Those of you who know Slipped Disc might agree that it's the TMZ of classical music news, which is exactly why I visit it on occasion to scratch my itch for something juicy to read. Amidst the usual posts about petty scandals and outrages (do I really care who Khatia Buniatishvili's baby daddy is?), this one caught my eye this morning: “Dear Alma, is my elite music PhD worth anything?”
The endless tasks of an advanced degree. It often seems like they throw these extremely time-consuming, somewhat unrelated classes and duties at the doctoral student just to see if they can get you to throw in the towel. And the difficulty and unrelatedness increases as the end of the degree becomes within sight.
My advice? Don’t think about it. Just do it.
In music higher ed, there is an ongoing conversation about the value and relevance of doctoral performance programs. Music schools continue to accept large numbers of DM(A) students—some who are funded by assistantships but many who aren't—knowing very well that the majority of doctoral graduates will not find tenure-track university jobs. If they are even lucky to land a university teaching position right after graduating, it will probably be adjunct, meaning it does not pay anywhere close to a livable wage while still requiring you to teach, administer, and recruit as if you were full-time. I'm mainly referring to those in applied areas (i.e., performance), though my weekly survey of listings on HigherEd Jobs tells me this phenomenon is increasingly creeping into even the more academic music fields.
Right off the bat, I'll just throw it out there that it's extremely irresponsible for educational institutions to require graduate students to pay for their tuition (and with no stipend). When you're already in a financially tenuous field, whether a terminal degree in performance is “worth it” becomes exclusively contingent on whether it can get you a job. Alma doesn't help by saying the best teaching jobs go to industry performers with prestigious profiles—which is unfortunately true—further eradicating the possibility that doing a DMA could be worth something outside of a toxic, broken credentialist system.
re: Alma's later comment about a good teaching job preferring someone with a significant professional profile and major competition wins to someone with a lesser profile and DMA
If I may toot my own horn for a second to refute Alma's observation…I'm one of only three harp professors in the US who has won a major solo competition, and I technically do perform internationally (perhaps not on a super prestigious level, but I'm workin’ on it 🤨). However, I'm the only one of the three who has gone the DMA route to pursue full-time teaching—the other two hold principal positions with major orchestras—despite becoming painfully aware midway through the degree that it wouldn't land me a financially viable job. Why bother doing a DMA at all? For example, recent trends in harp teaching job hires show that winning an orchestra job or building a major performing career is sufficient to get a teaching position. So why not just focus on performing instead of taking all those useless courses and writing a bloated manuscript if the employment outcome might be the same?
Being in a DMA program, especially at a large public university, taught me how to teach; from my experience sitting in the student's chair, I know being a world-class performer doesn't mean they're a good teacher and mentor. Taking classes with diverse professors, observing classroom dynamics, working with students from really different backgrounds: it all helped me think about not just what to teach, but to consider that whom and how are just as important as what. I've told my students that one of the most impactful examples of teaching I've experienced was not in music at all, but in the Intro to Programming course I took in college, which was taught by an ex-NSA computer scientist who was an incredibly compassionate, supportive, and empathetic teacher. Ultimately, what I love about the university is that you're there to learn; learning itself involves acknowledging ignorance and letting go of so many assumptions—not proving how smart or competent you are.
I've spoken publicly before about not selecting a graduate program on the basis of prestige (at least by classical music standards) but on the ability to pursue interesting research ideas that wouldn't fit in a more traditional conservatory setting. That meant taking courses way outside the DMA curriculum (3 semesters of statistics!) and being proactive about finding mentors who didn't question my broad interests; if anything, they pushed me to go down some really weird rabbit holes and encouraged me to think independently and creatively. Those are all things musicians don't do when they're preoccupied with executing a piece or orchestral excerpt *chef's kiss* perfectly—speaking from personal experience as a competition harpist.
So, on the music entrepreneurship class I teach at FSU, I try to get my students to think critically about value: what do they bring to the table and how can they figure out how to communicate that value to potential customers (i.e., anyone with $ or opportunities to give)? If the only value we see in a DMA is its ability to get us jobs, then we approach it as a box to be checked (exactly as Alma says) and waiting to finally jump through that final hoop becomes a painful, agonizing process.
What if the value of a DMA are these things: the opportunities to be exposed to new ideas, to discover new interests, to have access to resources and mentors (often less accessible outside of school), and to build lifelong communities? What if the value of a DMA is figuring out how to do things differently—to problem-solve the many clearly unsustainable patterns in the music industry? I'm so tired of seeing students come out of these degree programs traumatized and demoralized; something has to change.
I'll end with this. For those who have DMA students:
Fund them. A colleague of mine in physics was shocked to learn that we will accept doctoral students without guaranteeing tuition waivers and stipends. I get it that we in music receive/bring in way less funding than STEM, but maybe we should be thinking about how we communicate our value to the powers that be? I feel pretty strongly about not extending offers to students unless I can at least cover their tuition.
Consider applicants not just on the basis of performance but also on leadership. I've added these questions to my audition process:
What is your leadership style? Describe past examples of leadership.
What kinds of experiences and opportunities are you looking for in a doctoral program?
Where do you see yourself as a future leader in the [insert your instrument] community?
Encourage them to do meaningful research-creation and to incorporate that into their graduating requirements (recital, thesis, etc.). If a teacher see something as a box to be checked, their student will, too.
Help them build a robust performance/research portfolio with a clear and specific narrative, i.e., research interests. Avoid buzzwords and platitudes ("You're a passionate advocate of new music? Me, too!”). One of the biggest downsides of the DMA—especially if the school is more geographically isolated—is having fewer opportunities to build a competitive performance profile; however, students really need one to be more on par with the industry veterans applying for the same jobs.
Finally, reverse Alma's advice: don't just do it, think about it.
Hugs and kisses (the example my class gave of a super unprofessional freelancer email sign-off),
Noël
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