Which conservatories allow students to teach freshmen performance majors?

College Majors Music Major
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<p>I heard this week that one conservatory, Peabody I believe, has older/grad students teaching lessons to some of their freshmen flute performance majors. My daughter plays oboe, and I wouldn't want to pay the vast sums of money charged by a conservatory only to have her study with a student. If anyone is familiar with this practice at any of the "big name" conservatories and other schools, I'd like to hear about it.</p>

<p>Years ago I entered the University of Washington as a performance flute major. My first year, they assigned me and the other freshman performance major to lessons with a music education teacher, who was a bassoonist. I got almost nothing out of those lessons.</p>

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<p>When my D and I were researching her music schools, we did NOT come across this situation at Northwestern, Oberlin, University of Michigan, USC, UCLA, Indiana, or Carnegie Mellon. However, my D is only studying one instrument so far, so for someone who is planning to specialize in multiple woodwinds it would be worth it to call each place you are interested in to find out the situation, and also the fee structure for multiple lessons. Another issue I can think of, is that some schools have notable faculty who teach at multiple places (Peabody has a clarinet professor teaching at 3 or maybe even 4 places), and travel for master classes quite a bit. I wonder if there are situations where a grad student might do a make-up lesson with a younger student. “How are make-up lessons handled” was always one of our questions during our visits.</p>

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<p>We only came across one school where the Freshman worked with the grad student and that was as a supplement to the lesson with the professor. So, student would have main lesson with the prof and then a 2nd lesson during the week with the grad student.
Also, son is a performance/music ed major and at his school, surprisingly, the main teachers for each instrument also teach the music ed tech classes for the secondary instruments… no grad students. The grad students seem to do the warm up or scale class sessions for each studio.</p>

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<p>Can I ask where you heard that about Peabody? My D is planning to apply there this year. They have 4 flute professors, so I don’t know why it would be necessary to have students teaching freshmen.</p>

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<p>That is news to me if Peabody has grad students teaching PERFORMANCE majors. I would double check the source.</p>

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<p>Mater, I heard this from a parent whose daughter is a senior applying for performance flute major this year. I have no personal knowledge as to whether it is true or not. However, that information caused me to reflect back upon my own education, and I thought I’d ask the forum how often and where this happens.</p>

<p>CLRN8MOM: My daughter will likely apply as a performance major on only one instrument, probably oboe, then take private lessons on her other instruments from teachers she choses. She doesn’t want a BM in multiple instruments.</p>

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<p>Woodwinds, thank you for clarifying. Sorry if I incorrectly recalled some of your previous posts.
Regarding the lessons on other instruments besides her principal instrument, it would still be good to clarify who exactly would be doing that teaching.</p>

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<p>There are grad students and then there are grad students (just as there good full profs and not-so-good full profs). I think it is very rare for a grad student to be the exclusive teacher of a performance major on their main instrument at a good school (not so rare for secondary instruments and music ed or music theory majors; and often a senior grad student will be a teaching assistant of a major teacher). I would not want my performance major child to be instructed exclusively by your average grad student.</p>

<p>In Canada (which is, of course, similar to the US), the only instances that I am aware of in which a grad student has taught performance majors are ones where the grad student:
a) has completed their master’s and is near the end of their PhD or other doctoral degree;
b) is older (usually about ~30 years old, so not your typical 23-year-old grad student);
c) has extensive performing experience and successful (though not usual extensive) teaching experience;
d) handles their instrument very, very well (better than most tenure-track music profs).
Many conservatory teachers do not have a PhD and some do not have a Master’s. So a PhD student who is world-class (i.e. has competed successfuly in international competitions, has held an orchestral post in an excellent orchestra), and has a proven track record of successful teaching, might actually be a better teacher than many of the full-time faculty are.</p>

<p>Having a bassoonist music ed teacher instruct flute performance majors is terrible–that just is not acceptable.</p>

