Bob Jones University

Date: Jul 08 2004
Major: Music Education (This Major's Salary over time)
I, like seemingly many other students, attended BJU without full knowledge of how the school works. I was surprised to discover many rules that I would have expected at an earlier level of schooling. Things like mandatory bedtimes and impractical social restrictions caught me off guard.

The greatest disadvantage I met came to a head near the end of my degree program. For most of my final semester of student teaching, I had a very difficult experience. For the duration of that time, I received fairly regular counsel from my university superiors about my "poor character" for not doing the good job they thought I was capable of. It turns out that I have a documented (and easily identifiable by most educational personnel) case of ADHD which was discovered two weeks before the end of my degree program. For 4 1/2 years my advisors, in various ways, degraded my character while at the same time denied me the help that I desparately needed, not just to succeed in my academics, but also to live a normal adult life in the world outside of school. By the time someone took action, it was too late to save my grades. It was too late to implement any learning strategies so that I could survive in the adult world. I am still trying to make up lost ground.

As for the music department, it is a mixed bag. Some departments are well prepared to train students for a career as a professional musician. Mine was not. I made more progress in a week long workshop for my instrument than I had made in all of my undergraduate work for three years before. There were high school kids playing at a higher level than I was. I hadn't even heard of a great deal of the standard repertoire for my instrument. When I returned from the workshop, I was met with skepticism, even malice at times, from the faculty in my department. They didn't like my new-found ideas, even though most of what I learned was basic fundamentals of the instrument that no one had taught me before. Performance majors beware! Unless you want to perform in only a church orchestra for the rest of your life, seek your degree elsewhere.

If you are questioning the fact by this point, I am, in fact, a Christian. The greatest benefit I gained from attending BJU was the Bible training. I would never have gotten such thorough schooling in scripture and doctrine had I gone to a conservatory. And, of course, it was in the will of God for me to attend, because that's where I went. If God wanted me elsewhere for undergrad, He would have put me there. I guess I would tell prospective students or ill-informed critics that they should not expect BJU to be anything more than it is. I can tell you from experience that it is certainly no conservatory.