<p>Ablestmom-</p>
<p>Of course kids change majors in college, I did it myself, but there also are differences between performance degrees and academic degrees that can make that switching difficult, with the nature of a performance degree and all its required courses, it makes switching a bit more difficult then with academics, performance is very specialized, whereas with academics kids are not even required to declare a major until their sophomore year at most schools.</p>
<p>As far as the schools multiplying, the problem I have with that is they are operating outside the scope of supply and demand, they are creating an artificial one IMO by selling the idea that in effect anyone can come out of their program and be a musician, as if teaching music (talking performance here) is like teaching calculus or something. Among other things, if the demand for trained musicians is declining in the ‘real world’, as it in fact is, why are all these programs spinning up when demand is going down? The answer is that kids dream of careers in music, they love the music, they think it would be great to spend their lives doing music, and these schools sell the dream to them. Sure, it would be great is parents knew and kids knew, but music is such that even with the net, even with resources that didn’t exist before, most people don’t know the reality. Talk to high school guidance counselors and school administrators about music, and they will tell you “oh, music is a great ec, and if you really want to do it, you can get serious in college” which is so fouled up it isn’t even funny. These are supposed to be knowledgeable professionals, and they don’t know squat…and for a lot of parents, they simply don’t know, they haven’t been exposed to the reality of music, they haven’t see what is out there. I met someone at a business conference whose daughter was a violinist, they lived in a large town that is a suburb of Chicago, and he was telling me how everyone was telling him that his daughter was really good, that she was a shoo in to get into CIM/Juilliard, etc, including music teachers and such…he had a recording of her playing, and I was in a dilemma, because even I could tell that as musical as she was, she wasn’t at that level…I did suggest he get an evaluation from someone, maybe do a lesson at CIM, or someone from the Chicago symphony who teachers, but he was confident her teacher knew…I heard back from him after audition season this year that she hadn’t got into any of the big programs, and she only got into some programs that when they asked people, were told were not good on the violin…this happens a lot.</p>
<p>And yes, there are kids who go to ‘lesser’ tiered schools who do make it, in part because they are talented enough to get a scholarship, etc, to make it doable, and the school happens to have a good teacher. But in general, those are programs who have teachers who are up there, and have produced kids who made it, but many of the schools I am talking about are not in that class, the people they are hiring don’t have a track record and whose background is not exactly high level either. If a program admits almost anyone who applies, what does that say about it? There is a difference between a program who accepts kids across a wide range, and a program who if you look at the level, is uniformly low, one can turn out someone who is talented enough with the tools to become a musician, the other one exists to simply put kids through the mill IMO. </p>
<p>As far as the debt thing goes, the idea of no debt is a good one, but then again, if someone gets into a program that is affordable but the teaching and the other students aren’t very good, they may come out with no debt, but do they come out actually with a shot at being a musician, or did the school sell them a pig in a pole, cheap or not? Coming out with a huge debt load is not a great idea, especially with music, but coming out with no debt from a school that is basically not very good and a music performance degree that leaves the person unprepared isn’t worth much either, either musically or as a general background… I have seen a lot of the kids with the stars in their eyes, who have been told they are so good, they were all state, etc, and these kids end up at some music school that claims it is the up and coming ‘next juilliard’ and so forth, they often end up paying not a small sum in tuition, and then find out when they graduate how ill prepared they are…and to me that is sad.</p>
<p>Among the bigger music schools, Indiana is a bit different, because comparitively they admit a lot of students, compared to similar schools. The difference with Indiana is they encourage the kids to be realistic, through jury assesments and through placement in ensembles they nudge kids away from music who aren’t cutting it, and encourage them to do something different. The kind of music schools I am talking about, from everything I have heard and read, don’t do that, they keep encouraging the kids to stick with it, they make a big deal out of them, and get 4 years of tuition out of them, and you have to ask for what? I realize that the idea of working hard, starting humble and making it is the American Dream, but what if the potential isn’t there? It would be like some college when I was in high school trying to get me to attend to play football, telling me how I could make it to the pros with their training, where at 5’ 11 and prob 170 pounds at the time, I was too small and more importantly, too athletically challenged to have a glimmer of hope of making it as a pro…the other thing to keep in mind is that if the kid goes to one of these music schools, then decides not to do it (if they wise up), then they are faced often with the fact that the rest of the school may not be particularly that high level either. </p>
<p>Notice I am not mentioning schools, nor will I, and this is not saying “if you don’t go to X school, you won’t make it” where X is everyone’s favorite name school; what I am saying is that if you get into the kind of program I am talking about simply because they want a swarm of students and will take everyone, rather than being the gifted student they recruit to try and make themselves look better, it is a cruel illusion. Put it this way, schools like Juilliard and CIM and NEC and so forth have kids there who pay full tuition or near it, whereas a relatively small number of uber talented kids get full scholarships and so forth, but the difference is those schools have such a flood of kids wanting to go there, that the kids who are paying full freight, while not uber, are still very, very strong…and generally those kids know what they are getting into, whereas the “Newly built school of music at All American U” is taking in kids paying tuition who are not exactly strong, and it is likely they don’t even have the real uber kids enticed with a scholarship, because the teachers aren’t there either. Caveat Emptor is all great and good, but the problem is with music, that an educated consumer is a difficult thing indeed, because music programs and how good they are, or what constitutes a good program or what gives someone a realistic chance is murky, and schools are using that quite frankly to get kids to go who don’t have even an inkling of a chance.</p>