When students at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music resumed classes last week, many expected to return to the intimate learning environment that the school champions as one of its strengths. Instead, they found a significant increase in the number of their peers and a shortage of practice space – a result of the school’s largest incoming freshman class ever.
Jazz musicians wait outside practice rooms on a Monday evening.
The development has alarmed many students at the division, particularly since The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music prides itself on its small ensemble performances. As a result, continuing jazz students returned to school both confused and frustrated by the noticeable increase of their class sizes.
“We already don’t have enough practice space,” said Allison Phillips, a junior at the jazz school. “It’s one thing to continuously increase the student body, and another to increase the student body and not give us more practice space to use.”
Phillips, who also works at The New School as a tour guide, said that while giving tours in the past, she would explain to prospective jazz students that proper time management was a necessity in order to lock up a practice space at the school. However, she added, she can no longer claim that merely time management will guarantee a practice room for each musician.
Richard Harper, a vocal instructor at the school, said he was concerned about the lack of practice space that has resulted from the growth in enrollment. “The facility crunch is real,” Harper said, adding that he has already seen its effect on students.
The inflated student body has been particularly evident for students choosing to partake in elective ensembles. When looking to join the jazz ensemble, sophomore singer Maralisa Simmons-Cook said instructors turned her away due to the exceeding number of students already registered.”The jazz school is special because it is such as small community,” said Simmons-Cook. “We’re supposed to be a place where you can receive a lot of individual attention, and the intimate workplace is something The New School values highly.”
Simmons-Cook said she was concerned that if the jazz school were to continue this pattern, The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music’s original mission as a small school for the arts would be lost.The division’s admissions department normally aims for a student body ranging between 280-285 students. The student body for the Fall 2012 semester, however, currently stands at 299 students, with eight students already dropping out after the first week of classes.
Dan Greenblatt, Director of Academic Affairs at the division, predicted that the number of jazz students will decrease even more in the comings weeks – adding that enrollment figures at the school normally fluctuate over the first three weeks of the semester.”The university has made it clear that this is as large as [the student body] can get,” Greenblatt said. He added that The New School did not intend for the unprecedented growth in the number of jazz students, and acknowledged that the admissions process is an inexact science the university has yet to perfect.
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