You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Is A Berklee Degree Worth $240K? - #101

Episode Date: May 10, 2018

In this episode, Peter and Adam have an honest conversation about jazz education. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Menace and I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast. Is a Berkeley degree worth $240,000? It sounds like a loaded question. You know I went to the new school, right? Yeah. Is the new school worth $235,000? It's a little cheaper, right?

I don't think it is anymore, actually. Okay. I don't know, man. I left after year two. Okay. Is it worth $130,000? Oh, that's bad math, too. I mean, I didn't even get a degree.

He's paid all that money for nothing. Yeah, so, I mean, today we're going to just dive into a little free form here. There's no seven lists. Yeah. This is not seven reasons why it is worth it. We're going to try to see, I have the feeling we're not going to come to a conclusive answer, but we're going to debate, perhaps, and discuss if a modern jazz performance degree is really worth what they're charging for it.

Well, this is pretty timely. You know, we deal with a lot of young musicians coming out of St. Louis. There's a lot of great young musicians coming out of St. Louis. And Berkeley or some of these jazz colleges are always high on their list, and we're helping them try to get into them a lot of times. But it is a good question, you know, should you be paying all that money for a degree in the field of jazz, when do you need to go to college to be able to play this music?

You know, Coltrane never went to Berkeley, and he sounded pretty good. Yeah, and I think, yeah, I mean, it probably begs the bigger question. I mean, it's not exclusive to. jazz or even conservatories, the outlandish prices that they're asking. Well, I don't want to get ahead of myself. I can't call it outlandish, but you can see where I'm going with this. Right, right, right. Now, having said that, I think that the level of jazz schools, jazz

conservatories, jazz programs within bigger schools of music, the level at many of them is, I think, the highest it's ever been. Yeah, there was definitely a point probably in the 90s where there were a lot of new jazz. programs and the level of education wasn't that great it wasn't they were they were building or rebuilding or just starting up inexperienced teachers inexperienced admins but now it's it's a pretty good time yeah i mean and you know you play with some of these kids who come out of there and they're pretty prepared yeah you know everybody can play and everybody's everybody's on it you know yeah and so i think you know the question of is burkeley and let's depersonalize a little bit because

actually i think berkeley is one of the most amazing school i mean you look at if you're going to judge a school by the graduates who comes out of the programs and their success in the industry that they're learning i mean berkeley is is is among the elite you know yeah and and we probably use berkeley because you know it is one of the more famous music schools but the question really is is just school worth all that money or worth going into debt right for all that money yeah and i think that it's the same you know for you know college and getting a degree in general going into this deep debt i mean this is we know this is a huge problem in our society right now yeah and so it's no different for a music degree I would say it's not worth going into deep debt and there's ways

around that um so from that standpoint the value proposition is is questionable because then the two hundred forty thousand dollar degree actually ends up costing you 750 000 or a million dollars by the time you pay all the interest and stuff um having said that i think that when if you go in with your eyes open to say a berkeley or an elite let's just say an elite conservatory situation yeah to get a jazz degree what you can get out of it And no matter what, you end up paying financial aid, scholarships, rich uncle, whatever you can do, you still, like, there's going to be a lot of responsibility for you as the student to really maximize the benefits from that program. You've got to do that because it is costing a lot.

And it's, you know, you're taking a lot of time and stuff. And there's great teachers there, but it's not going to just be spoon fed for you like some programs. Yeah, you're not going to just go to conservatory and magically learn how to play and be a better play. player, like out the gate. That's just not how it works. And in fact, you know, our friend, we have a mutual friend, Bjorn Ranheim, who's a great classical cellist. And I watched him once, someone asked him, should my son go to conservatory for cello? And Bjorn said, well, is your son one of the better musicians in the area they live? And she was like, oh, no. We were hoping he would go to conservatory and become a better musician. And Bjorn was like, well, I don't, if he's not

already pretty good. I wouldn't go and spend the money on that, you know, maybe look into something else in music or the arts. But to be a player at a very high level, you know, honestly, if you don't know by the time you're ready to go to college that you can do it, it's probably not going to be right for you. And I'm always amazed that parents don't understand it. Seemingly intelligent parents that are operating in modern society, like that would, when would you ever say, oh, my little Johnny is very interested in basketball? He hasn't played a lot, but he does have a basketball. Should we send him to Duke to play basketball? Would that be a good place for him to go to learn? I heard they have a top program there. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's not to say that you can't,

you know, go play basketball at mineral area community college, because maybe you love basketball, but you're not going to be at the top level. And I think it's kind of the same thing with music. You know, you don't have to go to one of these elite music schools to be able to play music and learn music. But if you are not already kind of in the top tier of your peers, you're probably not going to get that that much better by going to one of these elite schools. And it might not be worth the money for you. You probably not going to get in. So it's not going to be a problem. You might not get it. But you may slip in. No, I mean, some of the bigger schools do, you know, they let a lot of people in. But, you know, I think some of the parents think like, oh, well, if they wanted to be an

engineer, they would just go to engineering school and then they'd become an engineer. And if they want to be a musician, they'll just go to music school and then they'll be a professional musician. And that's, this is not how art works. Right. And I mean, in terms of the value proposition, because we came up with this ridiculous title for this episode of 245 with a specific number. Hey, we didn't come up with that number. That number is ridiculous all on itself. That's true. No, but I mean, really to answer that question, if you're at that higher level and you have to pay that amount and you get in and you go and you maximize the opportunity, say, to become a great jazz guitarist and you leverage the great teachers they have, the ensembles, the peer group, the connections, it could actually be worth it.

