So, "My college education had very little to do with reaching my career goals" best fits me. First of all, I had no plans on doing theater as a career, it's just what I do. I started school with theater in mind because I enjoyed it in HS and frankly there was more scholarship money in technical theater than there was in Archaeology (Indiana Jones helped to solidify that as a career choice for me, but I already had that in mind before the first movie). So, even though I had offers to better colleges, I stayed local to incur the least amount of debt possible by going to a state college. With an Associates degree under my belt, I went to my dirt digging passion. Needless to say, that's not the direction I ended up going.
So, how did my AA in theater help me with work. Frankly, I doubt that it has done much other than showing employers that I have some theory under my belt and not all on the job training. However, my technical skills in theater have all come from professional experience and workshops. My college did not have a computerized lighting
console, but a two-scene
preset board. A
Mackie 1202 would have easily outperformed our sound
console, and we still had to splice reel-to-reel tape when recording our sound effects. I think that we only used a mic once the entire time I was in the program. What my program at my college did for me was give me opportunities. In the two and a half years that I attended, I was able to work in all aspects of the production. Not a lot of larger schools would allow a freshman to be the SM of a large musical. Due to my hard work, I proved my capability and had that opportunity at the end of my first year.
However, the position that I now hold probably did not consider my degree one
bit. I have co-workers who don't hold a degree in theater at all (some with no college at all) and others who have advanced degrees. The majority were able to get their position from their hard work and whom they impressed. Now, I work in corporate theater (for profit) and found that when I worked in regional theater (not-for-proit usually) that there was a different outlook on college experience. In fact, there are many regional theaters who will not hire upper
level positions without at least a Bachelor's degree in theater, preferring a BFA or MFA. So, by the choice of only obtaining an Associates degree, I have limited myself in some aspects.
I am not against college education by any means. However, I encourage all students to look at the reason why they choose to go to college. Since education is the only time that you can obtain extremely large sums of money on credit, without proven credit records or a means to pay it back, many students end up failing as has been previously stated because school works against them. If you choose to go to school because you aren't sure what you intend to do in life, or to try new things, or because that seems to be what is expected of you, you might find yourself in quite a lot of debt without means to pay for it. It's wasted money and opportunity. If you want to go to a technical trade school (Full Sail is probably top for this particular industry), then you have a limited time to make the most of it. I find that more students who have a better working knowledge before they go into those programs get a better education from them than those who rely on them for all of their training.
So, depending on your career goals, college may be extremely important, and sometimes it will depend on what school that you go to, such as Yale. On the other
hand, college may or may not benefit you at all. Dumb luck and good experience can get you far. Look at Luc LaFortune as an example of a successful designer without a proper education. In some ways, you could consider him as the lottery winner of lighting design since it will be unlikely that any of the rest of us will get that kind of luck.
My college experience may have given me the tools that I needed to get where I am today, but the degree is not a consideration, and I doubt that it was a consideration to any of my employers as to whether or not they should hire me.