<p>I don’t know if anyone asks that outright (there there was on thread about justifying a music degree) and in terms of the real world, a lot of parents consider a music degree a waste of time…and there have been comments on here about conservatory degrees, that have said because they focus in on music alone, don’t have the broad liberal arts basis that colleges have, that said in effect that if you don’t make it in music that the value of the degree is less than one attained at a college, and I was challenging that idea. In light of the Juilliard article, it is even more relevant, because people are passing this around as if it was some sort of hidden wisdom, and basically saying “look how hard it is for Juilliard graduates to make it in music” which in turn leads to discussion about what do you do if music doesn’t pan out…when a conservatory degree is called ‘trade school’ it isn’t exactly saying it is valuable, because generally a trade school degree is only valuable in that trade…if the value of any school is in learning, then a conservatory, albeit in different ways, is still a college degree, whether or not the students took all the core courses (much of which when I was in college we groaned about and called them “crap courses” as opposed to our major courses).</p>