This volume asserts that institutional teaching, study, administration, and performance of music should derive from essential goodness: the transcendent value embodied in meaning-making that is manifest through holistic cognitive, creative, kinesthetic, productive, and expressive reality. Contextualizing music higher education within wider ecosystems of teaching and practice, this book shows how leaders can embrace strategic change as a positive opportunity and offers new models for addressing contemporary challenges in a mission-driven way, including preparing musicians for careers and engaging communities.

Chapter 5: Transformation, cites SNAAP Board President Doug Dempster’s work on ROI in Arts Education.

In advocating music’s essential goodness as a core value for the Western classical music ecosystem, this chapter draws on examples of how that value is playing out, being explored through research, and may be influencing broader interest. However, such examples remain limited and are often viewed as interesting diversions irrelevant to the existing ecosystem’s assumptions and practices. Reinforcing the necessity of transformational change if the ecosystem is to achieve any of its frequently stated yet unachieved aims, the chapter offers a portrait of how sectors of the ecosystem may evolve if they adopt essential goodness as a core value and how they may, in turn, contribute to the experience of music’s essential goodness for a vastly expanded array of constituents. The potentially enhanced sense of value perceived among diverse communities and societies will further the sustainability of Western classical music as a societal norm.

Arts-intensive high schools offer a unique learning environment for artistically gifted students, but relatively little is known about the long-term impacts of attending these schools. Using data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), this mixed-methods study explores the educational experiences and career outcomes of over 2,900 alumni from arts-intensive high schools. Descriptive statistics, inferential regression models, and a grounded theory, inductive coding, qualitative analysis reveal important connections among acquired skills, experiential learning activities, and several career and community outcomes. Overall, the findings suggest that skills learned while at arts-intensive high schools are relevant to a variety of careers, and that certain high-impact practices are positive predictors of later outcomes. However, curricular revisions to address areas such as entrepreneurial and business skills may be needed. Implications for curricular improvements, programming support, and advising are also discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly shifted the context of artistic and creative work, forcing individuals to adapt to wide-reaching changes in the way they operated in both work and life. Relying on interviews with data from 66 U.S.-based arts graduates, this article speaks to needs in sustaining creative life and work after the first year of the pandemic. Interviewees related that their needs for a sustainable creative work and life were primarily that they needed the social and physical distancing restrictions of the pandemic to end, more time and capacity to be creative, and monetary support. Ultimately, we argue that the changing context of the pandemic required substantial entrepreneurial ability toward being adaptable, superseding capacity for creativity during the first year of the pandemic. Our findings reflect that when arts entrepreneurs’ self-structured careers required new or intensified effort toward non-arts aspects of their work, their feelings of, or capacity for, creativity may be diminished.

In this study, the authors look to understand whether living or working in a ​‘hub’ increases the likelihood that college graduates with degrees in the arts are working in entrepreneurial occupations or innovative industries, and whether it increases their success in such occupations/industries. While the share of arts graduates working in the arts is low, recent empirical evidence suggests that large shares of arts graduates are working in occupations/industries that can be classified as entrepreneurial or innovative, potentially because of their creative education/training. Using American Community Survey data, the authors find that living or working in a ​‘hub’ has positive impacts on the likelihood arts graduates are working in occupations/industries that are entrepreneurial/innovative and on earnings in such areas.

Disclaimer: This study is related to SNAAP’s research mission but does not include SNAAP data.

The high rate of self-employment among artists compared to the U.S. workforce on average highlights the distinct features of artists’ careers, characterized by a lack of stable employment. It emphasizes the shift in higher education towards creatively addressing professional employment in the arts through entrepreneurship. The author used 2015 – 2017 SNAAP survey data to investigate the skills provided by academic institutions and their relationship with the self-reliant career choices of 77,798 arts alumni from 193 different colleges and universities across the US. This article is intended to provide insights regarding the career development of arts students.

This study investigated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on recent arts graduates from three universities in the United States. The authors present evidence of shifting definitions of adaptability, resilience, transformation, excellence, and success in arts training. Based on surveys and interviews, it reinforces findings from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). The experiences of recent arts and arts administration graduates affirms some current pedagogies and suggests others. The authors synthesize these findings to amplify some models, propose new ones, rebalance traditional outcomes toward a social mission, and consider the need for an expanded notion of excellence in the arts.

