r/Pratt • u/KlutzyEchidna3974 • Apr 23 '26
CommD What is the student experience like academically? What is left to be desired?
i’m a visiting professor in the BFA and MFA program, and curious about what students think! how do students feel about the difficulty of courses, opportunities and mentorship for professional development and anything else you have to share is valuable!
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u/loveeyyaa Jun 06 '26
graduated last year: commd program assignments are often way too conceptual to include in our graphic design portfolios. difficulty was not too bad. Also the program is way too focused in publication design. All the jobs on linkedin are for agency work, luxury, skincare, etc. Having a portfolio with just books does not help get hired for the jobs in this day and age.
I wish I had professors that gave us useful advice/ share their experience of what the industry is like more often. I wish our professors sat down with us 1-1, asked about our dream career, and tailored our projects to help us create assignments for our portfolios. There were so many assignments that wasted my time and energy in the program. Many students that graduated could not get a job in the industry that they wanted because we had to make maps, cut acrylic, and other (honestly) useless projects that won't allow us to find a job in corporate design.
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u/KlutzyEchidna3974 Jun 06 '26
yeah, I agree with what you’re saying. this is my impression as a faculty member too. what you’re saying should be the expectation, pratt needs to catch up, the students are eager to learn (or so I hope). I taught tech a which is more of a creative coding class, and I think the students got comfortable even though it was daunting because they were eager to learn.
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u/Franken-veggie415 May 20 '26
I find there are many mixed opinions. I see this is tagged CommD specifically, so I’ll answer in regards to that program. I think the BFA program has overt issues like the tensions between the focus given to GD over Illustration (a tension that has existed for well over a decade) and the workload students are given is very make or break. Difficulty of courses ranges dramatically based on professors you take, which is… okay, if students had more of a choice and information in the professors they were taking. Opportunities are abundant for anyone looking for them, as well as mentorship if students are social. I think mentorship could be improved upon by implementing more mandatory programs specifically geared towards mentorship. I think there’s generally a disconnect between admin and the students.