to be industrial design. And this one makes sense because it's combining art with business. You're going to be designing products to be as ergonomic as possible and look the best in order to sell the most. This is the most common degree if you're going to become a senior industrial designer which makes around $82,500 a year. According to BLS, industrial designers make around $68,000 a year. There's 43,900 jobs available which is pretty good for an art career and it's growing at 3% which is slower than average. Now this is one that's really useful because you can see how these skills would be needed in the business world. And it's a great way for you to translate your artistic talents into something that can actually make money. Something that has market value. Now it still doesn't have the most outstanding stats ever but to be honest, it's a lot better than many of the ones that I looked at. The truth is, so many different art degrees don't have market value. Meaning it's going to be very difficult for you to find someone who's willing to pay you an amount of money in order for you to make art professionally. And I'm not saying that things should be this way, I wish they weren't but I'm just telling you guys the way that it is so that you can make the best decision for you. Just because think about it, it's all about supply and demand. If you're doing your passion with just something that a lot of people probably really love to do as well, there's going to be a lot of supply for that particular skill. There's not going to be that many businesses out there that have a lot of jobs available so there's not going to be a lot of demand. The supply is going to far exceed the demand and so you're not going to be able to find a job. If you do find a job, it's probably not going to pay very well, it's probably going to have bad hours and you're not going to be treated the way that you want to be treated. And if you have any issues with that, there'll be 10, 20, 30, maybe a hundred other applications out there that are lined up for the same job. Maybe we'll solve the issue by making it a crime for businesses to not hire artists or something like that to do what they want to do for fun. That's probably never going to happen though. Like I'm passionate about video games for instance, I've been playing them since I was a kid so let's make it illegal for businesses to not hire me to play Call of Duty. It's my right. Now don't get me wrong, there are people out there that play video games professionally and they make millions of dollars a year. But guess what? These people are not going to college for a video game degree studies degree or whatever the heck you would call it. They're going where the opportunity is, they're practicing, building their skills, networking and putting themselves out there and that is why they're successful. If there was a video game studies degree available, it would probably not only not help you but it would probably hurt you because then you would be $40,000 in debt. You'd have to pay that money back and so you could spend less time playing video games and networking and all that sort of thing and you'd have to spend probably 40 hours a week working a couple different jobs. Don't leave yet. This video was not painful at all to research and it was also super fun to make. I hope Susan sees this and if she does, please don't demonetize me and also can we be friends? Now you can probably tell that realistically speaking, I don't recommend getting an art degree about 99% of the time. So I found an excellent video when I was researching this from a guy who basically got a bachelor's degree in music and this is what he had to say about getting an art degree. A music degree doesn't really have value. It doesn't have value to employers in the market because it certifies a skill set that nobody really needs in business. Nobody really needs a classical guitarist or a great actor or even really a great storyteller if you're an English major. But it also doesn't have a meaningful certification within the field. Nobody gives you a gig because you have a music degree. Nobody hires you for a part because you have an acting degree and nobody publishes your book because you have an English degree. They publish your book because your book is good. They give you the acting gig because you auditioned well and they give you the music gig because you can play well, right? The degree is really irrelevant even within the market itself. Now this guy did an excellent job from the perspective of somebody who has gotten an art degree themselves explaining the reality of the situation. Definitely go check that video out sometime. It's worth a watch, especially if you're someone who's thinking about going into the arts, doing it professionally or it's your passion, you can't do anything else, that sort of thing. Check that video out. Now seriously, if you want to make art as a living, there are a few pro tips that you should follow especially if you don't want to end up posting on Craigslist that you're available to perform as a clown at children parties and bar mitzvahs. Number one is you want to know the market value of your degree. Now there's two different types of market value. There's kind of a broader market value and then there's more of a niche market value. So the broader market value would be something like an engineering degree is universally respected. Business degrees aren't necessarily universally respected but they are flexible and broad enough where you can get a job in just about any industry or with just about any company. Now art degrees generally are not going to have very much broad market value. This is just a fact of the situation. Pretty much none of them have that kind of broad market value. Even a degree like graphic design, a lot of that work can easily be outsourced to different countries where people have a lower cost of living and therefore they're able to do the work at a much lower price and honestly you don't sacrifice that much in terms of quality. Now the second type of market value is niche specific market value. So for instance, if you have a bunch of different art curators, your entire family, maybe you have like a bunch of people who run museums and you don't really care too much about making all that much money, maybe you could go and get a art history degree because that has a lot of niche specific value. You would