This study looks to test the impact of student loan debt on the career choices of college graduates with majors in the arts in the USA. The author found that for arts graduates, owing on student debt decreases the likelihood of working in jobs closely related to their major fields by over 25% and decreases the likelihood they work as artists by over 30%. For all college graduates, the negative impact of student debt on working in closely related jobs to their major fields is only 3%. Student debt may have potential distributional impacts on who works as artists, as Black and Hispanic graduates and those whose parents did not attend college are more likely to have student debt and less likely to be working in jobs closely related to their major field of study. Policies that help to alleviate the debt burden on arts graduates, like debt relief, could help to mitigate these negative distributional impacts.

Disclaimer: This study is related to SNAAP’s research mission but does not include SNAAP data.

This research explores the multiplicity of diversity based on gender, ethnicity, and age, and how it is reflected among leaders with an arts degree. They include leaders who are managers, arts administrators, curators, arts educators, theatre producers, and stage directors. In this quantitative study, the aggregated data of arts alumni, nearly 65,000 respondents from three consecutive years (2015, 2016, and 2017) from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), are analyzed. The study shows that nearly half of art alumni are in management positions, of whom 78.5% are white, and the remaining 21.5% are fairly evenly distributed among other ethnicities. Therefore, there is a lack of diversity in the positions of leadership. This paper suggests the need for inclusive leadership, in which diversity is encouraged.

In this article, the researchers explore polyoccupationalism by taking advantage of the Strategic National Arts Alumni (SNAAP) survey data on creative workers in the United States — which uniquely allowed respondents to identify with as many occupations as they deemed necessary from a list of nearly two dozen categories. The researchers theorize the relation of polyoccupationalism to postindustrial forms of work and work organization, and to workers’ position in the occupational hierarchy. 

In this study, Martin et al. examined how social capital developed during college years is connected to subsequent career outcomes for arts alumni. The researchers analyzed data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) survey. Results show that college social capital is associated with shorter and more successful first job searches post-graduation. However, there were significant disparities between men and women in terms of access to social capital and the impacts of social capital. Women report fewer and less influential connections to college social networks, with high levels of social capital being more strongly linked to career advantages for men than for women.

This study explored how exposure to creative coursework during one’s education can influence a variety of educational, career, and community involvement outcomes for arts alumni. Data were drawn from over 40,000 undergraduate-level arts alumni from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) surveys. Results suggest that exposure to creative coursework is a significant predictor of several desirable outcomes, including creative skills gained during time at institution, sense of connection to one’s institution, and others. These findings can help to support curricular changes that encourage the increased use of creative activities and assignments in higher education.

Using analysis of datasets from the 2015 – 2017 administrations of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), a multi-institution online alumni survey, this paper divides the skills most relevant to arts entrepreneurship training into four latent categories: critical thinking, leadership, business management, and artistic specialty. Results revealed significant associations between the variables with alumni’s propensity for freelancing and new venture creation. Researchers also identified that race interacts with both student loan amount and family social and cultural capital. 

As research increasingly suggests that student loan debt may influence college graduates’ access to lower-paying industries and careers, this study uses a cross-sectional dataset from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) to investigate how student loan debt predicts education-job match (entry into an arts position) among arts bachelor’s graduates. Results show that arts bachelor’s graduates with over US$10,000 in undergraduate student loan debt are less likely to enter arts careers than those with no loans. Findings suggest that arts careers may be less accessible for college graduates who are most dependent on student loans.

This chapter considers the impact of COVID-19 on alumni of higher education arts degrees in the United States with an analysis of 66 interviews conducted November 2020 through March 2021. Interviews demonstrate that adapting to a compulsory transition of work space has rippling impacts on creative workers’ larger ecosystem. Major factors affecting interviewees’ experiences during COVID include acquiring new workspace, accessing equipment and technical needs, balancing work and domestic life, and the intensification of the digital aspects of work. 

This study explores how arts alumni’s high-impact educational practices (HIEPs) during college and the local arts infrastructure affect post-college community engagement outcomes. The results combine data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) surveys. The Local Arts Index highlights the significant positive effects of the HIEPs on post-college volunteering. Thus, arts alumni’s community engagement can be significantly increased through HIEPs, particularly from service-learning or work with a local artist during college.

This chapter presents a broad interdisciplinary literature review linking artists’ economic precarity and need for but resistance to entrepreneurial skills, alongside colonial histories, structural racism, and hierarchies of taste in arts organizations. These themes are complemented empirically by engaging data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) to demonstrate indicators of attrition and privilege of arts alumni relative to their participation in the arts workforce.

Research has suggested positive and negative relationships between students’ socioeconomic status and their academic outcomes. As this relationship has yet to be explored in music therapy, the primary purpose of this study was to explore the current financial needs and economic diversity of American undergraduate music therapy students. A survey was sent in April of 2020 for dissemination to undergraduate music therapy majors. Key findings included (a) most music therapy students took out student loans during the 2019 – 2020 academic year and expect substantial levels of debt upon graduation; (b) about one-third of respondents received the Pell Grant, a needs-based grant, in the past year; © a considerable majority were employed during school; and (d) 97% of students received additional financial assistance from their families.

