CCS students are required to have a thesis defense in front of a panel of 3 professors. They must, as Amze commented, produce a significant body of creative work, and also must defend the “significant” designation. The difference between CCS and most schools is that there is one single course of study. All of the courses and programs are pre-selected by the school. If the students passed all their classes over the 2 years, it means they’ve completed historical research, demonstrated an ability to critically analyze comics as art and literature, and studied the financial/business institutions surrounding the industry.

That’s in addition to completing the comics. Most students choose to self-publish their comics without documentation of all this additional work because they believe the comics are strong enough to stand on their own. Including additional thesis-project-type materials would label the books as “student work” instead of just “comics.” The latter designation, I believe, is much more fitting.

And I would argue if one of my students had to tag on an essay describing what she was trying to do then it probably wasn’t all that successful a project to start with. Can you imagine Kerouac sitting down to discuss his influences?

Not trying to stir it up here so much as provide another perspective. I visited the CCS this summer and the folks up there work their tails off.

On a more important note, how do we get a copy of this comic? It looks/sounds very interesting.