More than any other MFA programs in Southern California—there are in excess of a dozen—CalArts and UCLA have long been associated with art super-stardom. Whether this perception is accurate or a mere distillation of selective anecdotes, it bolsters the mythology of getting into the right school as a launching pad to a prestigious commercial gallery. Through this looking glass, the notion of a hierarchy of top schools takes on exaggerated status. The discussion has circulated for a very long time, only getting louder in recent years. In April, the artist William Powhida, whose art and criticism investigates power in the corridors of the art world, wrote a column in The Art Newspaper about the correlation between top commercial galleries in New York and certain MFA programs. Powhida wrote about an unnamed acquaintance who applied strategically to programs based on their purported connections to top-tier commercial galleries.

Not surprisingly, many well-known artist/educators at Southern California schools loathe attempts to rank MFA programs. “It seems utterly worthless and a waste of time. From my point of view, there is no legitimate artist or student who would care about these rankings. It is a complete artificial construction based on fashion and cronyism,” said Daniel Joseph Martinez, the Donald Bren Professor of Art at UC Irvine. Martinez, who has been in the Whitney Biennial twice and is represented by Roberts & Tilton, is dismayed that questions like, “What is the top MFA program in Southern California?” and the quest for commercial success distract from what he considers most important: the philosophies and pedagogy of students and faculty.

Michael Ned Holte, who teaches at CalArts, writes extensively on contemporary art and co-curated the 2014 edition of “Made in LA,” said by email, “I’m sure there are students who go to grad school with a very focused idea of how it might help them enter the market. Given the cost of most MFA programs and the prospect of considerable debt, this is not surprising.”

The Metrics of Success
The problem with rankings, whether reflected in lists that each of us harbor, far from public scrutiny, or in formal systems that are published and disseminated by entities that claim a mantle of authority, is that most rankings are based in some significant way on subjective factors. According to Renée Petropoulos, who teaches at Otis College of Art and Design and is represented by Rosamund Felsen Gallery in the warehouse district of Los Angeles, “What I find the ranking system plays into is a business system model; it is a corporate model, where one uses rubrics and metrics to measure success. And as we know, most success is really renegade. It doesn’t follow the rubric. The rubrics are developed after the fact. It tries to measure something to make it manageable. One could say it’s the result of a kind of positivist attitude in culture, which I think is problematic.”

A good example is the MFA rankings published by U.S. News and World Report. U.S. News annually publishes what is perhaps the most prominent ranking system for colleges and universities. A couple of faculty I spoke with identified it as the only nationally prominent MFA ranking, although a few others noted blogs affiliated with other publications that offered one-time articles about top schools.

The U.S. News MFA ranking is beset with subjectivity and runs the risk of being a self-perpetuating system. U.S. News describes their MFA rankings as based solely on the results of a peer assessment survey. Two faculty members per school, including art school deans or other top art school academics, completed the most recent survey, which was conducted in fall of 2011. While the faculty of MFA programs are probably the best qualified to rank other programs, the validity of their opinions is uncertain.

Roland Reiss, who chaired the art department at Claremont Graduate University for 30 years, said the system is deeply influenced by how frequently the faculty completing the survey travel to other schools, and consequently, how familiar they are with other programs and the faculty at those institutions. He voiced concern that rankings can be affected by unconscious desires to favor one’s friends and the respect unquestioningly given to established brands.

Is Ranking Irrelevant?
In 1995, Reed College made its well-publicized decision to withdraw from U.S. News & World Report’s annual national ranking of small liberal arts colleges, citing its conviction that the “methodology is hopelessly flawed” and that it is a grossly inadequate tool for determining educational value, intellectual engagement and student/school fit. The following year, the magazine ranked Reed in its lowest possible tier. It was an absurd result for a school that is known for its academic rigor and the quality of its students and faculty. Yet, despite continuing skepticism about the rankings, the ease with which schools are able to manipulate the numbers that contribute to their rankings and the outright subjectivity of a portion of the survey, schools continue to participate, and the public presumably accepts the scale as a valid measure.

