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Let's not assume that just because you can learn something on your own, that you should. As for what makes a professor more valuable than a member of this forum. Easily, most professors are not 14-22 year old kids trying to find professors to ask. This is something that relates to this forum. On a certain physics forum, it's loaded with real professors and a world famous mathematician and those real professors actually answer questions and help people.. On that forum, i've seen kids grow from what's neighborhood to, what's stable homotopy of groups. I'm sorry, not everyone can read a book and actually understand it, even if they think they do. Also you make the mistake that all uni programs are the same and easy. Get over your failure to become a professional composer and stop giving bad advice ty.

I think an-whatever has a very crappy view of what University is. Now, I understand that there are certain state schools that offer no real challenge to a student then repeat the book. If that is the university you are going too, then I suggest you partake in more rigorous one o one with the professors in your department. However, there exist real university that encourage independent study and test that require students to take the information they learned and expand upon it during the test. An-whatever is completely correct about everything he says if your only goal for going to college is to have a job. However, I believe that if that is your end goal, then you probably should major in accounting or computer information systems, you know something where you know you'll get a return. A university is about expanding who you are as a person by forcefully putting you into a vast myriad of different people while forcing you to listen to older and more experienced people. I often see this in young math students. They can read Hungerford abstract algebra, and then complain that the questions have nothing to do with the chapter. Then they come to me and I point them to a chapter and show them how the word domain implies it's already a group -_-. Point being is that 99% of the people I come across CANNOT understand a text completely without reference. Even I, as a professional mathematician find new details in an intro text that I missed as student, a grad student, and using the text as a teacher. It takes experience, interaction with more skilled people, and most importantly a complete openness to new ideas to really succeed in whatever you do in life. You see, university is NOT there to teach you a skill or get you a job. It is there to EDUCATE you. I know people go there for a job, but that doesn't change the purpose. I find the people who are worse at their job were the same people who went to college for the job, not because they were interested in that field at a fundamental level. When you go to the university, you are paying for the privilege of the advice of people who have much more experience in your field than you can ever hope to find anywhere else. You are paying for an experience. You are paying for a challenge. You are paying for a new outlook and a refinement of skills and insight. You are paying for the opportunity to make connections. You are paying to find out what you really enjoy in life that isn't manual labor. Bottom line. If you value more over education, then yeah that money is a waste. Otherwise, then you cannot never replace a professor with the knowledge and experience to guide you where you want to go. (Side note, there are people who can make it on their own, but they are rare. They tend to have a key eye for self-criticism and pay attention to details every step of the way. Most kids are not that way.)

I don't know what kind of "Universities" you guys are talking about, but certainly the forum here does NOT have nearly 1% of the info you can get out of a proper course for either musicology OR composition. Likewise, even on the internet at large, you'd be hard pressed to find literature like books on in-depth analysis of Schubert's lieder or maybe stuff on Luis Couperin's influence on the french baroque canon, stuff that you can usually find at an actual university that doesn't completely blow. Hell nevermind that if you have actual professors that you can ask things to, they can point you to tons and tons of literature (and since you're studying there, you can ACCESS IT, imagine that!) Wanna know all the different interpretations of Beethoven's late string quartets and their relevance to 20th century perception of the middle romantic period? No problem! You can go look it up. If you're really studying -music-, composition or not, there's no replacement for having professionals help you pick out stuff and guide you into finding all the points of view on a particular issue. And even then, this varies greatly from country to country, here in Germany for example there is just SO MUCH literature on just about every single musical topic that honestly I still ask around when I need to dig up some particular bit of info for a research. Because, yeah, let's not equal wikipedia's entries on sonata form and what's here on YC to stuff like Erwin Ratz's "Einführung in die Musikalische Formenlehre," since that'd be a disservice. But of course how do you know if this book is any good if you can't find it or you have to buy it yourself? How about other books, then? Are you going to build your own library? Sorry but a lot of these things are not in PDF yet on the interwebs, like 98% of the literature on specific topics like these. Point is, if you study someplace where you have real access to all these resources and people to help you, you can only gain from that... But of course if you only want to write music, then you don't need to study anywhere or read any books, isn't that right?

