The death of instrumental music at U. Washington?

[SRanney]

Upon further review, this isn't really worth discussing.

Move along.

SR

[UTSAtuba]

A thread exactly like this was just up here, but it looks to be deleted (and for good reason).

Joseph

[Kory101]

Yeah, there was a thread on this the other day but it was taken down (for whatever reason...)

Thanks for posting it again!

[SRanney]

This one's for you, bloke:

http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-article ... e_for-1374

[The Big Ben]

NEARLY EVERYONE (regardless of political p.o.v.) is disgusted by "government waste", but VIRTUALLY NO ONE views ANYTHING related to their OWN fields of specific interest as "wasteful".

Agreed. I think about the battles over earmark expenditures in the Congress. What is a necessary and reasonable expense in one Senator's district sure looks like "pork" in another's. Up here in Washington State, in Seattle, there is a bridge crossing the Duwamish River in an industrial district. One side of the bridge has low income, blue collar workers as residents plus about 30-40 small industrial firms which have between 5 and 10 workers each. The other side of the bridge has one of the main Boeing Airplane plants and Boeing Field plus direct access to the main N/S freeway, I-5.

The present bridge is about 75 years old and is in bad repair. As long as 10 years ago, officials said that the bridge needed to be replaced but the idea of spending money on this blue collar bridge had a hard time gaining traction against the other spending from more affluent parts of the city. This last spring, the bridge was finally closed as being unsafe with no planned replacement any time in the future. It is a 10 mile detour to get to one of the two other ways to get across the Duwamish River- a major inconvenience for workers and industry on both sides of the bridge. Local and state politicians were ringing their hands that 'nothing can be done." Our Senator put in an earmark for 3 million dollars to be applied to the funding of the bridge. National defense relies in part with the activity of the Boeing Company and the work of subcontractors located nearby, thereby justifying it as a federal need. The bridge is going to cost somewhere in the vicinity of 75 million. When the Senator pledged the federal money, it got state, county and city governments off the dime and they "found" about 3/4 of the funds and should be able to find the rest in next year's budget.

So, was the Senator's earmark "pork" or necessity? I guess it's where you are in the country and what your area's needs are...

Jeff "True, a little off the topic but it *is* about Seattle" Benedict

[tuneitup]

For the most universities, firing a professor does not equal to saving money. Usually, the person who takes over the position gets the equal amount or the money is allocated elsewhere within the department. Unless there was a required budget cut, the money is still at the music school. Having that said, if you read the original letter from Mr. V, he suspects that the director wants to allocate the money to his own research field.

[bort]

I've been trying to follow this (though people keep deleting their posts so I don't know the details anymore), but anyway...

...it's basically like any other business laying off employees. I got laid off in February. I would have loved to have kept that job. I had just hired a few people. I was < 6 months from a promotion. Things were going great for me there. But corporate decided to make changes and cut our division to save money. They are not "saving" it in absolute terms, but rather, spending it in different places. If you don't work for yourself, you do not "own" your job. Layoffs might not be fair and it might not be what you want. But that's a risk you take by working for someone else's company.

[SRanney]

They are not "saving" it in absolute terms, but rather, spending it in different places. If you don't work for yourself, you do not "own" your job. Layoffs might not be fair and it might not be what you want. But that's a risk you take by working for someone else's company.

This is what is happening. Someone was complaining about losing their job and that someone was upset that their boss had decided to take their department in a different direction.

I just decided that the complaint nature of the email referenced in my original post did not merit discussion. In all honesty, it was just a talented guy complaining about losing his job, which happens all the time.

SR

[bort]

Aah, gotcha. Makes sense, and I'm glad you didn't repost the email then.

[pgym]

In this 'monkey-see-monkey-do' business/law/academic society, all it takes is one school 'breaking new ground' successfully and soon you have a domino effect all over the country.

Maybe so, but a good argument can be made that the explosion in the number of schools offering undergrad and grad performance degrees (particularly in tuba and euphonium) over the past 10-15 years is itself a "monkey-see-monkey-do" reaction, driven primarily, if not solely by the push to increase body counts (= more federal and state dollars for the school), particularly given the yearly flood of "scholarships/assistantships still available" postings by tuba/euph instructors.

