I'm 2x years old and have done these courses, I'm embarassed to say for how long and from what age. I'm nearly 10k in debt from them and that wasn't even to degree level.

I didn't do Music Technology/Audio Recording etc. at university, I nearly did when I was 18, I thank to high heavens I didn't in the end. I decided to do Engineering (Electronics). I know how your son feels, but he might resent everything you are trying to do for him and to be honest, at A level age, an engineering degree was laughable if you'd told me, then I started to read these threads and it became clear over months and the denial inside me started to fade.

Suggest to him maybe Acoustical Engineering, then try and work away from there. There are also Engineering foundation years he could apply to.

From doing those 'courses' to engineering within a month of my course I was calculating things which were alien to me just before starting, and even then I was not keeping up with the workload, but it's interesting, 18 year old me would hate it....I did more real useful math in one week than I could ever have done in 5...heck 20 years of these courses. In one month of those courses what would I have achieved? A cheesy track in a well known DAW and a few thousands words telling a lecturer what's so great about it.

He will be paying 12k per year whatever age he starts, I assume he's year 13?, he doesn't have to go straight to uni at 18 and for many people, it's the worst thing they could do and end up on a course they hate or is no use to them.

These courses are all run by graduates of the subject, and they tend to only be hiring those graduates by the looks of it and IMO trying to glorify their qualification by doing so, I think just about everyone of those that taught me were graduates of music tech from head of department to the technician in the building. I was even kind of nudged towards the university they all studied at over Surrey and LIPA, a few I know went for interviews there and couldn't do the physics test, and the staff turned up their nose and pulled the wool over their eyes....they should be teaching physics and various principles...but no, they were ignorant of that.

Some of the research lead universities push out a lot of work, I read through some of the stuff the Russell groups are doing and even though I understand about 1% of it, the person writing it is probably top of the field academically, but at best will get to lecture in it.

It's sterotypical for a parent to push their kids into medicine, science, law (even though it has awful prospects as well atm) or accounting etc. but you're going to have to somehow get him to see that what he wants is a pipe dream. He can always be interested in making music, local studios are always around and can stick around for as long as the owner cares, but a career? No. The music industry has changed and the people that rub shoulders with massive acts aren't audio engineers anymore.

Edit:

I'd also go with the Surrey Tonmeister course, but I've heard it's having problems finding placements for it's students, could be wrong but I wouldn't be surprised either way.

I got accepted to engineering with one of those diplomas in my hand whereas Tonmeister rejected me straight up, it's very competitive and I'm sure there are a few students on that course with the right attitude to succeed and overwhelming maths/physics capabilities.

Edited by Chris No.1 (06/11/11 11:56 PM)

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