<p>Every time I state that I want to go to college for Music Education (vocal, most likely) (and a possible dual-degree in Music Therapy) I always get shot down with "There's no jobs left here!" I live in PA, and yes, the budget sucks and they aren't replacing the retiring music teachers in my district. We have had 5 teachers retire this year and last year and one got replaced. Are there more music education jobs in other states or is this happening everywhere?</p>
<p>I believe there are jobs. This recession has been very tough, but as long as we have students to educate we have to have teachers. It’s MUCH cheaper to have a band program with 50-100 students per class, than it is to pay for a art class with only 15 students in it. Many school districts have not figured that out yet, they just have this kneejerk reaction that they must cut music if they have a money crunch.</p>
<p>A while back I read an article about a school system that was going to eleminate it’s band program to save money, they did a financial evaluation to determine how much they were going to save and discovered that it was actually going to cost them money to eleminate the band program because they would have had to hire 3 teachers to replace the one band director.</p>
<p>Some school districts like mine initially held off on making any new hires with the recession started, but are now hiring. My school system has hired three additional band directors in two years. As a matter of face, starting last year a semester of art class (music counts as art) has become a high school graduation requirment in my state so I expect to see more art and music teachers hired.</p>
<p>Also, as the economy slowly improves, many of those jobs that were canceled will most definately come back.</p>
<p>Don’t get discouraged, there are a lot of people who will try to discourage you who simply don’t know what they are talking about. Some people think that their negative attitudes make them more interesting than to be positive (or correct).</p>
<p>Easiest way might be to do some research on the subject. Look for help wanted postings for teachers (there have to be sites similar to we have in the tech world), to get a feel if there are any regions more likely to be hiring music teachers in the near future. States that are relatively weathering the storm would prob be ideal in the short term, whereas states in deep fiscal holes will be less likely to be hiring any time soon (especially states where real estate has hit rock bottom; most school districts get their funding from local property taxes, and where house prices have plummeted, the tax base is going to be devastated). The other thing to look for is states that have made music and art part of their core requirements (that might not be easy), if so they are a lot more likely to be hiring then a state that considers them ‘frills’. Also, you may want to look beyond the state level, you might find more jobs in affluent districts/areas then you might in more rural/inner city areas that financially always seem to struggle. </p>
<p>I will admit, I am one of the skeptics generally when it comes to art education, because with the type I have seen out there yelling and screaming about the cost of schooling and the like, it seems like always art and music programs are considered ‘frills’, and with the budget cutting mania of the tea party and the like, who I don’t see as particularly being friendly to arts programs. Recently a local school district here in suburban NJ gutted their arts programs, but they then turned around and spent 500k redoing the football field and stadium, and parents in the same district when ballistic when they eliminated some sports programs, arguing how valuable it was. In my own district, when I was going to high school, those of us in the music program were forced to do marching band whether we wanted to or not, and basically we were told flat out that if it wasn’t for the marching band aspect, there probably would be a hard sell on trying to maintain a music program at all (and this was a solid middle class area).</p>
<p>That said, I tend to agree with imagep that there likely will be jobs out there in the future. Among other things there is a growing backlash against the ‘ignorance in bliss, 3rs crowd’ that arts education is important, plus quite honestly, because of the perception that jobs might be scarce, at some point there is going to be a shortage I suspect. Like with music, if you are thinking of majoring in music ed or music therapy, do so because you love the idea of doing it, rather then looking at it as vocational training for an ‘in demand’ field. Even if there are jobs out there, if you don’t love doing it, you won’t be doing yourself or the students any favor if you are doing it because it is a ‘job’, steady or not.</p>
<p>Check out Texas. Very strong arts programs in public schools and, comparatively, few budget cuts.</p>