The TLDR: Our voice-performance system was built in the 1920s on Euro-centric ideals in a climate hostile to jazz and Black American Music, a legacy still shaping today’s standards. Student loans fueled enrollment growth, but classical demand has collapsed: classical music attendance fell over the course of 40 years from ~16% to 4.6% and opera from ~5% to 0.7%. Undergraduate voice enrollment is down ~45% since 2008, yet the number of schools offering performance degrees dropped only ~7.5%. Most programs remain classically focused while job markets demand other skills. Students reliant on student loans need career preparation, not cultural enrichment. Schools need to realign their degrees with market realities. This isn’t anti-classical, its pro-student.

Renee Fleming Kicks a Hornet’s Nest

In a recent interview at the Voice Foundation, Renee Fleming brought up her perception that there are too many vocal performance degree programs in the United States. Since that video began circulating, there has been a lot of discussion about her comments. My wife Jackie and I have been researching the history behind vocal training in higher education for the last 15 years. In this post I want to lay out a few points that we’d like to see included in these discussions around Ms. Fleming’s comments and at the end of the post I will put forth a few talking points that Jackie and I would love to see brought to the forefront of these discussions.

NASM

The National Association of Schools of Music was brainstormed in 1924 as a reaction to perceived problems with music training in America. One of the problems they identified was that students had a hard time transferring credits between academic institutions, thus the idea of establishing degree standards came to the forefront of their conversations. It is important to understand what was happening in society at the time to understand the choices they made. In August 1924, Etude Magazine published their issue titled “The Jazz Problem” where prominent leaders of music schools discussed the scourge of jazz. The head of what we now know as Julliard called it the “self-expression of a primitive race.” Others agreed. This is also the time period when the Eugenics movement was in full swing. This movement included forced sterilizations and discussions of euthanasia for those perceived to be intellectually deficient, usually people of lower socio-economic status. The Eastman School of Music even participated in a 10 year study to look for inherited musical talent as part of the Eugenics movement. During the 1920s, what we now know as Country music was called Hillbilly music and associated with poor whites and what we now know as R&B was called Race music and associated with Blacks. It is no wonder our higher education standards were built around upper-class ideals and European art music in a time when our country was taking steps to marginalize poor blacks and whites from polite society. In the first half of the 20th century, college was only available to those who could pay for it, namely the wealthy and the upper-middle class. The upper classes were not going to send their kids to school to study Hillbilly and Race music, they wanted Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach for their children.

Student Loans

Student loans first became available in 1958 for science, engineering, and education because the United States was in a space race with Russia and needed more educated workers to compete. The Higher Education Act of 1965 opened up loans for more students and allowed other areas of study. In 1992, the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act added subsidized student loans and provided higher loan limits, making college more accessible to students from all socio-economic backgrounds. This led to an explosion of enrollment in music programs as you will see below.

Opera in America and Vocal Performance Enrollment and Consumer Demand

In 1970, Opera America counted 20 members of its organization. By 1990 there were 45 member companies with budgets greater than $1 million (~$2.5 million adjusted for inflation) and in 1996, Opera America had 86 member companies of varying budgets. This provided a growing marketplace for professionally trained singers and of course there was Europe, which was hungry for talented Americans to join their rosters. In 1990, there were 325 schools offering a Bachelor of Music in Voice with 4,341 students enrolled. There were also 1,179 students in masters degrees and 397 pursuing doctorate degrees for a total of 5,917 students studying vocal performance. By fall of 1999, there were 337 schools with 5,948 students, 1,307 studying masters degrees, and 475 earning doctorate degrees for a total of 7,730 students studying vocal performance. It is reasonable to assume the availability of student loans led to this 31% increase in enrollment. By 2008, there were 7,226 undergraduate studying at 388 schools, with an additional 1,442 masters students and 488 doctorate students for a total of 9,156 students studying vocal performance representing an 18% increase in enrollment from 1999. However, by this point European companies were hiring fewer Americans and American arts organizations were still struggling to recover from 9/11. In 2013, New York City Opera, which employed hundreds of singers, shut its doors leading to even fewer opportunities for American singers.

