CAUT

  • 1.  poll on music departments

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 08-26-2023 11:12
    I retired 3 years ago from Cleveland  State University, after 30 years w/ 80 pianos and 300 orchestra/band instruments to at least maintain (I'm not a luthier or band repair person). I had control of an annual budget of about $25,000. Our department was recently made a "school of music", a rubric which does nothing to allay the problems it faces other than provide a name that potential students might interpret as an indication of quality. Our department suffers from the usual budget woes; realistically, it functions as one of 20 or so humanities departments in a university which concentrates on business/engineering, STEM programs etc. Our music therapy program, which was / is a raging success with 3 full-time professors and burgeoning enrollment, was recently transferred to the Health Sciences School. Go figure. That took away the department's main source of enrollment. I see a gradual paring away of the humanities at CSU, and the eventual demise of the music department. We don't have a football team, northeast Ohio is replete with pro-style music departments (Cleveland Institute of Music, Oberlin Conservatory), and unless the Republican-dominated legislature decides to really fund and organize the over-abundance of music schools in the state, I don't see our department as surviving in the long term.  Ironically, Cleveland, being the largest city in the state and possessing  a history of quality music institutions like the Cleveland Orchestra, should be the city that has a  viable and pro-style state university. We'll see...I'm glad to see that other schools in the nation faring better than ours.



  • 2.  RE: poll on music departments

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 08-26-2023 12:45
    Stephen

    Is the demise of the music department because of a lack of music students, or a lack of funding for the music department?  When a piano tuner's position is cut in half, and the pianos are not staying in tune, much less functioning, does that have an effect on the number of students enrolling?