What? Are? You? Talking? About? I agree with you, Ferk. We're all self-taught. Whether we bounce ideas off of a Professor or off of a fellow composer on a website like this, though, I don't see the difference. This forum is a collective body of knowledge that offers more insight than possibly any single university in existence. Just having an existing userbase of roughly 50 active members is far more than participation numbers in 98% of composition programs worldwide, and with technology and local ensembles among us (as a collective group) we can find ways to get our works performed simply through our own efforts to organize and communicate with each other. If someone with a concert band piece seriously needed a reading of their work, I know of three potential groups in my area that I am connected with who could potentially read those works (and I could record, video and audio). Of course, I won't go out on a limb for anyone who won't go out on a limb for me, either, so it's a give and get kind of situation. Still, we have everything we need here on this forum to learn about 95% of what we could get from a university. Is that 5% really worth the $40,000 tuition and the degree if all you want to learn is composition? Really? I think it's a question of value. I don't see it.

Like I said, if you don't want to recoup the money you spend on a university education, then go get a degree in music composition. It will be convenient. It will offer all of the things you mention later on in your post. The university will take your money and you will get what you pay for in terms of knowledge. Now, whether you can use that knowledge is another question, but if you'll be happy working in customer service to pay off your debt for the experience in college, then more power to you. I went to school to be a composer. They took my money, sold me books, lectured on material I could read on my own and understand, and had I held the foresight I have now, I could have dedicated a significant amount of that money to the equipment I actually need to work as a professional in the industry. I could actually be composing as a professional like so many others who never actually studied music composition, much less pursued a degree. It's not some "crappy view of what University is" as you claim. It's just a simple observation. If anything, I'm trying to get people to check in with reality and gain another perspective on the matter. If you don't agree, that's fine, but implying my education was somehow deficient compared to yours when you obviously disagree with my opinion for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the institution is absurd. Stay on topic. We're not talking about -MY- education, we're talking about the justifications for self-study and academic-study in music composition. My educational background has nothing to do with it. I'm pointing to general observations anyone with perspective on the matter could make. This isn't an exclusive description of university education. This is a description of -life- itself, just in case you didn't know.

Hey, this is a completely fair, valid viewpoint to make. I commend you for making it. :) But I'm about to disagree with you... Ugh, you're loading this whole discussion on the topic with presumptions of -my attitude- when I'm referring to very specific, very accurate, very telling -observations- of the university system. Please. Stop. Veering. Off. Topic. This, to me, is silly. It's actually a flaw on many fronts, but from a practical standpoint, everything you can garner from a University -can- be acquired through individual effort and thoughtful, resourceful research methods. This includes many of the same characteristics of music composition that you can learn -right here- on this website. What we do here is no different than what you do in a composition lesson with a professor. Except, here you get a variety of perspectives through community feedback as well as having it provided to you absolutely -free- of charge. You'll pay anywhere from $100 to $1000 per credit hour to a university to have one composition professor go through a similar reviewing process on a week-by-week basis. How does it make any sense that here, for free, we can get potentially -more- feedback on our work than a single professor we pay anywhere from $100 to $1000 per credit hour might provide? What is it, exactly, that qualifies the professor yet doesn't qualify the members of this forum? We're all composers with various backgrounds. If anything, I toss the suggestion right back to you... be realistic! :) -AA

For a minute there, I thought we were having a discussion until you threw out this little gem of pretentious malwisdom. By the way, define "professional composer" for the record, BD. :) All uni programs are not the same. I readily admit that. It doesn't mean my observations are at all unqualified. I should know. I've been to -many- uni's during my time in academia. Though I tire of the indoctrination going on in many of those universities that most consider to be the upper echelon of the academic ladder, I'm confident that my observations are just as relevant to those institutions as they might be to smaller, lesser attended/admired schools. So, please spare me the rhetoric. If you want to discuss, stay on topic. If not, if you insist on insulting me instead of engaging me on an intellectual level in this discussion, then I'll stop wasting my time on you.