By David Parker

    Chances are that at some point in your time at SAIC you have heard the following: "You know, 75 percent of freshmen drop out by their sophomore year."
    It's often said - but can this be true?
    The official SAIC administration numbers tell otherwise. Of the first-time freshmen who entered in fall 1999 (the most recent available figures), 93 percent came back for more in the spring. And after a summer to reflect and digest, 76.4 percent of that entering class returned in the fall as sophomores.
    Outside sources seem to confirm these figures. The Kaplan/Newsweek College Catalog 2000 says that 77 percent of the freshmen return for sophomore year, and the Arco Field Guide to Colleges calls it 75 percent.
    Undergraduate Division Chair Paul Coffey says that these numbers are quite typical of what happens from year to year at SAIC. According to Coffey, SAIC has an undergraduate enrollment of about 2000 (that's 500 per class for 4 years). Of that 2000, half (49 percent) are transfer students. Coffey said that keeping statistics can be more complicated than it seems; at present, the only group of undergraduate students who are followed are first-time freshmen (i.e., students who have never enrolled anywhere else following high school). That's because the federal government requires reports of such numbers from all schools. So that means that the only hard numbers on student retention available at present don't include all those transfer students.
    Looking at some other big-name art schools in the U.S. for comparison, the SAIC retention figures are very middle-of-the-road. According to Bill Barrett, director of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design, there's "nothing unusual about SAIC's freshman-to-sophomore transfer rate." Of the 30-plus member schools (including all the ones you've heard of), the average is 78 percent return.
    Barrett, who after 30 years with AICAD is perhaps the one person in the country most familiar with statistics of this kind, said that for most schools, half of the students who choose to leave do so before sophomore year. "Art school can be a really intense experience," he said. "Many students decide that it's just not for them, and they figure that out pretty fast."
    Coffey echoed this sentiment, adding that the question of student retention is a very complex one. "I don't think we can be everything to everyone. If we tried to do that, we would water down what we're good at. I think it's inherent in the system that some will say, 'I can't do this, I can't see a life in this, I gotta go." Different art schools offer different types of education, he continued. Some students come to SAIC in search of a precise and direct tracked approach in which they are led through a clear path. When they don't find it here, they go elsewhere.
    Which brings us to the question of how the First Year Program might figure into all this. Many students have the perception that FYP may play a part eliminating this 25 percent, or even is designed to "thin the herd." True or false?
    In response, FYP director Helen Maria Nugent and Coffey both stressed that the SAIC student body is a community of individuals, and each person chooses to stay or leave for individual reasons. Of those who leave, some of the most commonly cited factors are the loose SAIC curricular structure, the high tuition, family support, issues of living away from home, and prospects for the future.
    And FYP? According to Nugent, the 2D, 3D and 4D components are there to get students to see a bigger perspective on what they might do in art school, and on what art is. By providing a degree of structure for all incoming freshmen, "we try to set up a situation that keeps first-time students from falling through the cracks, but also one that leaves room for them to do what they want in outside electives," she said. FYP classes are mandatory in order to push students to consider their choice to come to art school.
    "If a painter comes to me and says they have no interest in 4D, I say, 'I understand.' But I'm not going to let them get out of taking the class, because it's important for education to be uncomfortable at times. Otherwise, what are you learning?" Nugent and Coffey both said that the benefit of being pushed outside one's comfort zone often doesn't come to light until much later, when students may come to see that their horizons have been broadened in ways that weren't obvious at the time.
    In this light, it makes sense that a die-hard sculptor forced to sit through 2D I and II might be heard to grumble on occasion, or a printmaker might want to smash a videocamera in the required 4D. Nugent has observed that many new students are frightened to learn that as artists they are going to be held responsible for their work and the choices in making it. For some, that fear gets transferred off of themselves and onto blame for teachers, other students, the school in general - anything except their own insecurities. Nugent has found this response to be quite common among entering freshmen, and so she concludes that for FYP "the challenge is not 'can you learn this technique?'; it's 'can you open your mind to this?'"
    Both Nugent and Coffey reiterated that FYP does not exist to skim the SAIC student body. They said that it is about giving students a taste of what it means to be an artist early on, toward the overall school goal of producing "self-generating, self-sustainable artists." These administrators' bottom line: there's an important difference between forcing students to leave school and showing them what a life in art means so that they can make an informed choice about whether or not they want to continue.
    F News would like this article to open a dialogue on the subject of perceived and actual student retention. Your response is welcome.