Academic Degrees Achieved by Collegiate Singing Voice Faculty in US Higher Education

Objective: Completion requirements and coursework vary greatly among degree titles and offer substantively different training for singing teachers entering the professional field. The objective of this study is to understand the degree titles and levels achieved by applied voice faculty teaching in musical institutions of higher education in the United States (US).

Methods/Design: 5,515 applied voice faculty positions at 1,534 institutions of higher education in the US were gathered from the College Music Society’s database. Degrees and content concentrations held by each faculty member were collected from institutional websites while updating the original list to reflect current employment status. Information unavailable from institutional resources was subsequently amassed from personal websites or marked “none found” when publicly inaccessible. Listed singing styles taught by individuals were noted from faculty bios and website content.

Results: Degree titles and experiences vary widely across the field. The most common degrees among voice faculty are in Western classical vocal performance (sometimes specifically noted as opera) at the undergraduate, master, and doctoral levels. Degrees in music education, vocal pedagogy, or choral conducting were the most common after performance, but to a significantly lesser degree. Some faculty listed specific certifications in education, Estill Voice Training, Somatic Voicework, and vocology. Additional training or certification data may not be complete, given that not every institutional website has space for added certifications. The majority of faculty currently teaching have achieved a terminal DMA degree in vocal performance, and very few explicitly list the singing styles they teach.

Conclusions: The data gathered here affirms anecdotal beliefs that most voice faculty in higher education in the US have careers and educational experiences primarily focused on performance. Few faculty explicitly list the styles of singing they teach in their bios or websites, reinforcing assumed and opaque content practices found in musical institutions.