<p>I am a senior music education major, piano proficency at college. I am thinking about getting a master's degree at the same college that I am at. Should I stick with education or should I try for a performance degree to have diversity in my degrees.</p>
<p>It depends what you want to do with your degrees. If you plan on being a piano teacher or trying to perform for a living, I’d say go for piano. If you want to teach public school, it’s probably best to get the music education degree so you can get paid more, although I don’t know how having a close but no cigar degree falls into the scheme of public school pay charts; it may have no adverse effect. That’s probably something to research if you do plan on teaching.</p>
<p>I have read the pay schedule info for my school district before, it’s on the internet, and the best I can tell there is no requirement for a masters degree to be in education or music ed to get bumped up to the masters degree pay schedule.</p>
<p>Of course it could be different in different places.</p>
<p>I’m not really qualified to answer this questions, so take my answer for what it’s worth…</p>
<p>I think that a masters would be more valuable in a different area of music. It just seems that would give you more options in careers. Since you will likely become certified before or slightly after getting your Music Ed degree, and since there is no such thing as being doubly certified in music ed, I think I would go for performance or other music specialty.</p>
<p>Unless you think that you might teach music ed classes at the college level one day, in which case I might would do the masters in music ed also, teach public school for a few years, and then go for a doctorate of education or doctorate of music ed or some other related terminal degree.</p>
<p>My piano teacher has suggested I go for a master’s in music ed. My ultimate goal is to teach at the college level. I don’t know if I want to teach piano at the college level but I definitely want to teach classroom stuff like theory and orchestration. Right now my options are limited because of finances and stuff like that. The opportunities at my college will be able to provide me with a master’s degree easily.</p>
<p>Then I am thinking that maybe your piano teacher is giving you the best advice. </p>
<p>If you can’t see yourself being paid (a living wage) to perform, performance may be a waste. Two of my son’s college professors have just outright told him that a performance degree is a waste - and both of those professors have multiple degrees in performance. Their thinking is that you either have the musical tallent that it takes to be a top performer, or you don’t, and that it takes being one of the best performers in the country to get a decent paying job performing, and no amount of practicing or college degrees are going to make you be one of the best in the country if you don’t have a freaky level of tallent.</p>
<p>Also, if you want to teach at the college level you would have more success with finding a job with a terminal degree, or possibly even two masters in two different areas of music (which would likely be easier to get than a doctorate degree). Less prestegious colleges will hire people with just a masters, but most colleges will require a Phd or other terminal degree, unless the applicant is world famous in their field.</p>
<p>dblomd, what do you want to do? Is getting a PhD/DMA/EdD/DME in music education part of the plan? If so, imagep is definitely right about not getting the performance degree. If teaching theory or orchestration is what you really want to do, then get a MA/MM in theory and then go on and get your PhD. It’s tough to make definite career and educational decisions on the fly and I wouldn’t recommend it, but I think this question can be better answered with a more concrete idea of your goals.</p>
<p>My goal is to be a music educator. I would love to teach at the college level. I honestly don’t know what I want to teach at the college level. I would be happy in any area of music, honestly.</p>
<p>Well it’s a good thing that you have the music education degree basically already under your belt; it’ll be good for the whole teaching aspect of being a professor, which is a fairly large part of it, of course. Make your choice and get whatever degree is best for what you want to teach.</p>