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<p>violindad–good points about grad students. However, if we’re going to vet oboe instructors and select a particular conservatory based on THAT teacher teaching my daughter, AND I’m going to be paying 50% or more of a $40,000 per year tuition bill, I’m not sending my daughter to that conservatory to then be taught be some previously-unknown grad student. Personality matters, a lot, expecially it seems in the oboe world.</p>

<p>By the way, I don’t think any of her preferred instructors have PhD’s. They are symphony players.</p>

<p>Since you are from Canada, perhaps you know what the policy is at McGill University, where some have encouraged my daughter to apply. If she gets accepted there as a performance major, what can we expect regarding her selected teacher vs. a grad student teaching her?</p>

<p>In my case, it didn’t matter so much. I had a full athletic scholarship and my parents weren’t paying anything. I would have a different view if say, my daughter attend a public university with a full or nearly full scholarship.</p>

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<p>My DD is a freshman at Peabody. They do not have grad students instructing the undergrads on their primary instrument. D even has a classmate whose flute teacher is flown in from Austria. Peabody does have some grad student TAs who proctor written exams so maybe there is some misunderstanding. None of DD’s classes are taught by grad students.</p>

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<p>The information I am giving below is at least 5 years old. I do not know if the said teacher is still teaching at Peabody and whether the situation was still true.</p>

<p>It was well known that one of the flute teachers at Peabody had (has) an active solo career. She flew into Peabody once a month. Her students received lessons from her when she was present. I assumed that her graduate students would teach her undergrad students when she wasn’t here. D’s then flute teacher commented that undergrads needs consistent and regular instructions and suggested her students choose other teachers if they applied to Peabody.</p>

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<p>pointegirl, I think that’s what I might have heard about. I agree with that teacher’s opinion that students should have a regular teacher and consistent instruction. I wouldn’t want my daughter to only be taking instruction from her teacher once a month for only an hour.</p>

<p>So, I will add this question about consistent instruction from the teacher to my list of questions.</p>

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<p>I can confirm that this isn’t the situation at Boston Conservatory, where some of my friends have done their grad degrees in voice/opera. All students have private instruction from a faculty member. Faculty members also teach all the classes; they may have a grad student who assists, but that grad assistant wouldn’t have primary (or even frequent) responsibility for teaching the class. Most of my friends had hoped to pay some of their tuition by teaching undergrad courses, and have received a nasty shock when they find out BoCo doesn’t “do that”.</p>

<p>BoCo does sometimes encourage students who’d like to pursue a secondary instrument (as a hobby–BoCo doesn’t allow double majors, although apparently they do have a multi-winds grad program now) to take lessons with a qualified grad student. Faculty members generally give priority in their studios to students who are majoring in that instrument, but if you can’t study with your chosen teacher you might choose to study with a grad student who’s being mentored by that teacher, rather than studying with someone completely outside the school.</p>

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<p>My son was a cello student at Eastman a number of years ago. During his freshman year, he had a lesson each week with his primary teacher, and a second lesson each week with either a grad student or faculty assistant. The second lesson was to reinforce things taught by the primary teacher earlier in the week. It worked very well for my son and he found that system quite helpful. He still met with his primary teacher every week and the primary teacher provided work for the secondary lessons as well.</p>

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<p>The flute instructor at Peabody who has a separate career in Austria is gone from Peablody ALOT. When my D applied/auditioned she was told to expect lessons from her half the time and lessons from a grad student on the other weeks. Some kids are ok with that, we weren’t. So in this case, we chose to go elsewhere.
It is an important question to ask!</p>

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<p>I think there are a couple of related elements being mentioned in this thread that in some ways are similar, others not so similar, thought I would throw out my thoughts on this (again, this is all from what I know and have experienced, it isn’t gospel).</p>

<p>-The “Great teacher” dilemma: There are some ‘great teachers’ out there who are considered such because they are successful musicians, it would be like, as a ridiculous hypothetical example, having James Galway as your flute teacher. There are plenty of these in the violin world, and the problems with this routinely come up. Besides not taking a lot of students (thus difficult to get into their studio), they are busy performing, teaching several places, and can cause issues with missed lessons and so forth.</p>

