Having read the recent postings by Drew, and Joe regarding the booming music/arts school enrollments, I decided to do some digging. There is a body that is at least partially responsible for this, an association that accredits schools to be completely autonomous i.e accreditation for proving that you are doing whatever you want to do……the ultimate “unregulatory” body (apart from the SEC!)……
The National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) is in the business of accrediting Music schools. I have read through pages and pages on their site and have yet to find the word audience. They accredit music schools who stick to their own autonomous missions. Creative freedom in how to educate is important because of the differing opinions and methods in addition to the strengths of faculties, but there’s one big problem that lies at the heart of this body which is that it focuses solely on the institution as a bubble and not on the successful advocacy of the art form, or the success rate of the students in finding employment after graduation. They basically will accredit an institution for coming up with a curriculum and sticking to it! From the definitions page on their site (words in bold are my emphasis):
Accreditation is a process by which an institution or disciplinary unit within an institution periodically evaluates its work and seeks an independent judgment by peers that it achieves substantially its own educational objectives and meets the established standards of the body from which it seeks accreditation. Typically, the accreditation process includes 1) a self-evaluative description (self-study) of the institution or unit, 2) an on-site review by a team of evaluators, and 3) judgment by an accreditation decision-making body, normally called a Commission. Accreditation reviews focus on educational quality, institutional integrity, and educational improvements.
There are over 600 NASM accredited music schools in the US.
Now in stark contrast here is an excerpt from the medical school accrediting body the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME, again the bold is my emphasis) :
Educational objectives state what students are expected to learn. Such objectives are statements of the items of knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes that students are expected to exhibit as evidence of their achievement. The educational objectives should relate to the competencies that the profession and the public expect of a physician.
There are only 129 accredited medical schools in the US and Canada combined!
To compare, LCME accreditation is about the effectiveness of the doctors produced as opposed to the NASM which is about how a music school wants to operate and educate! Potentially a music school that offers a performance degree might have zero graduates in the last 5 years that are full time performers now, but that wont effect their accreditation! I bet if a medical school doesn’t graduate an acceptable number of effective physicians, their accreditation would be yanked!
Rather than go chapter and verse into my dream of the kind of music school I would like to see created (I already wrote about that here) I have some suggestions for the NASM that would make schools accountable for their success at graduating students to employment, and successful advocacy (to potentially create employment).
An autonomous curriculum must address the employment prospects, accountability and advocacy in these ways in order for a school to receive accreditation:
- Provide as accurate as possible employment numbers of the graduating class from 3,4 and 5 years prior, with full disclosure of these numbers to potential students and their families (a statement signed by all parties that these numbers have been fully disclosed is required as part of every student application)
- Create an established connection and on going collaboration/programming with an outside body/institution within the community to provide students and faculty an opportunity to interact with the public in order potentially create new audiences for music (there is plenty of room for creativity here but audience numbers need to be provided)
- Create an alliance and a program with at least one community/social service group in order for students to have an opportunity to interact and create programming for people in need (again room for creativity but testimonials from the organization/group need to be provided as to the effectiveness of the program)
Music schools have to burst their own bubbles and participate in society to help create more demand for the art form so that students have a greater chance at finding employment. Pushing the envelope with innovative courses is OK, as long as you don’t keep sending the letter to yourself! Progressive education is fine, as long as there is progress, and I propose a new three R’s: Results, Responsibility and Relevance
I am not against teaching entrepreneurship as part of an arts course, I myself started my conducting career this way, but there has to be some accountability for success. Instead of “how to start at a not-for profit”, how about “WHY to start a not for profit”.
If benchmarks of student success in the field are used as one of the required components for accreditation, there would be a dramatic shift in the way music is taught for those schools seeking accreditation. It would be based upon what students need to learn as opposed to what a school wants to teach!
While I agree that music school curriculum could use an overhaul, your analogy with medicals schools denies some of the differences between music as an art and private practice medicine, or MBA programs, or JD programs, because those industries are 1- standardized, 2- competitive, & 3- lucrative and socially esteemed.
