Enlightenment or Entitlement?: Rethinking Tertiary Music Education

Tertiary music education is commonly understood as preparing students for a career as a performer. This, however, fails to address fundamental shifts in the ways most of us now typically encounter, and think about, music in our lives; nor does it acknowledge the diminishing funding base that supports traditional modes of teaching.

It is time to rethink both how, and why, we teach music on campus. In addressing the issues the author draws upon his experience since being appointed in 2012 to lead the government-initiated takeover by Australian National University of the revered Canberra School of Music, a time of intense controversy.