Background and Approach: International research has shown music students to experience high rates of health issues, including various physical, mental and hearing health issues (e.g. Fry, 1987; Olson et al., 2016; Payne et al., 2020; Stanhope et al., 2022). For decades, researchers have called for a ‘whole system approach’ to address these pervasive issues (e.g. Chesky et al., 2006). Institutional ethnography is a sociological research approach that, by design, directs attention to the connection between the individual experience and its social or cultural context (Smith and Griffith, 2022).Aim and Results: This presentation will discuss findings from a large institutional ethnographic study that set out to study the organisation of the work and health of music students at one Australian university. Based on data gathered at student focus groups and interviews, as well as at staff interviews and more than 30 hours of ethnographic observations, the findings show a clear tension between the school’s intention to provide additional performance opportunities to draw in prospective students and foster a lively creative environment, and the students’ lived experience of intense time pressure generated, in part, by the volume of these additional engagements.Conclusion and implications: It is important to shed light on this issue of time pressure as many students indicated that they found it difficult to incorporate health promoting behaviours in this environment. Further, multiple students described practices that compromised the completion of their curricular work or health, such as needing to get extension or staying up much of the night to complete assignments, as well as practising long hours immediately before performance examinations. It is time to seriously consider ‘how much is too much?’ in post-secondary music education and what needs to change in order to foster an environment in which music students are able to develop their musical and academic skills to their fullest potential, without detriment to their health.