This article incorporates Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) survey data to reconsider the term teaching artist from a variety of angles, exploring the ways in which the term teaching artist has developed, and the ways it remains nebulous. The notion that the teaching artist model presents an extension of the traditional master-apprentice model is presented. Observations are made about the pathways toward becoming a teaching artist and the systemic barriers to becoming a teaching artist are illustrated. Reconsideration is given to the professional developments available to teaching artists. Finally, the outcomes achieved by students of teaching artists are questioned and suggestions for research and policy are given.

Research on high-impact practices (HIPs) demonstrates positive links to student learning and development, but generally does not focus on discipline-specific activities, such as working with an artist in the community and portfolio completion. Using data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), this study seeks to identify beneficial HIPs for arts training through an analysis of 23,916 arts alumni from 77 postsecondary institutions. A series of regression models suggest that HIP participation was associated with gains in academic abilities and career skills, higher levels of college satisfaction, more successful job searches, greater likelihood of employment in the arts and avocational arts practice, and more frequent arts community involvement.

This essay synthesizes literature on trends within the humanities and considers its potential relevance for ethnomusicology. Then, based on interviews with faculty, as well as a 2018 survey circulated to current and former ethnomusicology students, it briefly considers the state of our discipline in terms of core training, student support, student placement, and other topics. The data suggest that many issues confronting ethnomusicologists resonate with those in other disciplines and that we would benefit from engagement with nationwide dialogues involving the future of graduate studies. Suggestions proposed are many and include an orientation of research toward issues impacting communities near one’s university, greater focus on team-based inquiry rather than individual scholarship, more active collaborations across disciplines, diverse professional training, more attention to shaping the content of K – 12 education, communication with diverse audiences, and a research focus on areas of broad public concern whenever possible.

This study analyzes how creativity can be used to benefit the economy and society, looking at the key components of creative careers that maximize the chances for robust ​“creative economic outcomes”. Researchers also investigate the ways in which the workforce can attract, nurture, and connect, individuals across the creative industries. 

Using SNAAP data, the authors explore gendered income inequalities and assess the gendered earnings gap for artists and for nonartists. The gendered earnings gap is found to be comparable for artists and nonartists, with evidence suggesting that artistic careers are subject to similar social forces that drive disparity in other occupational realms. Broader implications for scholarship on gender and work, as well as suggestions for further research and policy, are discussed.

Combining data from SNAAP and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), this study examines self-reported college experiences and skill development of seniors and alumni who majored in the arts. Results suggest that alumni rate their overall experience higher, while students judge specific aspects of their institutional experience and their skill development more positively. Given these differences, it is recommended that institutions survey both students and alumni to achieve a more complete picture of the educational experience.

Using data from SNAAP, this study explores whether satisfaction with aspects of the institutional experience contributed to the perceived development of creative thinking in arts alumni, and whether there are differences in these patterns between undergraduate and graduate alumni across a variety of academic majors. The results of several regression analyses indicated a greater number of significant predictors for creative thinking in undergraduate alumni when compared to graduate alumni. The two strongest, most consistent predictors across all models were satisfaction with their freedom and encouragement to take risks and instructors in classrooms, labs, and studios. Differences across majors are also discussed.

Utilizing data from SNAAP, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis indicated that there are two distinct components of job satisfaction for arts graduates: intrinsic satisfaction and extrinsic satisfaction. The results of ordinary least squares regression analyses for these two factors provide some relationships concerning demographic and occupational characteristics with these two areas of satisfaction. In considering overall job satisfaction, intrinsic satisfaction may play a larger role in how alumni perceive their career outcomes and success.

With the growing reliance on tablets and smartphones for internet access, understanding the effects of completion device on online survey responses becomes increasing important. This study uses data from SNAAP to explore the effects of what type of device (PC, Mac, tablet, or smartphone) a respondent uses has on their responses. Differences by device type in the characteristics of survey respondents, survey completion, time spent responding, willingness to answer complex and open-ended questions, and lengths of open-ended responses are discussed.

In the context of an intern economy that appears to be rapidly changing, this SNAAP Special Report focuses on the experiences of 10,698 of the most recent undergraduate arts alumni who graduated between 2009 and 2013 and whose experiences reflect current economic realities. Comparisons to older cohorts are also included to help examine trends and provide historical context.

