We know, Paul.

As I said, bizarre handwave acting like any of this stuff is new or even bad.None of this is anything new to colleges, disregarding relevant education as only trivia is nonsensical as is your axe grinding against higher education.

>we're seeing this pendulum of liberal arts far too wide

There is nothing wrong with a course analyzing a specific individual and their impact. It's bizarre to act like this is overreach, especially in a art form filled with music defining names from Beethoven to Kanye.

You're also acting history of certain artists is anything new. Music Humanities has been a thing in Colombia since the 40s which some credits include basic introductions to various artists and their historical context.

The history and factors that contributed to the production of the music of many artists, and their music's infuence is important to understand and provide proper context to them or just to get a few credits under your belt.

>if your intention is to just build the best possible trivia tream

That's a bizarre handwave that can be applied to any course that focuses on history of any specific individual. Or anything higher education for that matter.

Perhaps I'm just crossing some wires and flip flopping the names of these courses, you're probably right. I've only taken one music theory course and in that professor's hands it was 40% music history I think I just mixed the two courses together.

Nevertheless music history would still make sense as a course.

Berkeley deserves to be tossed away but let's not pretend music theory classes are anything new or any real indicator of quality of the school. Music theory classes are common, Mozart to the Beatles to 2pac.