<p>From what I have been led to believe, though, what usually happens is the student end up with lessons at odd times, or maybe at irregular intervals (which I think is a detriment, but that is a different story). I am not aware of these teachers allowing grad students to do primary teaching of students in their studio, and especially not regularly…they may use grad students from bits and pieces I have heard, to work on supplemental teaching, like work on scales or maybe work on orchestral pieces and such…and when they do need fill in, my take is they usually get another faculty member they work with to fill in…or maybe an assistant…</p>

<p>-Assistants, at least in the violin world, are generally not grad students, they usually are accomplished teachers in their own right who work with a ‘master teacher’…thus at Juilliard Dorothy Delay had assistants, many of whom now are full teachers themselves, as she was to Galamian; Perlman at Juilliard has at least one ‘assistant’ in his studio who now i believe has become faculty. There may be assistants who are getting a grad degree, but for the most part they are already proven teachers and performers working with a more well known teacher…</p>

<p>-I wouldn’t be surprised if at smaller music schools they might use grad students to teach a freshman performance student, but at any kind of level , and especially at the level of Peabody, I would be shocked if they did something like that. Take it from me, word would get out if schools did that kind of thing, and especially at the top level it would poison their reputation, because schools make a big deal about how good their faculty is, etc. Not saying there may not be grad students out there who could be really great teachers, but to have non faculty teaching like that would cause all kinds of blowback. Maybe, just maybe, some schools might use grad students with a ‘great teacher’ situation like in my first point above, but again, I suspect if they did that routinely for primary teaching you would see complaints and a black eye on the school that does this.</p>

<p>There might be obvious incentives to do this, there is a reason grad students often teach lower level courses in major tracks or general ed classes, it is because they are dirt cheap relatively, and in academic situations though this has often been talked about in a negative light, it is still quite common, and for the most part people accept this. But with music schools, where in a BM degree so much rides on the reputation of the teachers, the negative would far outweigh the positives, a school that used grad students to teach freshman BM students (whatever level they are at) would soon find that a lot of top students would not apply there…it would be kind of like going to hospital X for open heart surgery and then finding out that instead of being operated on by Dr. Somebody, you are being operate on by a resident and Dr. Somebody wasn’t even there…</p>

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<p>"I wouldn’t be surprised if at smaller music schools they might use grad students to teach a freshman performance student, but at any kind of level , and especially at the level of Peabody, I would be shocked if they did something like that. "</p>

<p>Musicprint: prepare to be shocked. I cannot speak about other schools or even studios within Peabody, but in the case of this particular flute teacher, her students see her on average once or twice a month and are taught by grad/doc students the rest of the time. She is very up front about it, and you know what to expect from the day you audition, but this is how it is.</p>

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<p>I happened to bump into the teacher that is being discussed from Peabody at a flute event earlier this year. She suggested that S attend the week long “camp” she runs each summer to provide a good sampling of what life would be like studying with her. She was quite pleasant and provided excellent critiques for the students at the masterclasses she gave and certainly is a stunning performer. Even though there are other flute teachers at Peabody, we are still on the fence about visiting Peabody next year given this and a few other factors.</p>

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<p>Flute-</p>

<p>Thanks for the update, though what you are talking about seems quite different then what the OP was saying. The OP in effect was saying that freshman were being taught by grad students alone, which is a bit different then what you are talking about, where the ‘master teacher’ only sees them once or twice a month (not saying that is necessarily great, mind you, but to me it is different). That is not uncommon, that basically was how Delay operated with her violin studio, and so did teachers like Galamian and others I have read about. Assuming that the people they designated to teach for them (for example, Delay was Galamian’s assistant and did a lot of teaching for him before having her own studio) are high level, it may not matter…as long as the teacher is honest about how they teach it is up to the student to decide if that fits what they need, and as long as the teacher has high level assistants, as opposed to what they do with UG academic courses where they simply designate someone to teach intro classes and such, it could work out well.</p>