This research explores whether those with certain demographic and personal characteristics, including gender, age, cohort, number of children, marital status, citizenship, race, current employment status, income, and institutional satisfaction level, are more or less likely to respond to open-ended questions placed at the beginning, middle, and end of an online alumni survey. Using data from SNAAP, a series of chi-squared and means comparisons analyses were done to compare whether or not respondents provided an answer to three different open-ended questions throughout the survey. Findings suggest that there are some group differences in likelihood of response, which could be explained by time burden, negativity bias, and self-identification as ​“other.”

Using SNAAP data, the authors suggest that arts graduates use multiple lenses to view the worth of their education.

This study explores the ​“professional artist” as the outcome of an identity process, rendering it the dependent rather than the independent variable. In their responses to the 2010 SNAAP survey (N = 13,581), substantial numbers of respondents gave seemingly contradictory answers to questions asking about their artistic labor. These individuals indicated that they simultaneously had been and had never been professional artists, placing them in what we have termed the ​“dissonance group.” An examination of these responses reveals meaningful differences and patterns in the interpretation of this social category. A significant correlation is found between membership in this group and various markers of cultural capital and social integration into artistic communities. A qualitative analysis of survey comments reveals unique forms of dissonance over artistic membership within teaching and design careers.

In this study, the authors investigate potential differences between responses on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) from the cohorts of graduating seniors from 2000, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 and those same cohorts of alumni responding to SNAAP in 2010, at six diverse institutions. A series of chi-squared analyses were done for each of the six cohort years. Findings indicate that the demographic characteristics and institutional satisfaction of alumni respondents closely mirror those of the graduating seniors. The results from this study suggest that even though response rates on alumni surveys might be lower, the results may be just as representative as studies with much higher response rates.

This report represents an initial exploration of the thesis that the arts are essential to a high quality of life. Using three national datasets, researchers examine the correlation between artistic practice and wellbeing among a representative national sample of adults, a sample of undergraduate seniors, and a sample of former arts graduates. Findings suggest that artistic practice is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, a more positive self image, less anxiety about change, a more tolerant and open approach to diverse others, and, in some cases, less focus on materialistic values and the acquisition of goods. A range of artistic and creative practices are examined, including fine arts, video, music, theater, dance, crafts, gardening, artful cooking, creative writing, designing clothes and composing music.

For the 2014 SNAAP Annual Report, this study uses data from the Fall 2011, 2012, and 2013 surveys, which garnered the responses of more than 88,000 undergraduate and graduate alumni. Researchers focus on the satisfaction and value of recent graduates’ education and on their experiences after graduation as they enter the workforce. There is also a comparison between the experiences and outcomes for recent and non-recent graduates. 

As catalysts of change and innovation, artistic workers face special challenges managing ambiguity, developing and sustaining a creative identity, and forming community in the context of an individually based enterprise economy.

A postsecondary arts education affords some unique advantages for women, minorities, and disadvantaged students. However, significant gaps remain and inequalities persist related to school debt, racial diversity within artistic occupations, and disparities in earnings by gender.

Using data from the 2009 SNAAP survey, alumni perceptions of institutional contributions to the development of certain skills and competencies across high school, undergraduate, and graduate arts training programs are analyzed. High school alumni report significantly greater perceived institutional contributions to their development of artistic technique, communication skills, social skills, and personal growth. Graduate alumni report significantly greater perceived institutional contributions to their development of research and technological skills.

Findings from the 2010 SNAAP survey highlights three broad ways in which arts students continue to flex their creative muscles after graduation: (1) using their artistic skills in their jobs whether or not they work within arts-related fields; (2) teaching the arts; and (3) contributing to the arts in their non-work time, through volunteering, artistic consumption, and making and performing art. Both those evaluating the impact of arts degrees and those in a position to influence arts training must learn to paint with broader strokes, looking beyond narrow employment measures as the sole defining features of educational success and expanding the scope of arts training to provide students with the resources necessary to help them move forward in their careers. 

Findings from the 2011 SNAAP survey conclude that (1) Americans with arts degrees are employed at rates equivalent to other college graduates; (2) Variations on satisfaction and performance can be seen within majors; (3) Findings have implications for current college advising; (4) Teaching plays a crucial role for many arts graduates; (5) Factors including socioeconomic status, gender, and race, must be considered; (6) The worth of an arts degree must be measured by both pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits. 

This article addresses how findings from SNAAP research are helping educational institutions, the government, and industry, to measure the impact of an arts education on maximizing talent across the ​“creative-work-force pipeline”. 

Using SNAAP data, the authors demonstrate that arts schools, while expensive, provide good value for education.