I think Charley Ives (who hasn’t been seen in these parts for a while, except he seemed a bit of a blowhard while he was borrowing Roger’s… typing fingers) showed the sense of that model. But a lot of parents who save to send their offspring to higher education, do so in hopes of a brighter economic future for jr., so they put pressure on the schools.

And there seems to be a discrepency between the thought that the musical labor market of Los Angeles should be a full on, dog eat dog, Miltie Freedman market model, while the Ivory Towers should go on studying how many camels can dance on the head of a pin (intentional mix).

By the way, London, where I lived for several years and produced some hit records (and I was a member of the British MU for sixteen years) is more expensive to produce scores in (if you include travel costs for mucketymucks from Hollywood), but their contract does not include new use (soundtrack albums)or reuse(television, foreign markets, DVD) clauses. It often gives the high-ups on the film the chance to take significant others to Harrod’s on tax write offable shopping spree on whats left in the budget, all first class, while popping in every once in a while to Abbey Road or Air “yeaaaah, I like it…. do it again, but make it more yellow this time, okay sugar, the taxis waiting, now lets go to Portobello Rd.”

But.. I am NOT opinionated (I swear)

Moreover, surprisingly MBA degrees are not as valuable as they used to be. But, business when they evaluate recruits use it as a filter when reviewing resumes.

2) “No, this means that we have to stop thinking of the music major in a liberal arts environment as training for a narrowly defined professional music career.” I really love that. However, I don’t think that market realities are as important as finding value in the education experience. I am sick tired of this world viewpoint that the university system is some giant trade school whose only value is getting a job after you leave. Education is a life experience that should be useful in a number of personal ways outside of this chea lowbar of get a job. I myself treasure my liberal arts education in music, and at the same time treasure that I don’t make my $$$ in music or music education. And I consider myself a composer. The artistic freedom turns into a major advantage plus I make much more $$$ than I would if I was gigging around LA…well, I guess I wouldn’t make much in LA heh…HA

No, this means that we have to stop thinking of the music major in a liberal arts environment as training for a narrowly defined professional music career.

The real degree inflation problem is at the graduate level, as far as I’m concerned. Despite the academic market situation, institutions continue to create advanced degree programs (and when is the last time that you heard of a PhD composition program shutting down?) Instead of meeting a real need for the students themselves in terms of academic or professional qualification, these programs appeared designed chiefly to provide tenured faculty with prestige, protegés (as well as partisans), and cheap labor for TAing and RAing.

It would be both very interesting and valuable if some administrator, somewhere, would really sit down and consider what the optimal combination of market realities, institutional needs, local scholarly/artistic resources and potential, AND an ethical treatment of grad students might look like.