Posted by Rick Denney on May 05, 2003 at 12:10:32:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: too many ? posted by Drago on May 03, 2003 at 18:49:33:
Chu--er--I mean "Dragomir" has hit the nail on the head. Universities do not exist to create job-holders, or to create future employees. Universities exist to create educated people, who then use their education as the basis for doing work, if they so choose. Universities also exist to conduct research, and the students are willing participants in that process, however much they may complain about its demands.
If college students are of adult age, then it's time they took responsibility for their own future. College is not high school. There is no babysitting. There is no legal requirement to attend. When I would complain about what I perceived as an unfeeling professor, my older college dorm-mates would respond, "Welcome to college." They were saying what I needed to hear: Grow up.
Anybody with a brain knows the jobs that are available for tuba players. Those who get them mix a generous dose of talent (whether or not they recognize that they have it) with a driving obsession to work harder than anyone else. By the time anyone is 18 or 20, they ought to be able to see that, and they ought to be able to measure it in themselves. If not, then it's high time they learned.
It's a good lesson with applications later in life. I don't still run my own business because I would not spend the time necessary handling the administration, and also because I don't care about what I do so much that I'm willing to invest that kind of time. I have avoided promotions for the same reason, and have changed jobs on occasion just to prevent those promotions. If the Peter Principle ("we each rise to the level of our own incompetence") happens, then it happens with the knowing participation of the victim.
Those who persist in a tuba program should know the odds and should therefore value the education they are getting for its own sake, not as some ticket to a performance career.
The real rip-off is when the curriculum is structured like job-training despite those odds, without the necessary elements of a broad education.
Rick "who thinks the world needs more well-educated amateur tuba players" Denney