Hey so first off, if you are going into the music buisness to make money you are doing it for the wrong reasons.
Now I'll tell you my story. I had a blast at Berklee. It did exactly what I wanted it to do, meaning my playing ability went from a 2 to a 9 (on a scale of 1-10). The education is awesome, the job placement not so much.
When I graduated I was working at a sandwich shop. I joined a band to play bass (I studied saxophone at Berklee) and this band was way more successful than any other band I'd played in before despite being a novice on the bass. We became pretty established in the Boston bar scene, sometimes going on short tours to New York and up to main. We gigged regularly and did several shows a month. However, I never made money from any of this. Any money we made from these gigs (if we did get paid) was spent to keep the band alive. Venue pays you $100? Thats pretty much what we spent on fuel, food, rehearsal space, ect. Basically we broke even. I still had to maintain a full time job outside of music during this period so I waited tables. I spent 3 years of my life like this.
Eventually I did find someone willing to pay me to play music, which oddly enough was the United States Army. If you were to ask college me if I were to ever join the military I would have said "Hell no." But after working for years in dead end jobs and playing for dead end bands the way you think starts to change.
The Army band ended up being a fucking miracle. It is one of the few, of not the only, opportunites out there for a musician to be able to earn a steady paycheck and benefits doing what they love. Thing is, it took me 3 years after Berklee to find that. I spent my entire life searching for a way to make a living out of playing the saxophone, now that I have it I can't stop but think "What next?"
The Army will pay for any education I want to pursue, but I'm in the position now where I can't decide. When I was younger it seemed so clear, but now I don't know. Do I keep my comfy job playing saxophone full-time, retire after 20 years and then die unremembered? Or do I take that GI bill, study law or some other stupid shit and try to become more?
I have everything I ever wanted in life, but now that I have it I want more. Life is funny. You never know what is going to happen, it is all chaos. Just try to enjoy the ride. Because I fucking had one hell of a time at Berklee, and I had one hell of a time playing bass in that nowhere band, and I have a hell of a time now, but I still don't know where I'll be in 5 years.