Posted by Kenneth Sloan on November 28, 2001 at 02:45:52:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Gross injustices posted by Matt G on November 27, 2001 at 11:31:53:
Matt says: "Colleges should be more reality based and not 'perpetuating academia' based"
With all due respect: no, No, and NO (not to mention, no way!)
Colleges *are* "academia". That's the reason for their existence, and the driving force behind what goes on there every day.
This may not be what the average 20year old college student *wants* - but as the old song says - "you can't always get what you want" (hint: consider the rest of that verse).
Attempts to produce "reality based programs" inevitably fail (and, I claim, always will). They crop up from time to time, in various fields. Sometimes they are successful in the short run. In the long run, they all fail.
The Academy continues to exist because society finds it useful. It serves the needs of society - which are almost always *not* the (short term) needs of the students (or, often, the faculty either).
Students should go to college, to prepare for life. Not for a career. Programs which are tightly associated with particular careers (education, music, and engineering come to mind here) are often the least successful, and the least admired. It's simply RealHard to smoothly integrate job training into the Academy. The most highly respected fields are those which are *least* tightly coupled to particular careers (Physics, Philosophy, Mathematics, History, to name a few). Music should take note: high quality and great respect are ANTITHETICAL to "job preparation".
Students should be advised to pay attention to requirements, and make sure they get their degrees (with luck, on time). But, career advice is not the sort of thing the Academy is good at - unless, of course, you want a career as an Academician! If you want to be an engineer, or a third grade teacher, or a musician, or a newspaper reporter, or an airline pilot, well...the Academy can't really advise you there. Your best bet as an undergraduate is to expose yourself to as wide an array of possibilities as you can manage (while still making sure that you meet the requirements for *some* degree - it hardly matters what the degree is, as long as you *finish* it; that's all employers really care about!) Explore music, but also history and poetry and physics and psychology and ... Vote with your feet, and discover what it is that you find yourself doing BY CHOICE. If, BY CHOICE, you find yourself 10 hours per day in the practice room...you have a career in performance. If, BY CHOICE, you find yourself 10 hours per day in the bar...you have a career in bartending, or in AA.
Corporations want "college graduates" because they want someone who can *finish* something - and they also want someone who has been exposed to a broad spectrum of ideas. They want "grown-ups". Guess what - they DO NOT want people who were exposed only to people who might be hired by the same corporation. They want people who were exposed to those crazy academics who spend their lives thinking about completely trivial and useless ideas and activities - they are called "Professors".
If the student is completely happy with what the Professor is doing, or requiring of the student, then one of them is in the wrong place. Professors who teach "real world skills" are incompetent Professors and rarely last long in a high quality academic department. Students who have only met such Professors have been shortchanged, and never been to "college". If your Professor is wierd and completely out of touch with the real world...REJOICE! Take what you can from this Professor (and give in return) and then move on. You'll both be better for the experience.
Rick complained that the Professors in his Architecture department could not explain to him what it took to do well in their courses. I know just what they mean. I can't tell a student what it takes (other than putting in the time) to do well in mine. All I can say is: watch what we do, do the homework, listen to the lectures - if you are not excited about it enough to do *extra* work BY CHOICE, well then...have a nice life - you just don't make a good fit with this field. Find something that suits you better. Rick did. So did I (I took my first computer course in the same semester with ThermoDynamics - to this day I know nothing about Thermodynamics, and thank my lucky stars that the Engineers told me not to come back..I had already left!) Try 10 things,
and stay with the ones that call out to you - there is no better way that I know of.
Bringing this back to Music - don't ask for a Music degree that "prepares the student for life in the business". You won't like the result, and it won't really work.
Trust me...I'm a Professor (but not, mercifully, of Music)...
As a result, I can say that I play the tuba...and have a well paying job. The job doesn't require that I play the tuba, though. I do that for the pure pleasure of it (mitigated only by the number of times that "Sleigh Ride" and the Nutcracker show up in the folder).