That last point of yours, Sidewinder, says it all. One great thing about a good education is that it makes you aware of how little you really know and how much there will always be to learn. If this course has done its job, the new graduates will have this awareness and bring it to their music for the rest of their lives. This contrasts, to my mind, with the tired old self-taught players and floor-singers (we all know who they are) who just trot out the same half-dozen tunes or songs every time, because that's all they know or want to be bothered learning.

In the past, if you wanted to learn plumbing or cooking or bridge-building, you worked alongside someone who had this skill and learnt it from them. Traditional musicians, too, have always learnt things from each other and passed on their methods as well as their material. I don't believe the "greats" of the past just plucked their music out of the air - they listened and learned and talked about it and shared ideas, and adapted material they learned from others before going on to create something new and individual.

Nowadays there's a much more structured approach to learning, and I don't see why traditional music shouldn't tap in to this. I don't see that learning one's craft (playing, singing, or writing songs or music) and understanding wider aspects of it should become invalid just because some people choose to do this full-time for several years - they still carry on learning from each other as well as from their tutors, and taking part in musical activities in the community, as they all did before they enrolled for the course.

I'm sure lots of us have attended a workshop in singing or playing at some festival or similar event, and come away inspired and excited because we've learnt something we would probably never have discovered for ourselves. (The tired old performers I mentioned above are not seen at such events, they can't be bothered). To decide to develop one's skills and knowledge in this way all the time for several years takes a lot of determination and hard work, but that's what these graduates have been doing. Good luck to them.