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How much do you think your experience was shaped by your own personality, versus what your peers were doing?
As a teacher, it's easy to get overly discouraged by all the students that aren't equipped with the foundational skills, or don't care about learning. But that doesn't mean the students who actually want to be there and are ready for it, aren't getting a lot out of it.
Oh, I loved the teaching and the students (mostly). It definitely wasn’t their fault that they were ill equipped…but they were, and to a significant degree. What bugged me the most was the fact that they were basically buying a ticket to better paying jobs. I only taught part time, so it didn’t create too much angst in my life. It was a fun thing to teach and then put it away when I actually went to work. But all in all, when it comes to my own kids, I’m pretty skeptical of the state of higher education based on my experience teaching there.
I think more than ever, what you get out of it depends on what you're willing to put into it. You won't get a better opportunity to network with experts at the forefront of their fields than at university.
And to be honest, the bar to engage with them is pretty low. Most profs are so jaded by disengaged students that they're pretty happy to talk to ones that show genuine interest, even the ones who aren't that talented. And talent can be compensated for by training/practice... but passion can't.
in Econ and most other fields, professors need to be active and publishing in their fields, which imposes a fairly high level of technical competency (though not necessarily aligned with what the market needs)
Is there no similar requirement for music professors, like that they need to be active in the performing community?
Many perform regularly, including faculty recitals and what-not. What many can't do, is actually hang on a pro gig. Obviously, there's a massive diversity of routes one can take to get paid to perform, and there are a decent amount to music profs who can't really hang in any of them. The typical audience at a faculty recital isn't the demographic that's paying for it, and many music classes force the students to go to them as part of their grade. On one level, that makes sense as you can't learn music if you don't experience it. On another level, it creates a fake sense that these professors have a consenting audience. Don't get me wrong. There are lots of great musicians in academia, but there are plenty of terrible ones as well.
I taught at both a state school and a very expensive private university for a number of years in the 20-teens and into the 2020s. My experience is that kids are now buying degrees. Different people are paying for them, depending on the kid, but a vast majority of the students could not write to save their lives. I felt like the kids mostly wanted to learn but absolutely had not been equipped for critical thinking. By the end, in my music appreciation courses, I had multiple weeks dedicated solely to learning persuasive writing and how to debate. I got so much out of my college experience (early 2000s, degree in political science), but I'm reluctant to encourage it for my kids today... :/