Dammit! I've been away from home since this thread started and have only just caught up with it. Interesting sets of opinions! I'll go back to the original query and, for what they're worth (which, as always,is only what value other people put on them) offer my opinions.

Like anything, you're only going to get out of it what you bring to it - tempered by your attitude (which itself may be mediated by what you learn). Education? - use it. Use the space it gives you. Use the improvement it offers you. Use the skill, knowledge and experience that its tutors are giving you. But don't expect it to do anything it can't!

It won't get you a job as a musician/singer though some people may be more willing to listen to you in the first place. It won't make you a better singer/musician than you have the potential to be though you may reach that potential quicker.

If you want to be a musician/singer use the course as best you can. If you want to be an academic use the fact that you're already within an academic institution. If you want to be in arts management you'd have been better off on an arts management degree course - and there's a lot more of them around than music degrees.

From the responses within the thread that have come back from people on the course, it doesn't sound as though the approach adopted will be narrowing. That would be my primary concern. Any academic adoption of a discipline will tend to institutionalise it, but as long as nobody thinks that what is taught is all there is, we're O.K. The fact of an academic interest, if properly used, offers the opportunity to expand understanding and knowledge.

As to whether it makes you an expert - an expert in what? A very wise tutor of mine once explained that a first degree stated "The cat sat on the mat", an M.A. asked "What kind of cat and what kind of mat?" and a doctorate asked "How do we know this is a cat and a mat?"

One thing fascinates me though. If this is a folk music course - rather than any other kind of music course - that rather indicates that somebody has managed to define 'folk' (surely that should be lesson 1). Please tell me what it is - so far I've found nothing better than the IFMC definition from the 1950s which, with only minor adaptation, still stands the test of time.