already have those connections within your community and your art history degree would probably help you to get a decent job. However, if you're someone who doesn't have a huge competitive advantage like that, even niche specific value is probably not going to help you all that much. David Stewart, the guy who made that video, talked about it in his video where having a music degree really didn't help him much at all when it came to getting different music gigs or anything like that. It wasn't that well respected. What people respect is your ability to play the instrument if you're playing a guitar, how well can you play the guitar or if you're a singer, how well can you sing? Nobody cares if you have a degree and you sing this well versus not having a degree and you sing that well. And it's the same in a lot of different types of art. All people really care about is your skill. And in many of the different art related degrees, you would have more skill just simply by taking those four years that you would be going to college and going out in the real world and practicing. Now, the third type of value that I wanna talk about is the value to yourself. Now, this out of all the arguments I've heard for going for an art degree is by far the best. So if you're someone who is completely passionate about music, you can't see yourself doing anything else. Let's say you want to play in one of the best orchestras in the world. That degree isn't gonna have a lot of market value. It's probably gonna have a small amount of niche related value. Just because of the fact that most people who play in orchestras probably do have a music degree. But that doesn't mean that you have to get a music degree in order to play in orchestras. There might be a few positions like that. But for the most part, it's not going to be. It's all about how good can you play. But the third argument is the value to yourself, which this is something that you can't really quantify or qualify that much. It's something that is unique to you. So a lot of people will say that, okay, I got my music degree and it really didn't help me get a job or anything like that. However, I met my wife. I met some of my best friends while I was in school. I had a unique experience that I couldn't have had anywhere else. And because of that, it was invaluable. Now, like I said, this is the best argument out of the three, but in my opinion, it's still not a great argument and here's why. You don't know what kind of unique experience you would have had if you took those four years and maybe traveled the world, backpacked across the United States, or maybe you moved to Seattle where it has a really great music scene and you just practice playing your instrument there and you networked with a bunch of different people. You don't know what kind of value that alternative situation would have had. For all you know, you might have been doubly as successful. You might have still met a really good person and everything might have turned out even better. I think a lot of people kind of backwards rationalize their decisions in many cases and that's what leads them to saying things like this. But at the same time, who am I to judge? If someone found a tremendous amount of value, if that made their life better, then that's great. I'm super happy for them. So yes, getting a degree is a unique experience that you couldn't have anywhere else, but there's a lot of other things that you could have done with that four years that would have costed a lot less. In fact, you might have even made money that would also be unique experiences. Number three on the list is going to be learning one other skill that either pays the bills or enhances your chances of being able to make a living as an artist. There's a really good book that I recommend to all artists. It's called How to Steal Like an Artist. I think it's by Austin Cleon, I believe his name is. And it sounds like a book on plagiarizing other people, but that's only one tiny little part of the book. Actually, there is some incredible, incredible advice for anybody who wants to pursue an artistic career or make money from doing art. Probably takes only about an hour or so to read, and it is just an incredible read, very, very helpful. Extremely practical advice from someone who is an artist and was able to make it into a full-time career and do it professionally. And one of his biggest tips in that book is you need to learn a skill on the side, learn a career that makes relatively good money, and it's also a career where you have plenty of extra time. It's not one of those careers where you're working like 60, 80 hours a week, and then you'll have that extra income and that extra time in order to practice your art. The reason for this is because many people aren't able to actually find jobs doing art, and so they have to go an alternative route. This means starting a business, maybe doing a YouTube channel, a podcast, starting a blog, something along those lines. And as with any type of business, usually it takes years and years in order to build momentum before you can make a full-time income from it. Especially if you're doing it with something related to art. I think Austin gave some absolutely incredible advice in this book, and I highly recommend any artist out there reads it. He recommends getting a normal job that pays pretty well, learning some kind of skill like maybe plumbing or HVAC or welding or something along those lines where you don't have to go to do too much schooling, but you can still make a decent amount of money. And he has a lot of other really good tips in that book for artists, so I highly recommend it. And technically speaking, this YouTube channel is art. I mean, I'm making videos on this channel. I know a lot of people probably wouldn't consider this art or maybe they would consider it art, but really bad art. But this YouTube channel is technically art. I like film, film is one of my biggest passions. I'm also very passionate about history as well as economics. And so I'm talking about things that I'm passionate about and making videos about them. And I'm making a full-time income just from this channel alone. Number four is to always keep your goals in mind and make sure that getting a degree will help you to reach that goal. Or in some cases, will it hurt you? So whatever you want your career to be, like your dream job, you need to figure out what that is. Maybe you don't want a career, though. Maybe you want to be your own boss. Okay, that's great. Figure out what that is and figure out what you wanna do in order to make money. And then ask yourself, is this degree going to help me get to that level? Now you can figure this out by doing a lot of research online, of course. And my favorite way to do it, which is something that nobody ever does, but this is by far the best way, is to simply, like let's say you have a dream job, contact people who are currently doing that job and ask them very nicely if you can ask them a few questions. Sometimes you'll take them out for coffee or maybe it's just over email or maybe you can just have a phone conversation. But as long as you're respectful of their time, they will usually be more than happy to help you and talk to you a little bit. And let's say that you don't wanna get a career. Maybe you want to be an entrepreneur and start your own YouTube channel, for instance, reach out to people who have already started successful YouTube channels related to the niche that you're wanting to pursue and then just ask them what their advice is. Again, as long as you're very nice, very professional about it, many of them will be more than happy to send you an email back or talk to you about it. Number five is if you do decide that you're going to go to college and you're going to get a degree, let's say you want to be the director of an orchestra or something like that and you found that you actually do need to get a degree in order to reach that position, consider double majoring or minoring in another degree that has more market value or you could even consider minoring in your art degree and then taking another degree as your main one. Now, the reason for this is because you want to be able to communicate to either a hiring manager or a business owner, how you're going to help their business make more money because at the end of the day, businesses cannot exist if they're not making money. So if you're getting a salary of $50,000, you need to make sure that the business is making at least $51,000 from whatever you're doing. So maybe consider double majoring with a business degree or learning a skill like web development, something that could help you to help the business owner or hiring manager make more money. Number six is to consider not going to college and instead focusing on skills rather than degrees. I have a really good friend who is a successful wedding photographer in Las Vegas, his name's Sam, I've talked about him before on this channel, but he came here to the United States from Lebanon and he didn't even know how to speak English and within just a few years, he started a successful photography business. He had pretty much zero photography experience before he moved here from Lebanon and he didn't even speak English. He did not go to college. I don't think he even paid for any courses. He probably bought a few books or something like that, but he did not go to college. He did not invest in an expensive college education in order to become a wedding photographer that makes over six figures a year. Instead, he got a job as a pharmacy technician which is relatively easy to get and it pays decently well. And then he learned wedding photography skills on the side. Eventually he had a portfolio built up and he was able to get some paid gigs. And then he moved where the opportunity was which was Las Vegas and then his business absolutely exploded. When it comes to art, all people care about is how good is your work. They do not care about your degree. They don't care about what awards you got or anything like that. All they care about is how good is your work. The final product. And so focusing on skills a lot of the time is a good way to go. Number seven on this list is to learn leadership as well as entrepreneurial skills. So in doing research on this, a lot of the highest paying art related jobs are ones that have director in the title or manager in the title and there's a reason for that. People who have leadership skills tend to get paid a lot more because leadership is such a difficult skill to learn. So leadership skills are gonna be very important for you to be able to get those scarce positions that are out there, especially the ones that pay really well. All right, that's all I have for you guys. Again, I really hope you don't see me as just like, you know, crapping on art degrees. I really don't mean to do that. I have a lot of respect for artists. I just think that a ton of people are falling into this trap. Several of my friends have fallen into this trap. I had one friend who got a dance degree and she really regrets it for instance. If you have a passion for something but you're not able to make any money from it, then consider just making it a hobby. A lot of the time, if you have something that you're really passionate about and you're forced to do it over and over again, it actually loses a lot of its passion, which is why you see a lot of really low meaning scores and really low job satisfaction with art related degrees and art related careers. So for instance, let's say you wanna become an actor. Well, if you're really desperate for money and you're, you know, you have to pay the bills, you might consider doing something that you're not very comfortable with, like doing a naked scene, for instance. Or maybe if you're a musician, if you're really desperate for money and you're desperate to pay the bills, you might do a bunch of different gigs that you probably wouldn't take if you had the money. And so you hate doing these gigs. It's not in the type of music that you wanna play, but you take it just because you have to. If it was just a hobby that you were doing on the side, or if it was, you know, something that you were pursuing kind of entrepreneurial, where you have a job, you have a stable income, but you're doing it entrepreneurially, you could easily just turn it down. I hope this was some good advice. Again, I, you know, I know a lot of people are probably gonna hate on me for making this video, but I'm just trying to tell you guys the way that it is, give you solid advice so you can make good personal finance decisions for your future. Thank you so much for watching this video. I made it just for you. Go ahead, smash the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera, that you have on the video.