In the Fall of 2021, the last year that NASM made its enrollment data publicly available, there were 359 schools with 3,984 students. There were an additional 880 students in masters degree programs and 436 in doctorate programs for a total of 5,914 students studying vocal performance. At the undergraduate level that’s a 44.86% decrease in enrollment over 13 years (2008-2021) with a 7.47% decrease in the number of schools offering vocal performance degrees, meaning that the remaining schools are all vying for a rapidly decreasing number of interested students.

These drops in enrollment are likely influenced by a significant drop in consumer demand for opera and classical music. In 1982, 14% of Americans attended a classical music concert and 4% attended the opera. By 1997, 16% attended a classical music concert and 5% went to the opera. In 2022, those numbers had fallen to 4.6% attending classical music concerts and 0.7% attending the opera. That’s an 86% decline in Americans attending the opera and a 71% decline in the number of people attending classical music concerts.

Renee is Correct: We Have a Problem

Yes, we have a problem in higher education and even though its really hard to talk about we must talk about it for the good of our students. We are teaching thousands of singers at hundreds of institutions for a field that has experienced a 71-86% decrease in public support over the course of 25 years. Now the solution to that problem is where we need some deep and thoughtful discussions.

The NASM guidelines for vocal performance degrees are vague, but anecdotal evidence suggests most vocal performance programs continue to focus on classical music while the classical music marketplace is collapsing. Churches have often provided other opportunities for professionally trained classical singers, but according to a 2018-2019 survey by the National Congregations Study, only 24.5% of churches have a full-time music minister and 50% of those churches use drums and/or guitars, which suggests that half of churches now have at least some element of contemporary praise and worship music which is an outgrowth of popular music. We are not training our vocal performance students for that type of work. Recorded music revenue in the United States reached $14.9 billion in 2024, but our degrees are not preparing students for that work either. The most closely related art form is musical theatre with Broadway reporting $1.89 billion in revenue in the 2024-2025 season. Broadway tours add another billion to that marketplace and there are of course regional theatres and cruise ships offering opportunities as well. However, recent research by Dr. Warren Freeman suggests that 73% of Broadway auditions want pop/rock or contemporary musical theatre auditions, which are pop/rock influenced. Again, anecdotal evidence suggests we are not preparing students with those skill sets. There is without a doubt a need for institutions that focus solely on classical singing, but the data suggests we do not have room for 359 schools training nearly 6,000 students for that specialization.

There was a time when a “classical foundation” was sold to students as the basis of singing any style. Including to me in the 1990s. We now know that’s not true and social media reinforces that to students who are contemplating their college major. In the past, students had fewer options for musical theatre and music industry degrees so they were more likely to consider a vocal performance pathway to their career goals. However, today’s students can pick a degree specific to their dreams. They know that classical music theory is different than jazz theory. They know that studying counterpoint will not help them compete with the songwriting prowess of Taylor Swift. They have figured out that audiences want to hear them belt and that learning Caro Mio Ben does not give them the skills necessary to deliver what their audience wants to hear. We are recruiting from a population that has more knowledge about the industry they want to enter than ever before and the statistics indicate they are increasingly seeking paths other than vocal performance.

“A College Degree Enriches Your Life”

Finally, I want to address the argument that studying music has never been about guaranteed employment and the argument that a college degree enriches your life and makes you a better citizen of the world. I hear you, but let me give you another perspective.

I started my college education with two unemployed parents. I was taking 21 credit hours and working 30 hours a week catching shoplifters because it was the best paying flexible job I could find with my skill set that would cover my bills. My dad was a factory worker, my mom a stay at home mom. My parents did not send me to college to enrich my understanding of the world or expand my horizons. They wanted me to go to college because they knew it was a pathway to economic security.

