".....perhaps garage band guitarists, self-taught keyboard and drum-set players..."

What, no garage schola directors!?!? They're the real wave of the future, right?

All I can say belatedly, Rogue, is "caveat emptor." Boston U. was among the first of established, credentialed colleges to "sell their soul" publicly in the choral and mus. ed. periodicals. I personally know colleagues who've spent thousands in pursuit of a sheepskin from such an established institution, as they are convinced that initials following a comma after their name, will place them among the front-runners for next-rung of the ladder gigs. A valuable fact I learned, almost from day one, is that earning a Masters is, verily I say, a glimpse and precursor of the gauntlet one must go through to really earn the doctoral degree (see Ruff, Rev. Anthony, OSB.). The more valuable fact I learned earlier than that is that, in nearly all musical realms (be it jazz to choral) a doctorate (even from a venerable institution) does not guarantee that the recipient has evolved as a musician to a more valuable degree Can you say "Roger Wagner" or "Paul Salamunovich?" Or Scott Turkington, AOZ or Jeffrey Tucker?
One pursues the doctorate because one loves the academic pursuit, period. For a pay grade advancement?
I can name that tune in two notes that edifies both sides of my equation's coin: "Mike O'Connor."
Now that's someone I can honestly dub "Dr. Mike," as opposed to say,........"Dr. Jerry."

Unfortunately I have had the pleasure of experiencing this quote in my brief education experience at the local state school here.
It's all well a good to be inclusive and not appear snoby by allowing a broader perspective of what actual musicianship is. UNTIL..... I have to sit in a semester of ear training with Music Ed. students who can either barely tell the diff between a major and minor 6th or just cannot match pitch. But think they have it goin on because they "gig" at the local tavern. The teacher of the ear training class was intelligent himself. He trained with Nadia boulanger in Paris and took a composition class with Messiaen at one point. He was sooo inclusive that even if someone could not match pitch, he would gloss it over as okay you are doing your best we are all learning from each other. He would regularly have us "mediate" before singing solfege! Oh my, I skipped the class so much I should have just dropped it.
This school I attempted to go to (had to leave the "music department" or would have progressively gotten less musical) regularly graduates wannabe rock stars and very poor musicians through their music Edu. program. What's more unbelievable is that their 4th semester(final level) theory class, did not have text book and were still exploring writing in root position with out any formal guidelines. We were told just to feel it out.
It's scary to think this music department has accreditation at all. What's worse is they place these people in local grade schools/ middle schools for internships.
Sigh,,,, wish I had something more positive to contribute.

Perhaps there are three separate but related issues here. One is that of balancing ability with potential in selection. Another is the purpose of taught (or undergraduate) education. And finally there's the drive to increase the number of graduates and post-graduates. I can't but feel that the third of these brings pressure to bear on the other two; that before the days of mass higher education it could be assumed that those who'd jumped through the hoops to get to university were capable of benefiting from academic challenge, and that the selection process could take the time to really identify those with potential who could show evidence of committment. In my own country, the government has a silly target of putting 50% of the population through higher education. The result has been a dilution of standards and large numbers of people with significant levels of student debt, and a degree that won't get them the money they need to pay it off this side of middle age.

I just spent the morning "organing" at four masses. Dang, I'm tired!

I find that the local colleges have some pretty high standards in the their music departments. To obtain a certification in music ed, this state requires you to take a test which requires the correct identification of played intervals, passing a significant music history component, and answering theory questions. If you don't pass the test, you don't get the certification.

These are PRAXIS tests from Educational Testing Service which are required in this state for K-12 teacher licensure. I no longer remember specific questions, since it's been too many years.

"Musicing" comes from Christopher Small's Very Important Book _Musicking: the meanings of performing and listening_ (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1998), which I blush to admit I have not read. "To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing materials for performance (what is called composing) or by dancing."- (p. 9). As a neologism to describe something which has not yet been examined as a whole, and for which no singe word or term exists, I have no problem with it. (Likewise, Edwin Gordon's "audiating" /= "hearing")

I have issues with popular music studies. Overall, the practitioners seem to be not as nice people as those who study the older canon. Likewise, the field is eyeball deep in gender studies, with its problematic social effects. As one who once fancied himself an Americanist, I was appalled at the level to which the New Musicology had overwhelmed AmeriGrove 2nd ed. (>2 pages on "Sex" in a geographically limited dictionary? What, musicians nowhere else have intercourse, or sex, or gender, or whatever it is they have??)

I have to meet the scholarly needs of everyone, whether I find their specialty worthwhile or not. My scholarly interests are certainly not everyone's cuppa. We tend to be especially appalled when Western Civ. breaks down in our own creative backyard, but none of that is limited to music. When it happens in church, we blame it on Vatican II, when it's just another symptom of the broader disease. As for the lack of basic skills, "we" (i.e., everyone not involved in classical music) live in a post-literate music culture. The music which makes money and fame does not require notational skills. We even think we can perform quality church music by having people listen to recordings of their part until they memorize it. We call chords by their roots and components, without reference to function ("F7" not "V7/Bb"), as if we could describe words without grammar. It sounds OK, so it must be OK.

Hang on; 20 years from now, we'll be nostalgic for the Good Old Days when we could whine about such trivia.

I can't even stand the word "concertize". Blech thrice-fold to "musicing".

But we are concomitantly in the era of Common Core, so how does one arrive at the answer to the equation, "blech(x3)=???

I will have to ask my parochially educated little ones! No doubt they can write a paragraph or two about it.

Has anyone else encountered this term? "Musicing"?

You might try spelling it correctly ;-)

Gentl. instructed (1713) "A man must have… a faint idea of future torments to be fiddled and musick'd to hell."

Jermingham letter 1788: "reading, drawing, and musiking"

Pycroft Agony point (1861): "Frenched, musicked, and deportmented"

It seems related to the German "musizieren" - to make music or engage in musical activity.

SEVEN YEARS

For most grad students, that means he's just about ready to finish the degree.

Three years