As the financial crisis punctured the art boom late last year, auction houses reacted swiftly to cut their costs.

Sotheby's said in December that it planned a restructuring that would streamline jobs and salaries to the tune of $7 million a year, while Christie's International last month announced significant staff reductions. Bonhams meanwhile quietly laid off most of its press department, according to a person with knowledge of the decision, who asked not to be named for confidentiality reasons.

Yet even as the art market has shed jobs, there has been no slowdown in demand for training from people who want to get to get into it.

"During times of economic downturn people review their lives and turn to education," said Jos Hackforth-Jones, the recently appointed director of Sotheby's Institute, established in 1969 as the education arm of Sotheby's, which runs courses in London, New York and Singapore.

The institute has been independent of the auction house since Sotheby's sold it in 2005 to Cambridge Information Group, a management and investment firm based in Bethesda, Maryland. But it continues to teach practical, object-based courses and to maintain direct links to the market, with Sotheby's auction house experts sitting on its advisory board and giving guest lectures. In the main London branch of the school, applications are up 40 percent compared with a year ago, Hackforth-Jones said. The school has recently added a new master's course in contemporary design, accredited, like its five existing master's, by the University of Manchester. 

At Drouot Formation, the education arm of the Paris auction venue Hôtel Drouot, the school's director Frédéric Elkaim reported a more than threefold rise in demand for professional training. This has more than made up for a 50 percent fall in enrollment to introductory classes for would-be collectors - hit by the credit crunch - he said.

"In some cases, after being made redundant, people are changing career paths, often re-evaluating their lives and looking for more meaning," Elkaim said. "It's less about money and more about following a passion."

For the year that started in September, four diploma courses have been added to the program, aimed at providing career-change training for work as auctioneers, art and antique dealers, and gallery owners. For next year, discussions are going on to develop an exchange program at the master's level with two French universities.

Situated in the heart of Paris on the Avenue de L'Opéra, the Institut d'Études Supérieures des Arts is another school that prepares students for art market jobs. Founded in 1985, it has the status of a government-recognized business school at the graduate level. It runs an MA program validated by Warwick University in Britain and, with the Wallace collection in London, a one-year diploma course in the history and business of art and collecting that includes study modules in Florence and Brussels. It also participates in the European Union's Erasmus student exchange scheme.

The Institut d'Études Supérieures des Arts is particularly strong on training in multimedia and the latest artistic and cultural technologies and trends. "I created the sort of school that I was looking for but couldn't find," its director and co-founder, Françoise Schmitt, said in an interview.

Schmitt said that the recession had made little difference to applications. "We have felt nothing different," she said.

But not all art business schools are expressing equal confidence. Christie's Education, which closed its Paris branch two years ago, citing weak enrollment, declined to offer any comment last week on current trends.

Its marketing manager in London, Lucy Marshall, in an e-mail message, cited an unidentified spokesperson as saying only that in previous downturns "people have migrated towards education that either nurtures their personal passion or furthers their career."