Terminal Degrees

[Ted Cox]

My original post has been removed. My apologies to those who were interested in a few meaningless thoughts.

[Three Valves]

With your connection to both Oklahoma and Hinduism, that must make you what??

1/512 Indian??

[Mudman]

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[rodgeman]

Very interesting read. Thanks for posting.

[Mudman]

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[Mudman]

That's fair enough. As you pointed out, states are spending less and less in support of universities each year. Full-time development positions are needed to help keep the lights on in many music schools.

[tofu]

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[tubeast]

Being a tax payer myself, and being quite concerned about the kind of nonsense tax money is being spent on, I´m still in favor of free choice of education. I also believe that it is a characteristic trait of successful societies if they´re able and willing to support stuff that won´t pay off right away in a hand-to-mouth manner. So in a way, I pride myself in my "generosity" of funding stuff I might never receive anything specific in return for.

If society needs people to pursue careers that require high levels of craftmanship, ability and Expertise, then by all means agressively promote such careers. Suppose some Teenager earned money at the groceries not for "goina colledge", but for their first basic woodshop- or forging equipment. Are You willing to applaud or are You going to suggest to not waste time and money and do something "smart" instead ?

Show kids how it MAY be cool NOT to go for academic education and acquire real-life-skills instead.
How it can be fulfilling to really know one´s profession and maybe add to its development, and GAIN PUBLIC RESPECT in the process. Go to Schools or parishes and offer role models and advice on what people can do with commitment, be that in an academic or non-academic career.

And, by all means, grant those kids that stay in town some means to unattendedly have fun and make experiences, including mistakes and failure.


Edit: in order to relate to the OP´s point:

As much as I believe that it takes skill rather than a piece of paper to successfully live up to any given task, I also believe in the justification of licenses as tickets to enter certain trades.
If only to guarantee a basic level of safety and quality standard so "black sheep" won´t discredit the whole profession. Whether or not a system based on college degrees is sufficient to enforce such standards should lie in the hands of those who set up the curriculum and modes of examination.

(hope that makes sense)

[hup_d_dup]

That having been said, with the admission charge (tuition) continuing to skyrocket, the amount that I (taxpayer schmucky bloke) am paying also continues to skyrocket, even though the ~percentage~ of the total that I'm paying becomes lower and lower.

Your statement that your tax payments for higher education is skyrocketing is factually incorrect. Since the 2008 recession, federal tax dollars for higher education have increased, and are now a higher percentage of tax funding than state taxes, but the increase in federal dollars is less than the decrease in state dollars in most states, (including your state, Tennessee, and my state, New Jersey), so you and I are now paying less tax for higher education than we were in 2008 (your tax bill may have gone up, but not for higher education). Funding for higher education has not yet returned to 2008 levels, but even if it had, that would not be skyrocketing.

Hup

Funding.jpg

[Ted Cox]

My addendum to my original post above has now been removed. Apologies to anyone interested.

[bearphonium]

I am reading this thread with interest, for several reasons. One is that my own Kollege (tm by bloke) degree in Criminology assisted me in my eventual 30 year law enforcement career was from a small school that allowed me a degree in one arena, the ability to play and be a four year letterman in 2 sports (field hockey and softball, if you're curious), and the opportunity to play in the symphonic wind ensemble for the entirety of my time at Kollege. The second is that, through my involvement with the tuba ensemble, I have come to know a number of students passing through the local university in various degree paths with various levels of success. What I know is that the tuba studio guy does not have a terminal degree, he also plays in the local symphony, and that he's a very good teacher. People that I know from the studio have, varioulsy, become band directors at schools ranging from K-12, to middle school, to high school; completed DMA work and are working professionally, completed DMA work after playing in a military band and gone on to teach in a small, rural community, finished a Masters program and won a Falcone Artist competition, had a successful military band career cut short by injury, at least two are playing currently in military bands, and a couple others are working in various music related jobs. Two of the guys currently in the program are working as teachers in music disciplines with the intent of becoming band directors.

That's my knowledge base, and I am interested in following these responses. I think I'm at the "I don't know what I don't know" stage.

[WC8KCY]

I don't have much to add to this topic, but wanted to point out that many things that need to be said about higher education are being said right here in this thread.

Kudos to you all for having the intellectual honesty to call a spade a spade.

[Mudman]

If a person has to pay for a DMA, that is often an indication that they are in the wrong field. The same used to be said of a MM degree as well but that has changed a bit.

[Biggs]

the most upscale malls or airports

What, to you, constitutes an "upscale...airport[]?"

[binlove]

I suppose there is an assumption here that an education amounts to job training. I haven’t observed that to be the case. I went to music school (one where there were NO non-music classes) and now manage an engineering team at a well known tech company. I now work with other folks who have master’s degrees in industrial engineering but their jobs are program management. I don’t think this issue of working in the field of one’s degree is particularly specific to music.

I think the bigger issue than what degree you pursue is what you learn along the way - in terms of education, skills and capabilities, and about one’s personal aptitudes. Those are shockingly transferable between fields.

[Ken Herrick]

Going along with the above...…….
More than once over the years when I had to gain an income doing non musical activities I was asked how training in music could make me good at the job being applied for.

My answer would be that learning how too interpret fly specs on a piece of paper to make music was like learning a very complex foreign language. Attention to fine detail, diligent practice and focused attention were required. I tended to get the jobs.

