The 5% Reality Check

So, the other day, I noticed a short post on NewMusicBox from a young Minneapolis-based composer, pointing out that, according to a seminar he'd recently attended, the percentage of college music majors who actually go on to a performing career is a miniscule 5%. 85% of music majors do end up working in the music world to some degree, but considering that the vast majority of young musicians in college go into the experience assuming that they will have a performing career, 5% is a shockingly low number. The author of the post puts it even more starkly...

Practicing eight hours a day is a great way to become a virtuoso, but it's also a great way to develop an eating disorder, and apparently it makes you only incrementally more likely to sustain a career as a full-time soloist or orchestral player than someone who only put in four hours per day.

Assuming these numbers are correct (there's no attribution in the post,) I'm of two minds on the issue. As part of the 5% who succeeded in carving out the career I sought when I entered music school, I'm horrified that there are a) so many young musicians deluding themselves about their prospects, and b) so many mediocre teachers willing to accommodate those delusions to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in tuition money.

This isn't to say that teachers ought to be discouraging the vast majority of their students from seeking careers in the field - obviously, it would be wrong to suggest that the success stories can always be predicted from the get-go - but even at many prestigious conservatories, there are, frankly, a lot of students who don't have the slightest chance of ever landing a "real" performing gig and making a living from it. And no one tells them this! Other students feel (correctly) that it isn't their place to shatter someone's dreams, teachers worry that telling a student to find another focus would lead to (legitimate) questions about why the student was accepted to the school in the first place, and administrators really aren't terribly interested in what students do or do not do with their degrees.

Worse, music is almost unique among "skilled trade" fields in that you can major in it at almost any college and university, regardless of whether that school actually has the faculty and resources necessary to train its students for professional careers in music. The kids at these schools by and large don't have a prayer of making the big-time, regardless of their talent, because they have no hope of getting the top-drawer training musicians must get in order to advance. This may not be a fair reality, but it is a reality.

On the other hand, many of the 80% of music majors who work in "the field" but don't perform for a living would probably say that I'm taking a very limited view of these numbers. After all, what percentage of students at an average liberal arts college in the US actually wind up doing exactly what their major would have indicated? One of my brothers majored in political science at Macalester and is now a professional cook, yet he doesn't consider his education to have been wasted, since it taught him a lot about the world and how to interact with it in an intelligent way. Couldn't music be the same?

Supporting this glass-half-full viewpoint is the fact that orchestra musicians are forever insisting that the folks who manage orchestras are doomed to failure unless they truly "get" the music business. So shouldn't we be appreciative of those who start out aiming for a performing career, but change course and carve out another niche for which they are better suited? We in the orchestra business get some of our best CEOs and management types via such progressions.

I guess my larger concern would be for the thousands of young musicians who haven't the foresight to see the demise of their dreams approaching, and either fall back on teaching other students whose ignorance mirrors their own (and whose employers choose to ignore their inadequacy,) or find themselves having to start their schooling all over in order to earn a degree they might actually use.

But like I say, I'm part of the 5%, and therefore not in the best position to judge. So what about it? Anyone out there a former music major, or someone who considered majoring in music? Do you regret the decision? Celebrate it? And do you agree or disagree with my premise that there are a lot of degree-granting institutions that just shouldn't even have a music major available? Your comments are eagerly awaited...