Oh, I think it's totally worth it. Because you could then, like, be a great session player or performer, do gigs where you're earning the kind of income where that would certainly justify it. So there's certainly situations where it could be worth it. No, absolutely. All these bigger music schools, whether you're talking about Berkeley or the New School or the Manhattan School or Juilliard or Indiana or North Texas or all the famous ones, you know, if you are there and you're already kind of, you know, good on your own, they're going to help you become great. if you apply yourself and you don't get lost in the shuffle. I mean, I think in that case, it's totally worth it. Of course.

Now, having said that, you would have to find $140,000 somewhere. So what is great now is because there's so many great programs, you know, if you're already really good, you want to pursue a performance-oriented career, you know, you have to be great. And then you have to have a bunch of luck. And then you have to kind of have a bunch of more luck. I mean, this is a very competitive thing to be a jazz musician just because of the number of gigs. ratio to the number of qualified players, be there from Berkeley or anywhere else. But this field, I would say that the elite name means less than other ones.

So like, so say you're going to go to medical school or law school, and I mean, I'm speaking a little bit beyond my, the parameters maybe of the you'll hear a podcast qualifications, but, you know, if you go to the certain names of schools, of elite schools, and then you come out, you can actually get a better job just based upon the name of the school. It's like, oh, you went to Stanford law. you know, do they have a law school at Stanford? Can you check that real quick? I Google that it's true.

But like the brand name matters more whether or not it should to get you in the door of certain places. Whereas if you show up to a jam session and, you know, have a Berkeley T-shirt on versus someone that has, you know, a Nebraska State T-shirt, it doesn't really matter. Like you're going to have to play your horn at a certain point and that's how you're going to be judged. Totally. So I think that, you know, people and there's this mentality now with parents where it's like

they want their kids going to elite name schools for whatever field they're in. And I would just say, go there, pay the money, do that if that's, you know, the environment that you want to be in and you're going to get something out of it. And you will, but don't do it because of the name. Because when you go to audition and you talk about Bjorn Reinhime, you know, and he's one of the cellists in the St. Louis Symphony, you're auditioning behind a screen. So they don't even know where you went to school. It just matters if you can play or not. No, I mean, you went to famously Juilliard for just a year, right? Yeah.

It was $240,000 for one year. That was the crazy thing. Yeah, but that doesn't help you get the gigs that you've gotten. It's probably nice to say at a dinner party, and people know what that's, it's like the Harvard of music school. So people are like, oh, Juilliard, you must be good. But you know that that's not helping you to get gigs as far as like that name. And it's the same thing with any of these things. Unless you really want to impress people at dinner parties, the name's not going to mean much.

But it is true that these famous schools are famous for a reason. and if you're prepared and ready to get something out of it, you can get a lot of out of it. I would say, though, don't sleep on schools with smaller names if they're the right fit for you. They might be better for you than the Manhattan School or Berkeley or Juilliard. And because the programs have gotten so good and because the big programs have kicked off so many great players,

graduates that are great teachers now, that's started. Now we're getting the next generation of all these great programs. Well, our good friend Nathan Pence's young bass player, goes to Temple in Philadelphia because he followed a bass teacher that he really loved. And I think that's more important. It's certainly more important for him, but it should be more important for you as you're, you know, deciding what college is right for you. Yeah.

Yeah. And then I would say, you know, some of the other areas in terms of music education, if you want to become an educator or want to have that a big part of what you're doing, there I would say the name of the school, and not even necessarily just the name, the dinner party name, but the actual reputation of the school. and places like Indiana that a lot of other people, it's funny because people will say like, oh, you went to Juilliard,

but if you say, I went to Indiana, they're like, ugh, they don't realize, I mean, a lot of people don't know that that is one of the best schools of music for a long time. Obviously, a lot of people do know that. But, I mean, that stuff, in terms of the people making the decisions about

if you're going to do a gig, but when you get into education, then you want a really good, strongly structured program that has a really good reputation so that you've got that degree, and then you're going to go teach somewhere. They know, oh, they came up in, you know, the University of Michigan, the Michigan State, Indiana, could be Juilliard, could be Berkeley,

although I think Berkeley is more known as performance-based, right? Totally, yeah. As opposed to music education. So those are things to think about. Make sure you're going to the school that fits kind of what your goal is. Make sure you're going to the area that fits where you want to be. You know, like I chose a new school because it was in New York City and I wanted to be in New York City. And that was it for me.

And I chose Juilliard. A big part was because I wanted to be in New York. And it was kind of the wrong thing because when I went there, there was no jazz program, but I wanted to be a jazz musician in New York. So that was kind of a bad decision. A lot of people that go to Loyola, be in Norlands. You want to be in that environment. That's part of it.

That city you're in is part of your education. So have we answered the question is a Berkeley degree worth $240,000? Yeah, the answer is it depends. It depends. It could be. It could not be. Okay? Yeah, either way.

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