As someone who just completed undergrad and would attend high school recruiting events for my school, here’s my take. Every high schooler wants to go into college for a very specific program not realizing our industry has some extremely niche positions that you don’t find in high school. I got a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and it has been the greatest decision of my life. I came in wanting to be the exact same thing, foh engineer/computer person. After the first two years of undergrad I was already looking for more than just foh engineering. But, because of how my program was setup, I was able to jump from being audio, to working my way up in lighting. I started as an electrician, then ME, and now I would do lighting designs for our university and venues in our community, while still having all my audio based connections. For this summer I am also currently working as a lead lighting tech at one of the largest summer stocks in the country. Eventually I got into digital media design and I have fallen in love. Im going to be doing the sort same thing in grad school, too. Going for Theatre Design to be able to take courses in all disciplines, but primarily focusing on researching and creating 3D digital media for live entertainment. I did not find this greater passion until my final semester of undergrad. But I know it’s what I really really want to do as a career.

Undergrad is your time to explore this crazy, ever-developing, fucked in the head industry. But I’m not saying don’t focus and be passionate about foh engineering and computers. I’m saying do focus on what you are passionate about, recommended in a program that will let you grow into more than just a foh engineer. A degree like Theatre Arts will give you the ability to try out other disciplines in a low stakes, educational setting. You can be an electrician (or even an actor if that’s your thing) for your university production, while working foh gigs in your community. I’m not sure how other programs are, but I’m sure it would be tough to convince your faculty to let you be a lighting electrician for a show when you are an audio engineering major. Which, to be completely frank, barely exists for live engineering. You could attend a program with a sound design BFA, but your courses will likely involve lots of music theory and all that good stuff.

So yeah. Honestly would highly recommend looking into any degree but live audio engineer. Also you could just hop into the working force right away and not get a degree because you don’t really need one for live audio engineering. But in this economical climate? Sheeesh.

If you have any more questions about my undergrad experience, feel free to DM me. It was a very crazy 4 years (especially with Covid) where I got a ton of resume level experience in audio, lighting, and video. Started out working ton of foh gigs and then eventually grew into more, because of my love for “computers” and theatre technology. Oh also my minor was computer information systems, so I was taking programming classes and stuff too (which tbh fucking sucked, but to each their own).