Berklee Announces New Online Music Degrees

The Berklee College of Music has announced a new slate of online degree programs, including two in music creation, cementing its status as the first accredited non-profit music institution to offer Bachelor degrees on the web. Online students will soon be able to enter programs focusing on Electronic Music Production and Composition for Visual Media, along with a degree for Music Studies.

Berklee Online, which launched in 2003, now offers five different Bachelor of Professional Studies degrees. The new music-creation degrees were chosen to focus on in-demand skills in a quickly evolving music industry, explained Carin Nuernberg, Berklee’s Dean of Continuing Studies. The Boston-based school teamed with Pro Tools maker Avid to create several of the new online production courses.

"We were looking at music industry trends and aligned them with what we heard from students," said Nuernberg. "We do a lot of surveying, of current, past, and prospective students, of people who take our massive open online  courses. And we listen carefully to the results."

The application process is open for the new degree programs, which will officially launch in Fall 2015.