I suspect his course is over now! As an ex-educator unable to cope with the standard of music education on the majority of UK schools, my view is that university education is the ideal route for very specific and quantity limited groups of musical folk. What I mean is that if you wish to play in a prestigious orchestra on live and recorded projects, then you need your musical performance skills, and your knowledge of formal score based music. I don’t mean you need to play the cello or trombone, but you need to be able to play with these people. With orchestral recordings nowadays adding electronics quite happily alongside the traditional, this kind of thing is still rare. If you need to play your PRS wailey guitar with all kinds of effects and processing alongside an orchestra, then you need experience with a conductor, and of course to be able to read music, or have a very good memory. Uni is very good for this kind of thing, and loves cross genres. However, in the UK, music technology is a totally different people set than music. Our 16-18 yr old A Level system bears this out totally. Posh, traditional and absolutely not state school cohorts who still study Bach Chorals and talk in chord numbers rather than letter names an Major minor are now struggling because some high schools and academies are trying to do music, with its reliance on history and essay writing, plus the analysis of classical works. They are demanding the music courses change to reflect less traditional music. The old private fee paying schools hate this. University then presents students with a wide variety of possibilities. Classical, jazz, pop, then loads of contemporary music, usually closely tied to technology. My experience is that lots of music students of mine wasted three years at university because their music wasnt actually any better, because they already had grade 8. One I still work with had to learn classical double bass to be able to complete the recital module. Electric bass, his instrument was not suitable. He still plays double bass on stage now, so for him, the learning curve was tough but worked for him. One got sponsored by the armed forces. She played the viola, she ended up in the Royal Marines, and was told to learn the clarinet because you can’t march with a viola!
uni is good for some and a lead weight for others!