Does it cost too much to be an educated person?

The Chronicle of Higher Education publishes both Higher Ed news and Opinion.  There's a debate brewing about how the value of a college degree is lessening.  With the cost of education rising (despite some folks arguing that the net tuition rate is lower due to the cost differential lowering.  I need to see more data before I concede that point), and the emphasis more and more being placed on the economic viability of an education, it would seem that for those students and family for whom college is a huge economic stretch, the school that can get you the job is the best school.

This begs the question, is it only the wealthy who can get a well rounded education?  Can only those who can afford to pay for a liberal arts degree with no direct economic advantage (other than the ability to expose young minds to the arts and sciences and critical thinking, and great ideas) get this kind of education?

Because as I dig into music and theatre conservatories and their curriculum, and how there is very little room for the liberal arts, I wonder are they just artistic trade schools?  And if they are, are they really doing a better job of educating our future artists for the world they will actually enter, and not the world artistic academia WISHES for (or is so out of date with, that they are educating students for a past reality), than their counterparts at universities with a stronger liberal arts core?

So do conservatories REALLY turn out more employable artists?

More liberal in music education?

Great stuff here from the Huffington Post about recent articles defending the Liberal Arts Education by Michael Roth, President of Weslyan University in CT. What may be lacking in traditional music school study is the liberal arts. I think there's the assumption that if a Music Conservatory or school of Music is located within a larger university then the liberal arts are taken care of just fine.

But I think we need to go beyond that and strive to make the liberal arts offerings work with the standard music curriculum. Like the New England Conservatory's Liberal arts offerings. Make them relevant and interesting. Link the context of Beethoven's music to Napoleon's wars.

Being close to the Liberal Arts isn't enough to make sure musicians are reaping the benefits. Students come to school to be guided and to learn. (There's a whole other blog post about the student who feels 'entitled' to a degree just for showing up, I'll write it eventually). One possible solution to improving the way we educate musicians is to really look closely at the non-music classes we're requiring students to take so that they have a degree, and not just a performer's certificate.

The context needs to be there. Because understanding how the arts fit in society and what environment led to their creation is crucial to keeping the arts relevant to our current society and environment now.

Just how many are we talking about?

There are 625 Music schools, departments, conservatories in the U.S. who are accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music. (and not every school is a member school. Juilliard is not a member of NASM. And we all know Juilliard trains musicians). Entering class sizes vary, and the number of graduates are less than the number we accept in to these programs, however, if you figure that a graduating class can graduate anywhere between 10-60 students every year, that puts the graduating number of music students at between 6,000 to 30,000 new music graduates every year. So the question that I see before me, is this- because of the specialized nature of music training, are these skills transferable? In our efforts to prepare our music students for the highest level of music study, are we omitting other skills that they can use to support themselves? And are we preparing musicians for the realities of the music world? The music world today?

Perhaps the place to start is to get a realistic sense of how many music students we really are turning out- a 24,000 possible difference in numbers is a big one. I think that will be an ongoing research project. . .

All college graduates must face the question of what to do next. And there are plenty of arguments against the philosophy major, or the ubiquitous English major for the very reason that there are few professional philosophers out there. But I'm thinking there is enough room in the English major or philosophy major curricula for a broader based liberal arts education, and the nature of music study leaves little room for that.

I see this post has more questions than answers. Seems to be time for some research. . .