So why did I get all these degrees?  Why, come to think of it, do so many musicians spend so much time, effort, money, blood, sweat, and tears getting advanced degrees that will, if they are very, very lucky, get them a job that pays about as much as bagging groceries?

Are we just addicted to college?  Is it simply that we graduate with our bachelor’s degrees, and then start going into withdrawal and rush to grad school to feed our habit?  Could be, but I think a big part of it is how one views the purpose of education.

Basically, do you consider education a monetary investment, like the stock market, or an investment in who you are.  Is your goal to improve your bank account, or yourself?  If we look at a music degree as a monetary investment, it suggests that we should really let someone else manage our money.  Maybe our cats, since they couldn’t possibly do worse than us.

But what if we consider our educations as investment in us?  An improvement in our quality of life, instead of our quality of wallet?  Suddenly, it looks like much better planning.  We pursue music degrees not because we want a resumé line that will get us a high-paying job, but because we actually care about what we are learning.  We study music because we want to know about music, not because we want big gobs of money.  After all, we all have to live with ourselves, so getting a degree that means we are living with a more interesting person doesn’t seem like such a bad investment after all.