When I was a college student living in a roach infested, public subsidized apartment in inner-city Cleveland eating Ramen noodles, Dinty Moore stew, and Spam because it was all I could afford, I was not focused on enriching myself as a human being. I was focused on getting out of public subsidized housing in a crime filled neighborhood while minimizing the financial hole I was digging for myself by getting a college education. But I refused to drop out no matter how hard it was because I knew a college degree would lead to a better life. That’s the reality millions of students from low-income households live in and that reality is not one that leads students to seeing the value of a college education beyond career preparation. That is why society is attacking higher education right now, they don’t want an Ivory Tower, they want career prep. Yeah it sucks that college is not free, but we can’t change that right now. If we are serious about DEI, we need to acknowledge the reality of low income students and reconsider what we are teaching in our degree programs. We also have to acknowledge that our country’s youth are distanced by 100 years or more from their European immigrant relatives. European cultural heritage is not prominent in their minds, which makes Euro-centric arts training a hard sell.

What are we Supposed to Do?

Jackie and I have yet to figure that out because as you can see its complicated. We still love classical music and opera, we sing it around our house until the kids beg us to stop. So while some people may think we do not like classical music and that’s why we are attacking the status quo, that could not be further from the truth. We just believe we need to stop telling people to major in it, when they are only casually interested in the art form because we know the realities of the world those students will enter post-graduation. I think that was Renee’s point.

We are 30 years past the time when student loans were made accessible to people from all socio-economic backgrounds, and it is time to reevaluate who we are training and offer degrees that appeal to the needs to 21st century musicians. Perhaps the answer is for schools to stop trying to conform to national standards developed in the 1920s and start forming their degrees around the needs of their region of the country instead. In communities where there are copious opportunities for early music, it would make sense that there are music degrees for that field of study. However, in a community where country music is most prevalent, it may not make sense to offer a degree in early music but rather create a music industry degree with a focus on the regional market for country music. Other schools may carve out a niche in contemporary, avant-garde opera, preparing their students to be entrepreneurs and reimagine what opera can be. We need that too. Some schools may train the nations top choral singers and teach them how to audition for and perhaps even form professional ensembles. There are countless possibilities, but they all require moving beyond the NASM standards.

An overhaul that creates diversity amongst our 359 vocal performance programs would decrease competition amongst the schools and allow for specialization that would enhance student learning. The problem is we have thousands of teachers who have earned doctorate degrees to lead academic programs where they were rarely taught music outside of the classical tradition. How do you create a degree program that you know your community could benefit from when you yourself have no performing experience in that genre? That’s a question to which there is no easy answer. Especially when most schools require a doctorate degree to be tenure track and there’s only one school in the United States offering a DMA in Voice Pedagogy for students from non-classical backgrounds. Once again academia is failing its students. At the undergraduate level, where DMA students would presumably like to teach, there are a decreasing number of students who solely study classical music. The 2024-2025 NASM handbook says that students in the Liberal Arts Degree with a major in music, along with the Bachelor degrees in Musical Theatre, Music Education, Music Therapy, and Music Industry must all demonstrate competency in popular music. But anecdotal evidence suggests most of the 47 institutions offering doctorate degrees in vocal performance are not spending much time training students how to perform and/or teach those styles. So in addition to reevaluating our undergraduate degrees, we also need to reevaluate our doctorate degrees and make sure our DMA students are prepared to meet the needs of 21st century singers.

The truth is no one has the answer to the massive problem we face that Renee Fleming was attempting to bring to light. So let’s use the comment section of this blog to start a meaningful dialogue. Ithaca College and San Francisco Conservatory have taken bold steps to open their performance degrees to singers of all styles. Other schools have already done so as well or are considering making a change. That’s a start, but there is plenty of work to be done.

What ideas do you have? How can we continue to move our profession forward? Please be solutions oriented in your responses, because the only way we can fix this issue is to talk about facts and solutions. There are always going to be a whole lot of emotions around this topic, but emotions do not lead to change. Emotions will not save music schools, only outside of the box thinking can save us.