MFA program rankings are different in that they are based solely on a survey. Additionally, comparing undergraduate programs with MFA programs is like comparing apples and durian fruit.

What drives the rankings?
Does anyone sincerely believe that students seeking an MFA put any stock into the U.S. News and World Report rankings of MFA programs? Martinez replied, “No one goes to school based on these rankings.” Holte voiced a similar sentiment, writing, “I don’t think that most students coming to CalArts—the program I’m most competent to discuss—are coming for that reason.”

Petropoulos thinks it is worth discussing school rankings. “Reporting on it might open up ways to speak about the commodifying of education. I see the ranking system as an extension of a commodifying system that chooses to place value on education in particular types of categories.” She sees this as indication of the speculation that affects the art market. “I start there because I think then you delve into the way that individuals need to assess their relationship to institutions. I think, fundamentally, there is a problem with an art student who literally buys into thinking that this is the way to achieve success. I know that happens; I’m not underestimating that power, especially now, 15 years after the mandate that an art education is the new MBA. It is part of the speculative market.”

It’s all about the ideas
Distinctions between the top 20 or even 30 schools are negligible. One doesn’t have to go to Yale, CalArts or UCLA to get a good art education. This sentiment was echoed across the board by faculty from all schools. Petropoulos contends there are many places to get a good education and that the value of schools like Yale, CalArts, UCLA and others considered “top” schools is the network. She said one of the main assets of CalArts in the 1970s was the connectedness of its faculty—that they knew artists and thinkers around the world with whom they could connect their students.

Holte contended that student fit is a much more important measure for students to consider when thinking about programs: “I believe each grad program has strengths and weaknesses. What might be a really ideal program for one student might not be the right program for another. I think it’s important for prospective students to thoroughly research the various programs when considering an MFA program.”

To illustrate what he considers the frivolity of ranking, Martinez took one of his “famous informal polls,” asking a dozen of his past and present students if they had ever heard of the U.S. News MFA ranking, and if they had, did they read it, and would it have made a difference in their decision to attend UC Irvine. “I got a no, a no, and a no. Not a single person cared or had even heard about it. And the only real thing that matters about education is not what professors think, it’s not how the schools advertise themselves; the only validating tool is what students think. That’s it. At the end of the day, nothing else matters. Either students think that the school is good for x, y and z reasons, or they don’t,” Martinez said.

What are the rankings, and why does it matter?
U.S. News ranked Southern California MFA programs in the following order: UCLA, CalArts, UCSD, Art Center, Otis, USC, Irvine, Claremont, SDSU, Cal State LA, UCSB, Long Beach, Fullerton, the Brooks Institute, CSUSB and Laguna College of Art and Design. The national ranking of these same schools starts at number four and ends with number 206. Almost everyone who reads this will, for their own reasons, differ in how they assess these standings. In spite of the skepticism about rankings, they continue to wield power, whether by U.S. News, another magazine, or someone’s personal rubric. And for good reason: there is a lot at stake. When one considers the cost of a graduate education and the uncertainty of any return, the prospect is daunting.

According to Petropoulos, about 10% of MFA grads remain in the field long term. Holte also observed the difficulties of thinking about the MFA as a bankable degree: “Of course there are many notable [Cal- Arts] alumni who have had enormous market success, and many more who have not. I think it’s safe to say there are no guarantees in the art market, even when there are strategies.”

Petropoulos framed the question as one of educational goals, “I do have internal notions of what I think an interesting, productive education might be. And I don’t always think they happen at the institutions that are maybe the most highly ranked. I think they might happen elsewhere, and that’s where things become interesting to me because it’s the long term. I really still go to the long term. When I see someone pop up, 15 or 20 years later, and they’re doing something super-interesting, and maybe they didn’t have that trajectory, whether visible immediately, [meanwhile] they’ve been really carefully figuring out how they want to proceed. That to me is the most successful model there could ever be. There are schools that teach that more carefully than others.”