[game_edu] placement rates (was Introduction - Sheri Rubin)

[Sarah_Lemarie at scee.net]

Who are "the accreditation folks", though? Does it vary for each 
discipline?

Sarah Lemarié
Infrastructure Manager & Academic Liaison
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited
t: +44 (0)20 7859 5200
e: sarah_lemarie at scee.net
w: http://research.scee.net








"Miller, Gary" <gmiller at fullsail.com> 
Sent by: game_edu-bounces at igda.org
23/09/2009 16:25
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Subject
Re: [game_edu] placement rates (was Introduction - Sheri Rubin)






I am at the limit of my knowledge on what count but I know that if we
fall below 70% we will loose our accreditation so we push to find out
what our graduates are doing.  There is always a bigger push when we get
audited by the accreditation folks. 

-----Original Message-----
From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org [mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] On
Behalf Of baylor wetzel
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 10:49 AM
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv
Subject: Re: [game_edu] placement rates (was Introduction - Sheri Rubin)

Is that an accreditation issue? We're also required to have a 70%
placement "in field" (and we sometimes fight over what counts as
in-field), but i thought it was an arbitrary number our school chose. i
hadn't realized that it was set by accreditation

One issue i'm unsure of is how we handle "self-employed". Our program
explicitly focuses on small game companies - we place people in large
companies from time to time but we realize the midwest isn't the gaming
hotspot so we try to make them well rounded and prepare them for small,
indie and casual game jobs. A lot of students start their own game
companies. The question is whether to count those as being employed.
Someone with a staff of five, some venture capital, a real office and a
publisher relationship working 40 hours a week should count but someone
who has a day job at Walmart, tinkers with a game idea a few hours a
week and claims to have a game company should not. i don't know what
criteria my school uses (or how it can even verify the facts), so
placement rates should probably be taken with a grain of salt

-baylor



On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 8:01 AM, Miller, Gary <gmiller at fullsail.com>
wrote:


                 Our accreditation is contingent on maintaining a 70% 
placement
rate but
                 I do not know how that is measured. If you email Coble, 
Rob
                 rcoble at fullsail.com he might be able to give you some 
stats and
point
                 you to the measures.  I teach Operating Systems and 
Machine
Architecture
                 II in our Game Development program but we do have a Game 
Design
Program
                 and a Masters in Game Development which I do not know 
much
about.
 
                 -----Original Message-----
                 From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] On
                 Behalf Of Dan Carreker
                 Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 5:54 PM
                 To: IGDA Game Education Listserv
                 Subject: Re: [game_edu] placement rates (was Introduction 
-
Sheri Rubin)
 
                 Baylor,
 
                 I think you have some great points here.
 
                 USC has a 49% placement rate?  (making sure I understand 
you
correctly)
                 Does anyone have any other data on placement rates? I'm 
giving a
talk
                 soon on how to choose a game design school and I'm sure 
this
question
                 will come up.
 
 
 
                 Dan Carreker
                 www.NarrativeDesigns.com
                 "If I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood.
                  I'd type a little faster."  - Asimov
 
 
                        ----- Original Message -----
                        From: baylor wetzel <mailto:baylorw at gmail.com>
                        To: amenezes at imagecampus.com.ar ; IGDA Game 
Education
Listserv
                 <mailto:game_edu at igda.org>
                        Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 2:45 PM
                        Subject: Re: [game_edu] Introduction - Sheri Rubin
 
                        >In the end, we are training future customers for 
these
                        > companies and it would be wiser to consider us 
as
                        > partners, not customers, don't you thnk?
 
                        i realize i'm going to seem like a tremendous 
jerk, but
i'm not
                 sure that it is a real partnership. Probably the top 
issue our
school is
                 facing is placement - most of our students just aren't 
getting
jobs with
                 game companies. This situation is true for most of the 
game
schools i
                 know of (USC's GamePipe, based in LA next to 49% of all 
North
American
                 game jobs, being the big exception). i don't think my 
school has
a lot
                 of leverage with game companies and although i wish 
they'd give
us
                 licenses for old games, snippets of source code, free (or 
cheap)
copies
                 of Unreal 2007, etc., i honestly don't see any reason why 
they
should
 
                        It's also worth noting that publishers aren't 
developers
and
                 developers are often very, very small and frequently go 
out of
business,
                 so setting up a relationship with most is fairly 
difficult. Many
of the
                 people they hire aren't people with game degrees, they're
friends and
                 talented people (probably without a degree) who send in a
fantastic
                 portfolio. Maybe they should hire someone different 
(although
there's a
                 good argument that they shouldn't), but they don't. So 
what's
their
                 incentive to take the (not insubstantial) time to manage
relationships
                 with game schools, especially given how many have popped 
up in
the last
                 few years (the growth in the number of game schools has 
been
truly
                 dizzying)?
 
                        We use cheap tools (Flash, Torque, the level 
editor in
Unreal
                 2004) and not very cheap educational versions of tools 
such as
Photoshop
                 and 3DSMax. If we want to show them "classic" games, we 
show
them movies
                 and screenshots of them (asking a student to invest 40 
hours per
game to
                 find those classic bits like the bathroom scene in Deus 
Ex or
the low
                 int dialog option in Fallout is fairly unrealistic) or, 
to study
                 concepts, we make our clones. As much as we wish we could 
get
Mudbox, a
                 motion capture system, the source code to Half-Life and
unlimited free
                 copies of Monkey Island, we'd be happy with just the game
companies
                 showing up at our career fair
 
                        -baylor
 
 
 
 
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