The Sound Arts Program at Ex’pression College for Digital Arts

During my schooling, I encountered a number of problems with the school. I don’t know if they’ve fixed these problems, but they are things I would bring up if I were taking a tour of the school.

The biggest problem was their lack of focus on ProTools. No one that graduated in our class was proficient in that program, which is the most central software in sound recording or sound design. It was actually rather ridiculous how little we were exposed to ProTools at Ex’pression. That is a major flaw.

The other problem with the curriculum is that there is no real master curriculum. That is to say, each class is autonomous. This doesn’t make sense in a set-curriculum program. Basically, it means that a lot of classes are teaching the same thing over and over, and some things aren’t getting covered at all.

Other problems included near-constant administrative errors – ie, changing the dates of spring break one month before it was supposed to happen (I missed an entire week of school because of this, since I had already gotten tickets out of town).

I mean, the list is long in this department…I don’t really even know where to begin or end. So I’ll just suffice it to say that their administration needs a lot of work.

The program itself was pretty challenging, but I think that had a lot to do with the schedule – classes and labs can be scheduled at very odd hours. Also, if you’ve had absolutely no exposure to audio before this program, it will take some work. I definitely left the school knowing more than I did when I came in. This is because of the wonderful teaching faculty there. The one thing that kept me going to school was how incredibly wonderful all the teachers are at Ex’pression. I can’t say enough good things about them.

Keeping that in mind, the overall program was still not that great. I could have been a lot more prepared for entering the workforce if the administration had done a better job planning a master curriculum. I think the only reason I’ve been able to get jobs is because I’m versatile and dedicated. Their career development department is nothing to write home about.

I think what you have to ask yourself is what you want to do with your education from Ex’pression (or any school like it) and why you want to go. I think I would have been able to assert my education more if I had a firmer grasp on what I wanted to do. Ask a ton of questions of the school if you take a tour, see if you can talk to some of the current students, etc.