I still want to get across that if we, as students of a degree course like this don't regard ourselves as being better than anyone else for having a degree.

why is it that we are being labelled that way? The best thing about this tradition is that ANYONE can do it as good as anyone else -provided they have had experience of the tradition in practice, and I'm sticking my neck out to say that what these degree programmes offer most importantly is folk in PRACTICE.
Of course we as individuals will be better musicians after 4 years of playing and interacting, but only as good as joe bloggs who practices every day for 4 years.
What this course offers us is a structure in which to better ourselves.

As students we have the time to put a considerable amount of work into researching trad music -alastair anderson said this to us just last week -"there is so much GREAT stuff out there just waiting to be found and brought to peoples attention". This is a strong argument for the benefit of the folk scene as a direct result of our degree course. And even if we fulfilled your fantasy of 'snobbish academics' (if you could only see us!) then do you also think the folk scene would be as strong if not for the work of REAL academics like Cecil Sharpe or Vaughan Williams? It is quite a popular opinion that hundreds of songs would be altogether lost if "the collectors" of Cecil Sharpes era hadn't done "their work" (even though large amounts of it were notated badly using inadequate classical methods).

talk about off on a tangent. you have to apreciate, GUEST, that this stuff is fairly close to home.

ian s.