If You Want A Degree in Audio, You May Want to Leave the Country

Glyn Johns never went to college. Steve Albini earned a journalism degree. Laura Sisk studied audio at Indiana University. Clearly, there are many paths you can take that could lead you to becoming a high quality studio engineer. There are plenty of soft or "people" skills involved. After all, you have to work with producers, musicians, and record label reps just to name a few. I wanted to take a look at bachelor degree programs that teach the technical skills for students to become great studio engineers and the costs associated with these programs.

Using my personal awareness, forum posts, and the Audio Engineering Society's list of student chapters, I did my best to compile a list of bachelor degree (or equivalent) programs that fit the bill. You can check out that list by clicking here.

Know of a program that should be on the list that I missed? Let me know!

Drop me an e-mail at tommy@mitorajmusic.com

Again, there's plenty of great Music Tech programs with a focus on electronic music or Music Electrical Engineering courses out there. This is a focus on the recording arts, and my condition is the program has to aim to produce graduates with the technical skills to be professional studio engineers.

Why Get a Bachelor's Audio Degree?

As I noted, there's more than one path towards becoming a great studio engineer.

So why bother with a degree at all?

That's entirely up to you! A college degree won't automatically land you a job, and it certainly isn't free. The decision to get a degree needs to be right for you. Maybe it's better for you to get a degree in music business to support your engineering, or maybe you have an opportunity to work as an apprentice right out of high school. These are perfectly valid routes and should be considered if the opportunity is there for you. Opportunity is certainly a major factor.

From the dozens of universities I researched, there's a good reason most of them are in cities or suburban environments. The music industry is strongest in metropolitan areas. More people, more venues, more artists, more studios... You get the idea. If you live in an area that doesn't provide these professional opportunities, then higher education can be a great way to get yourself in the middle of the action.

If you want to do academic research, some programs will have a research component, but you may want to look at getting your masters or eventually a PhD. These (post)graduate degrees will often accept relevant professional experience as an alternative, but they almost always look for a previous degree in a related field to build upon.

The Cost

It's impossible to predict how much money a degree will run you when you have to factor in food, housing, increases in tuition, and much more. The best that the institutions themselves can do is a yearly estimate with some fees and extra costs listed. Some institutions don't give extra estimates and tell you how much the tuition or semester fee is, and nothing more. I spent a few days going over different educational insitution's websites from across the world, gathering data, translating documents, and hunting down webpages.

I collected in-state or resident tuition rates as well as non-resident rates with comparisons. Private schools tend to set the same tuition rate regardless of where you are from. Using the average residential tuition rate and the average tuition rate for private schools, combined with the average listed fees (such as housing, meal plans, transport, materials, etc.) , I found the average total cost for a degree in the U.S. to be a whopping $171,096.33. This price goes up If you were to factor in the average costs of non-residents going to public universities in other states.

It's probably a bit difficult to really imagine how much money $171k is. Lucky for you, I did some more research to create this helpful visual.

Here's a breakdown of the average cost of each type of degree using the same process as above, but now including countries outside the United States.

And finally, here's a map showing the average cost of tuition alone each year of the degree program, featuring both the resident and non-resident tuitions separately.

Scholarships can reduce the costs of school in the range from a couple hundred dollars to footing the whole bill. Check out what each institution offers and see if you can lower your spending.

Getting a Degree in the US versus International

Besides the obvious price tag difference, there are a few other differences you should consider before picking where you want to go to school.

The US tends to provide a more well rounded education. This doesn't go for all US schools or all the programs at schools outside the country, but as a generalization many US degree programs require you to take classes outside your major, and often provide opportunities to earn a minor. At most institutions outside of the States, the degree program you pick focuses on that topic with a set degree plan and a number of electives that are all relevant to the degree. Personally, I earned my bachelor's in the US and my master degree in the UK so I've seen both types of programs in action. I took Political Science classes in the US but I didn't meet a single person in the UK who took classes outside of their degree, save for the occasional go-getter taking optional language courses.

The worldwide music industry is dominated by the US market. So if you're determined to be where the majority of the industry is, then the US is the place to be. Between hubs like NYC, Nashville, LA, and Miami, you can even pick out a city based on the genre of music that you want to work with.