[game_edu] guidance for students and parents

[Roberts, Scott]

All the recent posts on "those" programs and the all the "other" evil schools/administrators are entertaining, but I'm not sure who they're aimed at.  Are there members of those schools subscribed to this list?  If so, they must have thick skin to take all this venting.  (And is it just my imagination, or does this thread happen every year following GDC?)

It doesn't appear that anyone is proposing real, concrete actions to improve the situation.  I think it's inappropriate for this group to publish a list of predatory schools, and problematic to list schools that are AOK (the specter of the IGDA stamp of approval).  What is appropriate is to present a list of what students and parents should look for: positives and warning signs.  Do we have something like this and I've just missed it?  I wasn't able to locate it on the SIG site.

Breaking In
I'm embarrassed to say that I just noticed the IGDA Breaking In site: http://www.igda.org/breakingin/ , and I have no idea how old it is.  It appears to be meant to encourage students to get into the industry, but there's no real guidance of any kind for choosing a good school (at least that I could find).  

Can I propose that we try to add some education advice to this site, and then all work to link to that location from our program sites?  That would raise the chances of students finding the site (through a better Google rating based on our traffic) and avoiding some of these predators.  FIEA has a list of questions for prospective students to ask: http://www.fiea.ucf.edu/shield/showpage.php?page_id=1007 , and I liked it so much that we made our own version: http://gamedev.depaul.edu/?page_id=38  I'm sure many schools have their own versions.

Maybe something like this could help the situation, and we'll have less to gripe about next year.  :)

Scott


Scott Roberts
Associate Professor
School of Cinema & Interactive Media
DePaul University 
sroberts at CIM.depaul.edu 

http://GameDev.DePaul.edu/