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Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary

Scrub through 171years of this role's history, from when it first emerged, through every wave of technology that reshaped it, to the cited projections for where it's heading next.

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187519001925195019752000now
2026
Known today as Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary (BLS SOC 25-1121)
Latest actual · 2024
123K
BLS OEWS May 2024 figure sourced from O*NET, which reflects the same establishment-survey estimate. The 2024 figure represents a significant expansion from 2000-era estimates, driven by the growth in higher education enrollment through the 2000s and early 2010s. Since 2011, MFA enrollment has declined at some institutions, and enrollment pressure from AI-disrupted graduate employment markets began to surface in arts programs after 2022. Employment of 122,800 places this SOC among the mid-size postsecondary teaching specialties (larger than English literature teachers but smaller than nursing instructors).
Latest actual · 2024
$80,190
BLS OEWS May 2024 median annual wage sourced from O*NET. The $80,190 figure represents a composite median across all ranks (adjunct, instructor, assistant, associate, full professor) and all sub-disciplines (art, drama, music) within the SOC. Full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty earn considerably more (full professors in arts programs at R1 institutions commonly earn $100,000-$140,000); adjuncts and part-time instructors often earn below $40,000 annualized. The reported median compresses this wide distribution.
Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.
Tools of the era

The tools that defined the work

Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Instrument, easel, and voice: pre-recorded transmission (no amplification, no recording)

    The defining technology of the conservatory and studio era was the absence of recording or amplification: instruction was entirely live, one-on-one, and dependent on the physical co-presence of teacher and student. A piano professor at Oberlin in 1870 could not play back a recording of the student's performance; the teacher listened, demonstrated on the same instrument, and corrected in real time. A drawing professor could not project a reference image; they pinned an actual engraving on the wall or sat next to the student and drew on the same paper. Drama instruction depended on the teacher's own vocal and physical demonstration. The technology of instruction was the teacher's own body and instrument. This era established the irreducibly embodied character of arts pedagogy that persists to the present day.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • Phonograph and radio: recorded music enters the classroom

    The phonograph, by the 1920s widely affordable and mechanically reliable, allowed music faculty to play recordings in class for the first time, separating listening and analysis from live performance. For music history and appreciation courses, this was transformative: a professor could now demonstrate Beethoven's Fifth or a Gregorian chant from an RCA Victrola rather than requiring live performance. For theory and composition courses, recorded playback enabled comparison and analysis in ways that pure notation study could not. For drama faculty, the emergence of talkies (1927) and radio drama gave new reference material for vocal and theatrical technique. In the visual arts, the lantern slide projector (which preceded the 35mm slide) allowed art history lectures to project images for the first time, transforming art history from a lecture-before-prints discipline into a comparative-projection discipline that would define art history pedagogy for the next seventy years.

    Effect on the work

    The phonograph did not reduce demand for music faculty; it expanded what music courses could teach and contributed to the growth of music appreciation and music history as mass-enrollment survey courses that required faculty staffing.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • GI Bill expansion: mass credentialization of arts teaching

    The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (the GI Bill) is not typically framed as a technology, but it was the catalytic event that transformed arts teaching from a craft-apprenticeship model into a credentialed academic profession. By 1947, veterans made up half of all US college enrollment; by 1950, nearly 500,000 Americans graduated from college each year, compared with 160,000 in 1939. Colleges and universities recruited professional artists, musicians, and theatre practitioners to teach this wave of students, professionalizing what had previously been informal studio transmission. The GI Bill also catalyzed the consolidation of the MFA as the terminal credential for arts faculty: by the 1960s the MFA was the standard requirement for a faculty appointment in studio art, and by 1970 it was near-universal in art and drama programs. This era created the occupational category that BLS now counts as 25-1121.

