When I refer to conceptual art it’s a discipline where the student has to articulate an overt meaning - often prior to even beginning any kind of making. Chuck Close’s work isn’t that way. He has styles and approaches, but not the intellectualized.
In part, it’s far easier to grade the intellectual than the aesthetic. It’s also easier for students to discuss the meaning than to discuss their own emotional responses to a work.
That’s what my son encountered at SAIC and it was absurd - as a kid who grew up around art and artists he was furious that their program wasn’t about great art - but intellectual statement.