How Film Schools Are Bracing for Change in a Time of Hollywood Disruption

College is expensive. Film school can be even pricier. So it’s understandable that parents might worry about forking out $70,000 a year for their kid’s future in a cutthroat industry that isn’t known for its guarantees. “Parents, the last several years, were concerned,” Elizabeth Daley, dean of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, said. “They saw strikes. They didn’t really understand how cyclical the industry is. You had to reassure them, ‘Hey guys, we’re all still here and we’ve been through a lot of this.’” 

Which is not to say the challenges film schools and their students face today aren’t real. With the entertainment industry changing amid a diminishing job market, soaring tuition costs and advancements in technology such as artificial intelligence and virtual production, film schools are in a period of transition as they grapple with how to respond to an evolving landscape. 

Adding to the urgency is the projected demographic or “enrollment cliff” that is expected to affect higher education as a whole after 2025. Following the 2008 economic recession, national birth rates declined significantly; studies predict that college-age applicants will drop 10% to 15% over the next decade, which means less tuition money for each institution. “Every university is going to have to be practical and pragmatic,” Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, said. 

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, enrollment in public and private two-year and four-year universities has already been trending downward. Undergraduate enrollment has decreased for some colleges by 38% to 59% between 2010 and 2021. Those concerning figures, coupled with Hollywood itself being in a state of retraction due in part to the pandemic, cost-cutting and the shift to streaming, means more pressure for film schools to maintain relevance. 

“We need to be graduating people who are innovators because the industry has gone through many changes,” said Susan Ruskin, dean and executive vice president of the American Film Institute’s AFI Conservatory, which offers various two-year master’s programs. “I’ve watched people who hold on to the old way of doing things end up finding themselves becoming obsolete.” 

As some film school leaders see it, the entertainment business is forever in a state of change, so they’re used to living by a survival-of-the-fittest philosophy by which they are always looking five years ahead. “How is AI going to impact the industry? Do you take more students who will specialize in virtual reality and fewer who will be doing hand-drawn animation?” Galloway said. “These are all the decisions we have to make, and it’s very difficult.” 

While elite film schools like NYU, USC and AFI will likely continue to be in demand and be insulated from the projected enrollment decline, that isn’t stopping programs from reassessing their curriculum to create viable pipelines from the classroom to the workforce. A 2024 study conducted by the Otis College of Art and Design found that employment in traditional entertainment fields, including the old-model production and distribution of film and television, is down 9.1% from 2013 to 2024. At the same time, emerging industries such as the constantly changing streaming business have increased employment 53%. 

“In many ways, there’s more opportunity than ever, but it’s in different places,” Daley said. “We have students hired to do things now that didn’t exist 20 years ago,” she said, adding that since the pandemic, an estimated 1,600 recent alumni have been placed in entry-level industry positions through the school’s First Jobs program. USC’s film school employs two former agents in the Industry Relations Office to guide students in career planning and development. 

The Business of Entertainment minor, which was introduced in fall 2023 at Chapman, is a corrective means to better prepare students for both the business and creative aspects of the industry, Galloway said. “Students who might otherwise be in a more classical producing major are now being prepared for a business track. We’re offering more possibilities.” 

Any changes to curriculum is a slow-moving process that often takes years to see through, but Daley believes it’s vital for a film school like USC to adapt as fast as possible. “If we don’t, we would be training [students] as dinosaurs,” she said. That means equipping students with a skill set relevant for the present, but also setting them up with necessary tools for the future, “making sure that we are always ahead of the curve, that we’re always sending students out really, truly prepared to go to work.” 

One of the ways to accomplish that is acknowledging that AI and virtual production has disrupted how the industry operates. It remains unclear what lasting impact AI and virtual production will have on movies, TV and the way content is made. In predictive moves to safeguard the future, some film schools are training students with hands-on application of the new technology by constructing virtual production studios featuring LED walls, which are primarily used to display virtual backgrounds or sets in real time. Others are creating new courses, taught by experts in the field, focused specifically on AI and virtual production. 

“It’s a two-sided coin,” Daley said. “We don’t want to be naive about the jobs that [AI] may replace — about the threats, about the harm it could do.” A study commissioned by the Concept Art Association and the Animation Guild estimated that 204,000 industry jobs will be affected by AI over the next three years. “But we’ve also been around long enough to know that every technology that has emerged has had these same two sides.” 

Ruskin added, “People are throwing around the idea that AI is going to change everything. We don’t know what the benefits are and we don’t know yet what the problems might be. [But] we sense that this is going to be very seismic.” 

She’s taking a wait-and-see approach, “and trying not to chase every headline. You see a lot of, ‘Oh my goodness, VR is here. Oh my goodness, volumetric capture.’ To me, all these things are the sky-is-falling moments in time — a headline grabber rather than, 

‘Is this truly something we want to integrate into the conservatory?’” Ruskin said storytelling will dictate whether something like volumetric capture, which captures three-dimensional spaces for various screens and VR spaces, is the “appropriate tool” to bring a project to life. 

There’s potential, too, for skills learned in film school to open students up to alternate career routes outside of the entertainment sphere. “We are looking at how you might blend CG animation with other industries that need it, [like] science, medicine,” Galloway said. “Students can come out with a cutting-edge skill set as well as the traditional knowledge of how to tell the story.” 

All that is well and good, but there is still the matter of rising tuition for students who have no guarantee of employment after graduating. Galloway said that Chapman, cognizant of skyrocketing costs, created an accelerated film production master’s program that lasts two years instead of the traditional three and launched this past fall. 

And let’s not forget that entertainment has never been a field open to all who desire entry. “The industry has always been difficult to break into,” Ruskin said. “It has had moments of expansion and moments of retraction. We’re in another moment of retraction.” Daley agreed: “It’s the same story it’s always been. This is not an easy industry.” 

There is cautious optimism that uncertainty breeds opportunity. “I do really believe that in moments of disruption, historically there’s a renaissance afterwards,” Ruskin said. “And I’m optimistic about where we’re going.” 

This story first ran in the College Issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the College Issue.

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