    Effect on the work

    Total postsecondary faculty in the US grew from approximately 147,000 in 1940 to 474,000 in 1970, with arts faculty expanding proportionally. The GI Bill-driven expansion is responsible for most of the mid-century growth in this SOC.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • 35mm slide projector and hi-fi audio: the audiovisual classroom

    The 35mm Kodachrome slide, widely adopted in art history teaching by the 1960s, became the defining teaching technology of the visual arts classroom for three decades. A two-projector setup (standard equipment by the 1970s) let art history faculty project two images side by side for comparison: Raphael next to Leonardo, Impressionism next to Post-Impressionism, ancient next to Renaissance. Reel-to-reel tape recorders and then cassette decks gave music faculty the ability to record student performances for playback analysis and critique. The Wollensak, Nagra, and later the Sony TC-series tape recorders became standard teaching tools in music programs. For drama faculty, the 16mm film projector brought the work of Stanislavski, Brecht, and the Method to students through documentary and filmed performance footage. These audiovisual tools expanded the reference library available in the classroom enormously without displacing the core studio and performance instruction.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • Adjunctification and MIDI: the contingent labor era meets digital music production

    Two parallel developments reshaped arts faculty in the 1980s. On the labor side, the shift from tenure-track to adjunct hiring accelerated sharply: from the mid-1970s to 2011, part-time faculty hiring grew 286% while tenure-track hiring grew only 23% (AAUP data). Arts programs were disproportionately affected because practical studio instruction was easy to staff with per-course adjuncts who were working professionals. On the technology side, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), standardized in 1983, brought digital sequencing to music programs: a composer could now produce a fully orchestrated mockup on a single workstation, transforming music composition and recording curricula. Electronic music and computer music programs became standard at major conservatories and music schools by the late 1980s, and faculty who could teach electronic production became a distinct hiring category.

    Effect on the work

    Adjunctification restructured the economic floor of arts teaching: by the mid-1990s, a significant fraction of arts instruction at US universities was delivered by adjunct instructors earning per-course rates that annualized to well below the poverty line. This compressed the median wage reported for the SOC downward and created a two-tier faculty labor market (tenured professors vs. adjuncts) that persists today.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • Digital production tools: Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Pro Tools (the democratization era)

    Adobe Photoshop (1990, mass adoption by mid-1990s), Apple's Final Cut Pro (1999), and Digidesign Pro Tools (professional standard by the late 1990s) radically lowered the cost of studio-quality visual and audio production, transforming what arts programs could teach and what they needed to teach. Graphic design programs shifted from paste-up and darkroom work to entirely digital workflows. Film and video production programs moved from 16mm film to digital video, lowering per-project costs by orders of magnitude. Music recording programs built Pro Tools labs where students could produce professional-grade tracks in school facilities. The net effect was not a reduction in faculty demand but a transformation in the technical skills faculty needed to hold a credible appointment: a photography professor hired in 1990 needed to retrain in digital darkroom techniques or risk irrelevance by 2000. The early 2000s expansion of MFA enrollment at US universities drove significant hiring of arts faculty, with total postsecondary arts faculty estimated to exceed 78,000 by 2000.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • Learning Management Systems and online arts education (Canvas, Zoom, critique culture shifts)

    The rise of Canvas, Blackboard, and similar Learning Management Systems brought administrative layers to arts teaching that the studio had never had: documented learning outcomes, online grade submission, digital portfolio platforms, accessibility compliance requirements. For arts faculty this was largely administrative overhead rather than a transformation of the teaching core. The more significant shift was Zoom's arrival in the COVID-19 period (2020-2022), which forced studio critique, music lesson, and theatre workshop formats into a distributed video format for the first time. The results were instructive: online music lessons and art critique proved workable for some purposes and deeply inadequate for others. Ensemble rehearsal online was largely unworkable due to latency. Individual voice lessons online lost the physical placement and tactile cuing that defines the best vocal pedagogy. Studio critique online lost the ability to walk up to a canvas. The COVID-19 experiment demonstrated both the potential of distributed arts teaching and the irreducible advantages of physical co-presence for the most central activities in arts pedagogy.

