A couple of quick comments:
He ended up being a tenured professor of music.
It is tough these days to get a tenured position in music. Many schools use adjuncts and humanities and arts departments are declining at some as well. Just don’t want any young people to get the wrong idea.
I haven’t seen much discussion of the transfer path here, and it’s a great point. Outside of CC, I have seen lots of discussion about going to a “lesser” school and transferring into a preferred program.
Again, just a note of caution: some schools/conservatories need you to do the full 4 years (8 semesters of lessons, for instance) even if you have done two years of gen eds and music classes. It is worthwhile to make sure that a transfer will save time and money. (Great the Berklee has that list!)