School: Yes or No

[JTJ]

"The vast majority of liberal arts colleges seem to see their duty as not teaching people HOW to think (as they claimed to in the past), but WHAT to think. If students do not philosophically and politically align with the 95%+ professors who view these things in nearly lockstep, these "disagreeable" students are sometimes given a hard way to go."

The above: Conservative boilerplate, not really true at all.

The rest: not a bad plan for a self reliant education, especially the part about staying out of debt. Had a friend who said you could not understand Greek philosophy unless you read the original in Greek, something about the structure of the language and nuanced meaning. Cultural relativism?

So it goes.

[WoodSheddin]

Is school worth it?

Do symphonies care if you have a degree or do they care more about having a musician that's proficient at his/her instrument?

Thank you in advance for your feedback!

Matters who sounds the best.

How you get to that point is up to you. College offers experience and challenge. Very difficult to get that alone.

College degrees are a means to an end. They themselves are not the end.

[Slamson]

I'm going to risk relating this bit of history, since I suspect John wouldn't mind (and doesn't haunt this serve anyway)...
I was in graduate school when John Rommel, who now teaches at IU, started as a freshman trumpet major. He had graduated a year early from high school, and was already so much better than any of the other trumpet students that we had him playing second trumpet in the graduate brass quintet. Early in his sophomore year, he won the second chair at Nashville, and came back to a rehearsal and asked us if we thought he should stay and finish his degree. We practically carried him out of the rehearsal hall.

Eventually, of course John finished his degree, but only after he had established himself as a major player (and I suspect IU demanded SOME sort of sheepskin from him...), but the moral of the story is that most of us who go to college to as performance majors are preparing for this career. If you can win an orchestral audition at a professional level before you graduate, you're obviously prepared, so why wait? You may be passing up the only chance you might get for years. You can always go back and finish later, or in your spare time - after all, you'll certainly be practicing enough!

So,school? Yes, but always stay? No.