    Effect on the work

    The COVID period accelerated adjunctification in some arts programs (laid off per-course instructors are easier to shed during enrollment contraction) while creating urgent demand for faculty who could adapt studio formats to online delivery. MFA enrollment began declining at some institutions from its 2011 peak, partly due to cost concerns and partly due to skepticism about online-delivered arts education.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • Generative AI in arts education: Midjourney, Suno, Runway, ElevenLabs (the curriculum disruption era)

    Midjourney V5 (2023), Suno (2023), Runway Gen-2 and Gen-4 (2024), and ElevenLabs voice synthesis entered arts curricula not as tools faculty chose to introduce but as tools students were already using. The College Art Association's 2025 Technology in Arts Education Task Force documented widespread student use of AI image generation in MFA and BFA programs; the College Music Society's 2025 survey found student use of AI music generation (Suno, Udio) for composition assignments at more than 40 institutions, with no reliable detection method. Adobe's integration of Firefly AI generation across Creative Cloud (2023-2024) placed AI image and audio generation inside every tool students already used. For arts faculty, this created the defining curriculum question of the era: when AI can generate technically adequate images, compositions, and performances from text prompts, what is the pedagogical purpose of arts education? The answer that leading programs (RISD, Pratt, Yale School of Drama, Juilliard) converged on by 2025-2026 was: the purpose is the development of artistic judgment, conceptual authorship, and embodied craft that AI tools demonstrably cannot provide. Faculty who could teach students to use AI tools critically, professionally, and with aesthetic authority found themselves at the center of the most consequential curriculum debate in higher arts education.

    Effect on the work

    The indirect employment risk is larger than the direct: if AI tools displace entry-level illustration, concept art, session music, and voice-over work for arts graduates, enrollment pressure on arts programs will mount, creating institutional headcount pressure on faculty positions even though the teaching itself cannot be automated. The 2025-2026 period is too early to quantify this effect in BLS employment data.

    AI audit toolsPattern detection
Projection cone · present → 2034

What credible sources project

Scrub the slider past now to anchor each scenario on the scrubber. The spread is the range of futures credible sources project for this role.

Employment outlook
Projected change in the number of people doing this work.
BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook — Postsecondary Teachers (broad category)
→ 2034
+7%
BLS OOH projects overall postsecondary teacher employment to grow 7% from 2024 to 2034, much faster than the average for all occupations, with approximately 114,000 annual openings across all postsecondary teaching specialties. The broad-category projection is more optimistic than the 25-1121-specific projection because it includes healthcare, STEM, and business education fields with stronger enrollment tailwinds. The 7% figure is included here as the upper bound of the uncertainty cone: if arts program enrollments track the broader postsecondary growth trend, 25-1121 could outperform its specific projection.
BLS National Employment Matrix 2024-34
→ 2034
+1.7%
BLS Employment Projections national matrix, 2024-34 cycle. Projects 25-1121 employment from 122,800 (2024) to approximately 124,800 (2034), an increase of about 2,100 positions. This is classified as modest growth, below the all-occupation average of approximately 4%. The projection models continued demand for postsecondary arts instruction driven by undergraduate enrollment growth in arts programs and continued expansion of music and performing arts offerings at community colleges, offset by headwinds from enrollment softness in graduate programs, adjunctification, and the emerging enrollment pressure from AI-disrupted arts graduate employment markets. The model does not explicitly account for AI generative tools displacing entry-level arts jobs and thus reducing enrollment demand.
AI task exposure
Share of the role’s tasks that researchers estimate AI can do. This is a measure of task exposure, not a forecast of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. — "GPTs are GPTs" (2023)
→ 2028
35%
of tasks
GPT-4 task-by-task LLM exposure labeling on O*NET tasks. Postsecondary teachers broadly fall in the high-LLM-exposure tier in Eloundou et al., because lecture preparation, syllabus drafting, feedback writing, and research scaffolding are all text-based and easily AI-assisted. However, the Art, Drama, and Music sub-group has a meaningfully lower exposure than purely text-composition fields (English, History) because studio critique, performance instruction, and embodied technique demonstration are tasks that require physical co-presence and expert perception that LLMs cannot provide remotely. The 35% estimate reflects Eloundou's finding that approximately one-third of tasks in the broad postsecondary teacher category have significant LLM exposure, concentrated in the administrative and lecture-preparation portions of the job rather than the teaching core itself. This is an exposure estimate, not a headcount displacement forecast.
Today, in this role

What's shifting in the work right now

The historical view above shows how this role has moved. This is the present-day detail: which AI tools are picking up which tasks, where the edge still is, and the natural directions this work can grow.

