There’s nothing better than soothing music. Except maybe saving $3 million.

Whether it is played after a bad day, to help someone study or concentrate, or to uplift those patients in a hospital, there’s no doubt music has an effect on the moods of people.

On that thought alone, the idea behind UK’s creation of a graduate program in music therapy sounds great. But dig a little deeper, and maybe a $3 million donation for such a program could have been put to better use.

The program would be Kentucky’s first of this type and maybe there is a reason for that. In a Kernel article on Oct. 14, Ben Arnold, director of UK School of Music, a registered music therapist — which is what the program is designed to produce — probably won’t fit in a small town. The majority of Kentucky’s population lives in small towns.

Louisville is the largest city in the state, and it barely cracks the top 50 nationally. Lexington, Frankfort, Bowling Green and Paducah are not really large enough to be a blip on the radar for anyone outside the state. So where exactly are we training these students to go?

The on-going drone of the Top 20 Business Plan constantly drives home one point: UK is to become a top-20 university in order to provide the state with educated young people that can better the state by creating new businesses and jobs for the Commonwealth. If a music therapist is not suited to work in a small town and Kentucky only has one large city, where exactly does this new program work into UK’s Top 20 Business Plan?

It sounds like it doesn’t fit in at all. Which leads to another question: if the program doesn’t fit well, why use so much money on it? There are budget needs everywhere, and $3 million could definitely be used elsewhere. Just ask the provost and Student Government, who could have saved some of their funds if some of that $3 million were used toward reopening W.T. Young Library. Ask professors who didn’t see raises in this year’s paychecks about this $3 million.

Budgets are crunched, they are only going to be further crunched and UK is spending $3 million on a program that will only work in a few select cities in our state. Even worse, the program won’t even go into effect until Fall 2010, Arnold said, because the program has to first find someone willing to sign up. A program that hoards $3 million for two years until it can find an interested prospect? It sounds like a huge waste of spending. Is there a mortgage broker among UK’s Board of Trustees?

The Kernel does not doubt the positive effect of music therapy. It is extremely uplifting, and anyone who chooses this profession is admirable. But such a rigorous program that uses a lot of money is not really needed in times like these.

In the Oct. 14 article, Arnold said the idea for the program had been circulating on and off for 20 years. It should have circulated a few more.