Sessions CollegeReviews of sessions.edu

I am writing this review to share an objective assessment of my experience in the asynchronous BFA in Illustration program at Sessions College of Professional Design. While the flexibility of an asynchronous program is appealing, the execution of this degree falls drastically short of professional and higher education standards across several critical areas. First, the program is fundamentally unequipped for individuals who already possess a baseline foundation in art or are looking to advance an existing career. The foundational courses are largely rehashed versions of introductory high school art classes, focusing on rudimentary drawing mechanics rather than higher-level concepts. Experienced artists seeking advanced skill refinement, industry-level portfolio development, or professional growth will find the coursework reductive and unchallenging. Furthermore, a substantial portion of the course material is severely out of date, with modules left untouched for five or more years. Key instructional resources, external reading links, and tutorial references are frequently broken or point to missing pages. In a rapidly evolving digital art landscape, relying on obsolete tools and non-functional materials is unacceptable for a degree-granting institution. The quality of instruction is equally concerning. Rather than receiving tailored critique from industry professionals, assignment feedback consistently feels automated, repetitive, and formulaic. In a professional illustration program, students rely on actionable visual and technical guidance regarding composition, value hierarchy, and draftsmanship. Receiving surface level text templates instead of genuine human mentorship severely undermines the value of tuition. Finally, feedback within the core courses exhibits a distinct bias toward traditional Eurocentric aesthetics. Non-Western or contemporary stylizations are routinely penalized not for technical flaws, but simply for departing from a narrow, traditional aesthetic standard. Compounding this issue, global illustration assignments actively discourage students from showcasing their own cultural heritage, forcing them to research external cultures only to hyper-scrutinize minor inaccuracies in their execution. For the cost of tuition, students deserve a modernized curriculum, functional learning materials, inclusive stylistic guidance, and meaningful mentorship. Sessions College fails to deliver on these basic standards. Experienced artists and prospective students seeking a contemporary, rigorous illustration education should look elsewhere.

The course is rather superficial, it's mostly based on reading material. Many lessons are outdated and many links are broken so we can't get access to the videos they are trying to show. General YouTube videos are used to explain the lessons on some of the subjects. The projects were hard to execute based on the content of the lessons alone so extra research is needed. I use Photoshop for 15 years and had a hard time executing the projects, I have no idea how a person new to Photoshop would be able to get it done, especially in the time frame you're given. The worst for me was that every time I finished a chapter they removed those lessons from my dashboard so I lost access to it's content and couldn't even see my grades anymore or the comments received on my work. Many times I needed to go back to the content of a previous chapter as I needed that info for the next project and that was gone. The course has an expiration date of 12 months so don't think you can take it at you own pace. If you don't submit at least one project per week you'll fall behind and will be charged a good amount to extend for another 6 months max. In my opinion this course is way too expensive for what it offers. They also don't give you a transcript after you finish so you don't even receive your grades at the end, only a certificate . There are many online courses on these subjects that you can take separately for a fraction of the cost and will probably be more engaging. This course will not prepare you for a job, it will just give you an overview about each of the subjects so you can have a sense if you like it or not.

Most of my teachers were very nice but brutally honest with their feedback. It was very helpful. For one of my teachers, it took several weeks and 2 emails for her to thoroughly respond to me. But aside from that great experience with the teachers. My rating is mainly for the lessons. Not all but many of them had grammatical errors and concepts were explained very poorly. The attempt to do so in a somewhat colloquial manner was appreciated but not executed effectively. I needed to google a lot of things especially marketing concepts. Several of my classes had year(s) old discussion threads, notifying me of things that my teacher was out of town or other things that weren’t relevant to the course. In summary the course material needs an update and a good editor. Also, a certification is nice, but I don’t think I really learned much from this. All things I could have learned online for a lot cheaper.

I feel Sessions has their program wrong. They should teach the basics of camera usage first! They taught very little. Photoshop was more geared for graphic design than photography. Seems a number of students thought the same about photography and photoshop. Then after this students should be able to branch out to other types or brands of photography they prefer rather than be stuck into one type. Such as portrait vs. landscape. I think Sessions in a good college with nice people, but they need to take a good look at the way they are structuring their classes.

I'm disappointed in Sessions. Most of my instructors aren't much help and nearly all of my learning has been through Youtube research. An assignment is made and from there I'm almost always researching Youtube for answers for all my photography and Photoshop classes. I could do this without Sessions. I have had a few instructors that are very knowledgeable and helpful but that is the exception.