What's changing in your day

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereEvaluate and grade student work — visual art portfolios, musical compositions and performances, dramatic scene work, and written critical analysis — navigating the absence of an AI detection equivalent for music and visual art (no Turnitin exists for Suno-generated compositions or Midjourney-derived paintings as of 2026) by designing evaluation rubrics that require process documentation, in-studio process work, and live performance defense that AI tools cannot fake.

Evaluate and grade student work — visual art portfolios, musical compositions and performances, dramatic scene work, and written critical analysis — navigating the absence of an AI detection equivalent for music and visual art (no Turnitin exists for Suno-generated compositions or Midjourney-derived paintings as of 2026) by designing evaluation rubrics that require process documentation, in-studio process work, and live performance defense that AI tools cannot fake.[8],[6]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

The absence of AI detection tools for music and visual art is the defining academic integrity challenge for this SOC in 2025–2026: the College Music Society (2025) survey found that faculty at 40+ institutions had documented student use of Suno or Udio for composition assignments, with no reliable detection method. The solution is assessment redesign: require process portfolios with iteration documentation (sketches, drafts, rehearsal recordings, revision logs) that AI tools cannot produce; require in-studio composition or creation exercises where you observe the student making work; require the live performance, not just the recording — AI cannot walk into a practice room and play. Use Turnitin for written components (program notes, critical essays, artist statements) while acknowledging that it was not designed for arts-specific work. Use ChatGPT Edu to draft rubric criteria, then apply disciplinary expert judgment in the evaluation itself. The RISD and Pratt policies both converge on process portfolio and in-person defense as the most assessment-robust formats.

AI is sitting alongside you herePrepare course materials — syllabi, assignment prompts, reading lists, and lecture notes — using ChatGPT Edu to generate first-draft weekly schedules and assignment prompts, then applying disciplinary expertise to design studio projects and performance requirements that sequence skill development coherently and culminate in portfolio-ready or production-ready work that will hold up to professional industry review.

Prepare course materials — syllabi, assignment prompts, reading lists, and lecture notes — using ChatGPT Edu to generate first-draft weekly schedules and assignment prompts, then applying disciplinary expertise to design studio projects and performance requirements that sequence skill development coherently and culminate in portfolio-ready or production-ready work that will hold up to professional industry review.[13],[1]

Where your edge is

Syllabus scaffolding is the highest-leverage AI time-recovery for arts faculty: a first-draft 15-week Drawing I syllabus, a Music Theory II weekly schedule with practice assignment structure, or a directing course reading list can all be generated with ChatGPT Edu in minutes. Then invest your expert effort in the curricular architecture that AI cannot design: the studio project sequence that builds from value studies to color to composition before introducing conceptual work, because you know from 15 years of teaching when students are ready to think conceptually about what they are making. Use NotebookLM to synthesize uploaded artist monographs, theory texts, and score analyses for lecture prep. The Inside Higher Ed consensus on arts curriculum (2025–2026): AI accelerates the scaffolding dramatically; the pedagogical arc — the argument about what the course is building toward over a semester — requires human authorship from someone who knows both the discipline and the students.

AI is sitting alongside you herePrepare and deliver lectures and seminars on art history, music theory, dramatic literature, and arts-related topics — using ChatGPT Edu to scaffold first-draft lecture outlines and generate discussion questions, using NotebookLM to synthesize secondary scholarship from uploaded readings, and using Midjourney or Adobe Firefly to generate visual reference images for art history comparisons and contemporary AI-art case studies, then applying disciplinary expertise to build an interpretive argument the AI cannot make.

