B. HIGHER EDUCATION
MUSIC EDUCATION
IN THE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
OF AMERICA
bY
Cat1 PARRISH, Chairman, Department of Music, Vassar College, U. S. A.In the past few decades, a particular interest has been taken by Ame-
rican institutes of higher learning in the problems of non-specialized
music education at the university level. In the general educational
pattern of American college and university students (for us the ‘uni-
versity student’ and the ‘college student’ are practically synonymous)
a programme of undergraduate studies is pursued for four years,
leading to a bachelor’s degree; either the Bachelor of Science, which is
of a professional character, or the Bachelor of Arts, which comprises
what we call a liberal arts curriculum.
The subject I shall consider forms part of the latter curriculum, which
may be briefly described as consisting of three groups of courses:
(a) a certain number of required courses from the humanities (litera-
ture, philosophy, art, music), the social sciences (history, sociology,
economics, etc.), and the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, etc.);
(b) a sequence of courses in a single field, leading to professional study
later on at the graduate level. These courses represent the student’s
major field; if it is in the field of music he is called a music major, if
in history he is a history major, and so on (in this expos6 I shall refer
to the student who is a major in any other field than music as the gene-
ral student) ; (c) in addition to the two groups of studies just mentioned :
one general and one specialized-the student may also select courses