Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2020 - 40

report all theatre-related completions
in the Theatre: General or Theatre:
Other subcategories, even when their
program descriptions identify design or
stage management as a distinct major.
Reported in this way, it is impossible
from IPEDS data alone to distinguish
a technical production student from a
music theatre performer or a playwright.
Aligning reported numbers to individual
institutions suggests that there may also
be dance and secondary education majors included in the total. It is very rare
to find theatre, as a major, housed within
an English department, but it is not uncommon, particularly in small colleges,
to find it within communication departments. Yet most of these programs are offering very little theatre coursework and
are still reporting theatre separate from
communication completions.
To discover the number of production-focused graduates, it is clear that
they must be teased out of the general
and other categories. Three separate examinations yielded some insights. The
first was a breakdown by theatre specialization for all 125 institutions that
did report performance independently

from design and/or production over a
seven-year span. A second examination
looked at bulletins and catalogs from the
same seven-year span for approximately
150 institutions drawn from all colleges
and universities claiming theatre as a degree option (1,065 institutions) to align
degrees offered with published curriculum and completion reports. The third
was a study of completions reported in
all institutions that offered degrees in
Theatre, Visual Communication, Design
and Visual Fine Art (2,176 institutions).
The overlay of these data sets produced
an estimate of 1,622 production-focused
students per year in academic years beginning between 2010 and 2017. The
formula applied is differentially weighted
for the following factors: NAST (National
Association of Schools of Theatre) membership, size of school, volume of total
completions, degree type (BFA or BA),
emphasis/track/major offered, and the
number of uniquely named and numbered production-related courses in the
catalog. Although this is much better
than the 700 per year officially reported
as design and production, this extrapolated number still only represents a less

FABRICS

than one tenth of a percent share of the
total undergraduate degree market.

Don't Cry for Me Argentina
(Evita, 1976)

The impetus for this data-gathering effort was originally to build support for a
design and production student recruiting
plan at my institution. This interest was
soon intensified as I became aware of
the experience of several friends and colleagues who were navigating mandated
program closures, staff reductions, and
curricular modifications of their own. The
work then became even more personal
and neccessary when my institution announced the need to streamline our
academic offerings and increase class
course enrollment minimums as part
of a comprehensive strategy to address
a significant projected budget shortfall.
The data confirmed that the challenges
we were facing were widespread, particularly in smaller institutions and acutely in
the fine arts and humanities.
The educational landscape is anything but static. During the gathering
phase of the investigation, several programs in the catalog examination subset

PROJECTION
SUPPORTING THE

ENTERTAINMENT

I N D U S T RY
FOR OVER 70 YEARS

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Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2020

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