Prepare and deliver lectures and seminars on art history, music theory, dramatic literature, and arts-related topics — using ChatGPT Edu to scaffold first-draft lecture outlines and generate discussion questions, using NotebookLM to synthesize secondary scholarship from uploaded readings, and using Midjourney or Adobe Firefly to generate visual reference images for art history comparisons and contemporary AI-art case studies, then applying disciplinary expertise to build an interpretive argument the AI cannot make.[7],[13]

Where your edge is

Lecture scaffolding is where arts faculty recover the most time with AI assistance — an art history survey lecture outline on the Harlem Renaissance, a music theory lesson on modal interchange, or a dramatic literature seminar on Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt can all be first-drafted with ChatGPT Edu in minutes. Use NotebookLM to synthesize 15-20 uploaded PDFs on a topic into a thematic overview with inline source references for lecture prep. The interpretive work that makes the lecture worth attending — your reading of why Romare Bearden's photomontage is formally revolutionary, your analysis of what makes Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" spiritually and musically unprecedented, your argument about why Beckett's stage directions are as important as his dialogue — is your scholarly contribution. Faculty at RISD and Pratt (2025 guidance) also recommend using Midjourney outputs as explicit lecture examples of AI image generation to teach students to distinguish AI aesthetic from human artistic intent — turning the tool into pedagogical content.

Where this role is heading

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

A direction you could grow

Education Administrators, Postsecondary

Art, Drama, and Music faculty move into department chair, dean of arts, and provost office roles at significant rates — particularly those who have served on curriculum committees, led MFA or BFA accreditation reviews (NASAD for art and design, NASM for music, NAST for theatre), or built AI policy frameworks for their programs. In 2025–2026, postsecondary education administrators are being called to lead institutional AI governance with specific expertise in arts curriculum, digital intellectual property, student performance rights, and the pedagogical stakes of AI creative tools — all domains where arts faculty hold rare disciplinary depth. The CRI increase reflects that administrator roles have stronger institutional stability than faculty positions in arts programs facing enrollment pressure, and that AI governance expertise built in this SOC translates directly to senior administrative value.

What you'd add
  • · Arts program accreditation: NASAD (National Association of Schools of Art and Design), NASM (National Association of Schools of Music), and NAST (National Association of Schools of Theatre) standards, self-study documentation, visiting team protocols, and ongoing outcomes assessment
  • · Higher education budget and enrollment management: faculty line modeling for arts programs, studio and equipment capital planning, program viability analysis using institutional research data, and the enrollment management decisions specific to competitive BFA/MFA applicant pools
  • · Institutional AI governance for creative programs: developing AI-use policy that is pedagogically coherent for studio arts, music, and performance contexts — translating CAA, CMS, and TCG disciplinary guidance into enforceable institutional policy with faculty buy-in
  • · Development and alumni relations for arts programs: annual fund for arts scholarships, donor cultivation for named endowed chairs, artist-in-residence funding, and the case-making for arts program value in a university political environment that increasingly demands vocational ROI justification
  • · Facilities and production infrastructure planning: studio renovation, performance venue and stage technology upgrades, virtual production lab investment decisions, and the AV/lighting/recording infrastructure that defines a competitive arts program's market position
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
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The data behind this timeline

On record since1865
Latest tracked employment122,800 (US, 2024)
Latest median pay$80,190 (2024)
Outlook+1.7% by 2034 (BLS National Employment Matrix 2024-34)
View all 28 cited data points
YearUS employmentMedian annual paySource
19004,500n/aESTIMATE
194012,000n/aESTIMATE
197042,000$11,000ESTIMATE
198058,000n/aESTIMATE
1990n/a$34,000ESTIMATE
200078,000n/aESTIMATE
200360,120$47,980BLS-OEWS
200463,730$48,780BLS-OEWS
200569,260$51,240BLS-OEWS
200672,100$53,160BLS-OEWS
200773,890$55,190BLS-OEWS
200876,810$57,820BLS-OEWS
200980,790$60,400BLS-OEWS
201086,860$62,040BLS-OEWS
201190,030$62,330BLS-OEWS
201292,570$62,160BLS-OEWS
201392,930$62,830BLS-OEWS
201497,500$64,300BLS-OEWS
201598,310$65,340BLS-OEWS
201699,020$68,650BLS-OEWS
201795,110$66,930BLS-OEWS
201894,310$69,960BLS-OEWS
201994,060$69,530BLS-OEWS
202091,170$69,690BLS-OEWS
202194,720$75,940BLS-OEWS
202297,830$77,280BLS-OEWS
2023101,500$80,360BLS-OEWS
2024122,800$80,190BLS-OEWS
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