It's all about supply and demand. Left to its own devices, the market rationalizes itself over time: too many available slots (supply) + not enough qualified students (demand) = teaching positions eliminated.

At least that's the way it should be: unfortunately, in much of academia these days, there are too many parties with a vested interest in artificially propping up the body counts and protecting their jobs/turf. I sat in on a masterclass at a nearby university earlier this year, where one of the students (a junior performance major) receiving coaching on his primary instrument couldn't make it through a three measure phrase at crochet = 128 on one breath or double tongue. And this person passed his college audition and yearly juries? (Can you say, "Grade inflation"?) The instructor had a full studio, though!

Who's interests are being served by allowing this student to (pay big bucks) to remain in the music performance program under the delusion that his playing is anywhere close to adequate? The school's? (Yup) The music dep't's? (Unh-huh) The instructor's? (Damn straight!) The student's????? (Um ... err ... uh ...)

Yeah, it sucks that a world-class musician and a fine educator lost his (part time) job at U-Dub, it it sucks that a bunch of students who wanted to study with him at U-Dub won't be able to, and it might even suck that the resources that underwrote the position may be diverted to non-instrumental music; but not any more than stringing students along (and damn near bankrupting them along the way) with the promise of a degree in music, then dumping them into an ever-growing pool of "academically certified" "musicians" competing for not only a shrinking, but an ever-more competitive, job market. So if U-Dub's action does cause institutions across the country to look honestly at how they're running their music programs and precipitates a rationalization of the music education market (which--call me skeptical but--I don't expect to happen), I say, "Good on them."

[Biggs]

Instrumental music dies a little bit each time I play.

[pgym]

Anyone who knows the story

Don't you mean, knows the complainant side of the story?

The fact that, to date, the U-Dub faculty association hasn't filed a grievance over this purported "miscarriage of justice" suggests that the "story" is not quite as clear-cut as the complainant e-mail makes it out to be.

[sloan]

Aah, gotcha. Makes sense, and I'm glad you didn't repost the email then.

Especially since there is information from a reliable source that the e-mail in question appeared to
vary somewhat from actual events.

[BopEuph]

The truth is right here:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db ... =236#comic" target="_blank

Note 1.) Replace "Sanders" with "Vizzutti"
Note 2.) It's a joke.

[TexTuba]

Some of y'all make it seem like he's going to end up on the streets!

There are FAR more people who have it worse than a man (and he IS just a man when you put the horn down) who lost his PART-TIME gig. The only difference between THIS adjunct teacher and all of the other ones who lose/lost their jobs this year is the last name.

[Todd S. Malicoate]

I never saw this situation as 'poor old Allen', Ralph. Rather, I looked at how secure a job was for a person of his stature and acclaim 50 years ago vs. now. Now, talent and global-appeal don't seem to be leverage enough to keep even a part-time job anymore.

They never were.

How safe will anyone's job be and how will that look to prospective students with great talent (even genius status) in a field of study, if all that matters is money.

Money has to matter in this case. The school has a budget and it was slashed. Should they have cut one of the tenured positions instead? Just because one of those tenured teachers wasn't a "genius"?

Someone here said it before...better to go into business for yourself than be at the mercy of a tyrranical corporation, school system, etc.

Good luck finding a job that pays benefits so that you can be there 1/2 the time to teach trumpet to a few students.

[Chriss2760]

In my fairly small (80k or so pop.) town, two of our "best and brightest" young players went off to Ohio State (yeah) and majored in music performance. For the last five years the tuba player has been driving a Pepsi truck, and the bone player is an assistant manager for Bi-mart.
I don't like it, but that is the reality.
So, I haven't encouraged my tuba-ist daughter to attempt making a living at it. Although she has pretty much taken over one of my regular playing gigs, it would seem, at this point in time, that playing the tuba is a lot better avocation than a profession.