My last job was in a critical position as a defence logistics systems analyst. My training in music did much to prepare me for the complexities of that job

[bearphonium]

degree in Criminology

a textbook example (related to my previous post)

Though I suspect that the rulers of the dysfunctional large city near me are far more interested in erecting more-and-more $250M boondoggles (cities' versions of "elaborate student union buildings"), for quite some time that particular city has been roughly 500 SHORT of a full complement of police personnel. In other words, state/federally-funded enterprises (plus individual tuition) supplying places where desperately-needed personnel - and can be (pre)-trained to fill empty jobs - would be justifiable, in regard to asking taxpayers to kick in a share. Further, (my view) I'm perfectly fine with them visiting other disciplines (fine arts, sports, engineering, physics, whatever...) during their primary pursuits of gathering societally in-demand bodies of knowledge and levels of expertise.

The degree in Criminology had nothing to do with police training. It was a social science degree (I know, totally useless in your world, but that's OK) that emphasized a combination of psychology, sociology, political science, history, and economics in its curriculum, along with some constitutional law and statute study with emphasis on the why of laws rather than the what of laws. What my degree "got" me in my career was nothing as far as a hiring privilege, or a training privilege but rather a broader exposure to the construct of policing. IMO, the current shortage of law enforcement personnel is based more on the ability of people to pass a background investigation or those who apply lack the temperament required for the job. As an FTO, I had more than one recruit that had passed all the background investigations who had either no aptitude for the work, or lacked the temperament for the work.

[Bnich93]

Not to be rude, but if ones goal is to teach in a college setting then they must acquire three degrees. There are almost no exceptions to this. As far as orchestras not requiring a DMA, of course they don't, but what they do require both considerable skill and perhaps even more total luck. Today each audition can have between 100 and 300 applicants and perhaps 10-20 people who perform the excerpts perfectly. To have your name drawn from a list of perfect auditions to go to the final round may come down to details that they don't even remember about your playing specifically since the board just listened to a huge amount of players. This especially applies in a world where "automatic finalists" are a thing.

Honestly this kind of strikes me as a "Why go to college when you can just land a 1/1,000,000 job" post.

Edit: I'm not saying that the luck takes precedence over skill, but one must first have skill to make it to the part where they get lucky.

[tubasoldier]

This has been a really fascinating to read. I started college as a music education major and ended up in a completely different field. I spent two years working on a music major only to realize it wasn't for me. I ended up getting a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering... a completely different field!

I do have to say I agree with Bloke on subsidizing higher education. I believe that one of the reasons tuition is skyrocketing is because universities know they can charge more because the government will cover it. I would rather see the government spend money helping people develop skills needed for the technical jobs that are out there. Once I graduated with my degree I found out that technicians where I landed my first job (electrical, I&C, plumbers, HVAC...) all made the same amount of money that I did. It was a huge slap in the face. My salary has since gotten significantly higher but I still know plumbers and electricians who make more money than I do. This is the jobs area that the United States is lacking in. We have lots of people with degrees but not enough people with skills. There is a big difference.

I sometimes look back at my time in music education and I can say that it has been helpful in life. I don't know that the monetary cost was worth it but the experiences has given me an different view of engineering and health physics. It is interesting how acoustics similarly relate to radiation with the inverse square law.

[Slamson]

I spent last semester finishing up a couple of searches for applied faculty, and I had several observations as a result:
Terminal degrees don't matter to musicians - they matter to the people that hire the musicians. Our institution has had a long-standing policy that the terminal degree was to be the mitigating factor in faculty selection. We don't even look at talented musicians for our applied faculty unless they are at the very, very least ABD. It sucks. We can brag that the faculty has all of these baloney-doctorates (myself included) so that it will supposedly impress potential students, but honestly, after auditioning a lot of people with DMAs, it's pretty obvious that lots of folks still can't really play their axe after four years of undergrad, two years of masters and at least two of a DMA.
With that said, I'm not sure why anyone is bothering to pursue the DMA any more. The only advantage it gives a player is the one mentioned above, and places like mine are becoming very, very rare. The only reason we're still getting authorized for tenure-track applied faculty is that the institution thinks that since we're out in the middle of nowhere (actually, just a little to the right of nowhere), no talented DMA would come here to teach part-time. That's ridiculous, but I'm not about to tell them (and I don't think the President is on TubeNet).
I suppose I have to take a stand for subsidized graduate study if I want to keep my GA. He's a good guy, I like him! Is he ever going to get a full-time, tenure-track applied teaching gig? Get real. Those of us who have them should realize that we're an endangered species, being made extinct by a complete removal of the environment that keeps us alive.
Finally, with the accelerating loss of federal and state subsidies for education, we all have to accept the reality that colleges and universities are marketing themselves with a totally different approach. No more "education for the enhancement of the quality of your life" -instead, it's "earn your bachelor's degree in just three years!" followed by the next billboard on the interstate that says "Earn your MBA in 18 months totally online!", and my current favorite (traveling from Missouri into Illinois the other day ) "Special 40% Discount for Missouri Residents!". Some of you who who are in the AFM may have seen the ad for Bard College that gives you the chance to get your Masters AND your teaching certificate in Music "in just one year!? What's next? A Free set of dishes with every Freshman enrollment?