This article seeks to reignite debate about the purpose of a university music education. Taking inspiration from Randall Thompson's 1935 investigation of the role of music preparation in U.S. colleges and universities, an analogous call is made for a less vocational approach to the study of music. The author claims that the music education profession's historic apprentice model, a practice of training and adaptation, is insufficiently rich, particularly in today's context of open and hybrid musical forms. Resisting the discourses that link educational excellence to economic competitiveness and human capital, a music education in and through the humanities would include more focus on creativity, independence, and idiosyncratic learning.