We asked participants a number of questions about their education, training, and mentorship within their careers. This section of the findings outlines respondents' educational status, level of specialized training, and engagement with mentor-mentee relationships with other comics professionals.
434 (58.4%) participants had attained post-secondary education; of them, the majority of participants hold a bachelor's degree or higher.
46 (6.5%) of participants reported their highest educational attainment as being a highschool diploma and 36 (4.8%) reported having no educational certificate or diploma.
227 (30%) participants did not respond to this question.
Common "other" certifications included:
It was also fairly common for participants to report having "some college" (but no formal degree) in the "other certification" field.
While the participants of this study are generally a highly-educated group of workers, this study identified three areas of job-specific training where discrepancies could occur:
Approximately 75% of participants had (at any point) received formal training relevant to their current creative work.
Approximately 51% of participants had formal training which included content which was specifically related to working in comics.
Approximately 17% had participated in some form of formalized on-the-job training relevant to their career in comics.
Aside from formalized (or informal) training, we asked participants whether they were involved in a mentorship related to their work in comics. This was captured via two questions, whose results are as follows:
Approximately a third of respondents have an on-going relationship in which they were the person receiving training, mentorship, or advice from another comics professional.
Approximately a third of respondents have an on-going relationship in which they were the person giving training, mentorship, or advice from another comics professional.