Art Center plans

I GRADUATED from Art Center College of Design in 1997 with a product design degree and now work at Continuum with Damien Vizcarra, who was quoted in “Uproar at Art Center” [by Mike Boehm, June 11], and as a designer involved in vetting both our product design intern candidates and applicants for entry-level design jobs, I would have to agree with Paul Kirley that I don’t see many current ACCD students or recent graduates possessing a high base-line level of quality in terms of design thinking or foundation skills.

Historically, Art Center offered its students, in exchange for enduring a very expensive and extremely intense eight semesters of study, an almost-guaranteed position as a professional designer. (I like to call Art Center the “world’s most expensive vocational-tech school.”) However, the school seems to have lost its way in recent years in terms of preparing students for the professional design world, and it’s now just really expensive.

Alan Mudd

West Newton, Mass.