Music is a broad field of many tiny specialties, and while I’ve never been in on an NASM review except as a student, I’ve come in contact/applied/have friends at a number of incredibly diverse programs. Their approaches, philosophies and course requirements are vastly different.. is that bad?
I’m a MM candidate a small liberal arts school with a big music program- they restrict concerts and recitals to 50mins so they can produce all 149 recitals in a semester. I’ve heard that at UT in Texas MM Composisition recitals can last as long as 3 hrs (seems like an overstatement). which is better?
would the current kaleidoscope of programs be more palatable to you if they all had different names? So mine might be a MA in Composition and Personal Enrichment, while UT’s would be MM in Serious Composition? Or M.Ms in Symphony Performance? Baroque Styles? Plenty of schools have degrees in “Jazz Styles” should we create one for each subset of the industry?
Kyle
Kyle
Medicine is to serve the public, music is to serve?……I am going with the public! There are differences between medicine and art of course but the fundamental similarity is that arts organizations do not survive without the public (ticket sales, donations, community outreach, education), and neither do doctors who can’t treat the public (correct diagnoses, prescriptions, referrals, cures). Yes we do serve the art….to the public! It seems that the NASM is only requiring a music school to serve themselves (“achieves substantially its own educational objectives”). I believe that just gives validation that it is OK to not have to recognize that at the end of a degree, the student should be well equipped to get a job. I am advocating that music schools need to be accountable to prospective students (and families) with honest numbers of former students who are now working in the field, that there is advocacy for the art form, and an attempt to teach a student to connect to real audiences in a variety of settings…which is what they have to learn to survive when they get out. I think they are mixing up creativity with self servitude, because I can come with any number of courses the chordal overtones of the Beethoven silences, that might sound interesting, but true creativity is how to best prepare a student to be able to immediately connect with a job and an audience upon leaving. That shouldn’t be a school’s choice, it should be their responsibility!
I think this gets to a point that our industry has been dancing around for some time, and is only now beginning to see (at least pay lip service to).
In my experience, we have been far more focused on perpetuating our own survival, rather than providing a valuable service to the community. We just assume our service is valuable, and treat the community as though it should feel lucky we’re here at all. I’m sure this mentality extends into the training grounds for the industry, and only exacerbates the problem.
Sam
Thanks for your response, what is apparent to me is providing a valuable service to the community will perpetuate our survival!
Ron
oh, and that being said, I have plenty of friends from high school days that have played for you in the Springfield Symphony, and they were really excited, and it was a great experience for them.
Michelle M. Julia H. if that helps…
Please say hi from me, I remember them well!
One thing you folks are overlooking which is tremendously consequential:
NASM IS NOT THE ACCREDITING BODY FOR COLLEGE MUSIC PROGRAMS.
College and university music pgms are accredited by their own state’s Dept. of Education, each of which (at least NY state’s, I can vouch) have numerous benchmarks about alumni employment and alumni tracking. Just like their medical pgms do.
What, then does NASM “accredit”?
They have their own community-music-school-based benchmarks which can ALSO include a post-secondary element. Their post-sec benchmarks include graduation rates, number of credits in specific music areas (theory, ensemble, etc.). Alumni employment ratios? I don’t recall, perhaps not.
Both sets of standards–state DOE and NASM–involve a several-year process of “self-study” and outside adjudicators, generally deans of college music programs and other music-educator types.
BTW–last time I looked, neither Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, nor Princeton had NASM accreditation. The 600-plus schools figure you cite probably includes many, many community music schools without post-secondary programs of any sort–it’s not really fair to compare their output with that of Johns Hopkins Medical.
Actually you are mistaken, google NASM “Accredited music school” and you will find on page one, USC, Louisiana State, TCU and Huntington College, and on their home page the NASM states this:
NASM, founded in 1924, is an organization of schools, conservatories, colleges and universities with approximately 615 accredited institutional members
You may be mixing it up with the Accrediting Commission for Community and Precollegiate Arts Schools (ACCPAS):
was established by the Council of Arts Accrediting Associations (CAAA) to review and accredit schools and programs providing non-degree instruction in the arts disciplines to children, youth, and adults. ACCPAS does not review undergraduate or graduate degrees, or programs providing professional credentials in an art form.