Except for two or three music schools in America (San Francisco Conservatory, and maybe Curtis and Juilliard) all music schools in America insist on PhDs before they will offer teachers tenure. You can be a creative musical genius, but unless you have spent four years studying what put Beethoven did on July 20th, 1808, and whether he took milk and sugar in his coffee, you cannot get a tenured job.
I don’t have a PhD (my wife does), but I don’t understand the connection between a PhD and teaching young people how to play musical instruments. I can see that showing that you can stick at something for four grueling years is a test of character, but I would have thought that the enthusiasm, imagination, artistry, competency (and making it all fun) trumps all that. You can’t get a PhD playing an instrument. The result is that wonderful artists can never get beyond being “assistants”, even if they are concert pianists.
The world is daft! Certification trumps talent. Epicurus would be puzzled. The system is sclerotic.
“The system is sclerotic.”—————–
Another way of phrasing this terrible situation is: “the system has developed into one more bloody racket,” like so many other endeavors which stray from their purpose in order to make money.
Academia is in total need of reform, top-to-bottom. That last sentence should be re-phrased in an Epicurean tone: “Academia is corrupt to the core, so let’s adjourn to the seminar in the Garden instead.”