Posted in the dunk tank because I expect to be dunked on.

So I got in a discussion with a friend that someone they knew was hardworking because they were doing a degree in music theory on a PhD track while also juggling multiple jobs. I was impressed with all the jobs this person was doing, but I said that music theory as a degree is absurd and most liberal arts degrees are related to professional bullshitting (re: writing useless essays about a specific quality of something) than they are about something socially useful so I didn't find that aspect impressive at all. In my eyes, the socially useful thing about a music theory degree would be applying this idea to make good music, or to teach others about it. Notably, music theory is not about engineering a stage for good acoustics, nor is it about building instruments. It leads to nothing tangible, but rather is a sort of meta-analysis of music as a whole. Its possible to receive a music theory degree while making bad music. And bad music and good music is wholly subjective, its possible to put on a very musically skillful display and have no one like it, or not be interesting enough that a good swath of people enjoy it.

Compare this to, say, an architecture degree. There can be artistic expression in architecture, but its incredibly important to put people through a degree program for rigor to avoid architectural deficiencies which can kill people. The point here is that any sort of rigor drilled into someone in a music theory PhD pipeline has questionable benefits, and is likely a waste of time and labor. However, it is possible that it would be useful to have music theory certifications that are relatively quick, cheap, and potentially free to get to help teach musicians music theory to improve their art, maximizing social benefits. And I think that is something that can be applied to a lot of liberal art degrees.

Maybe this is colored by the way my grandma taught me about Socialist Czechoslovakia. There were benefits for artists, but people could only get free/subsidized degrees if they went to do something very practical such as architecture, engineering, science, and so on. Which is why so much socialist art is baked into something practical, like housing.

  • KollontaiWasRight [she/her,they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Here to engage in some light dunking:

    • First, the liberal arts are significantly more expansive than you seem to think. Maybe you mean the arts? Even there, I'd disagree, but there's absolutely a great deal more research to be done in philosophy, history, religion, and other humanities, and that's without expanding out to include the other liberal arts: the social sciences and math.
    • Second, there's lots to research in the arts, still. For instance, there's space for trying to rectify hegemonic western musical theory with other music theories. Music theory is about better developing the conceptual tools available to composers and creators, and as instrumentation and technology change, more areas open up for exploration. I don't know as much about other artistic fields, so I can't speak to them as well.
    • Third, actually, we should just disassemble the traditional university altogether. There is something fundamentally wrong with the conflation of teaching with research, and the result is the tierification of schools such that a small portion of those who wish to be researchers first get to be serious researchers, and the "best" schools often have professors who are crap teachers. Teaching university and postgraduate studies should be a respected and valued skillset in and of itself. The model of academia, wherein exploited postgrads who want to do research are pushed into classrooms for a pittance, and anyone who wants to teach first and foremost is pushed out of the top tier altogether needs to be destroyed and replaced with a system that values both teaching and research and doesn't falsely conflate the two.
    • CyberMao [it/its]
      ·
      3 years ago

      For instance, there’s space for trying to rectify hegemonic western musical theory with other music theories. Music theory is about better developing the conceptual tools available to composers and creators, and as instrumentation and technology change, more areas open up for exploration.

      :this: