What Music Schools Graduates End up Doing

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What Music Schools Graduates End up Doing

Monday, November 2nd, 2009    Subscribe To Our Feed

Maybe you have a musical gift, and your family and friends say you must go to music schools. Maybe your band teacher says you show promise with your instrument. Perhaps, you’re dubbed as a great singer. Maybe you have won every talent competition you have joined in. You begin to wonder: I could make a living doing this. So you go on having dreams of being a professional and a famous musician. But you have no proper training; you clearly require a good musical education.

So you get a music program in one of the universities or those pro-music school that guarantee you a job after you graduate. Your prize? Learning and good grades. Naturally, you graduate. The degree or certificate is in your hand.

Now what?

Several music schools forget to teach their students that many of their graduates don’t really get a career in music. And graduates who were lucky enough to stay on course end up doing what?

The answer: teaching music.

This is reality – even those who were able to get paid for a gig still need to find some other job to supplement their income. The reason being that many programs failed to train their students to do anything else. A lot of the graduates maybe excellent academically. But in reality, most of the job offers in this type of industry are not based on talent, but on connections – and the educational systems have not emphasized this. That being said, it is evident that only in the academic community does a music degree hold any bearing. When hungry music school graduates get turned down in other places, they take jobs from the schools, or resort to giving music lessons themselves. This then created an ingrown cycle of teachers – they teach students to teach others to teach – instead of fresh musical talents.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a career in teaching music; without music teachers, there would ultimately be no musicians! But let it be known that this is not what most students anticipate after graduating from a music school. When music graduates end up teaching simply because they can’t get work elsewhere, there is a disconnect along in the process. In this case, the educational system is seen as fueling only itself.

These days, serious music students definitely require an education that is not detached from the “real world.” What they need are music schools that offer training in real-life context and with real-life connections – this shall little by little eliminate the vicious cycle of having music teachers simply because they do not have any other choice.