Are Art Schools Stifling Creativity?

Well you said no one had commented, and indeed they haven't, so rather than leave you wondering why I thought let us, foolish boy, tread on the thin ice; just watch me plunge through it... Trouble is that probably rather few of us have been to art college either at all, or in recent years, so we don't necessarily know what the current practices are. But I have heard, at second or third hand, students complaining that they're not being taught what they want to know, eg how to draw, how to stretch a canvas (something I've never done, incidentally, and am never intending to do), how to mix colours, how to understand how colours are classified. The art schools would probably reply that what they exist for is to help their students make a living as artists; and that the traditional media are not the best way to do that; indeed one could hardly argue with them, because it's well-known that most of us who tried to make a living just from painting have failed to do so, and have either had another job to bring home the bacon and paint, or have had to teach (which some enjoy, so it's not necessarily a hardship). If art colleges were to move away from that which might make their students a living, they'd be criticized just as much as they seem to be now for not teaching traditional skills - but you would hope there could be a happy medium; that the old skills could be taught alongside the new ones. I've never been to an art school; I've never even visited one - those who have tend to come up with contradictory impressions, so I imagine there's considerable variation in approach and what can be offered. The advantage they always seemed to offer, so far as I could tell as an outsider, is that they introduced emerging artists to each other; facilitated approaches to galleries; and promoted marketing. Is this enough? Well, no - if that's all they do, I don't think it is. But we really need someone to comment who has direct personal, recent experience of going through college.