You ask a lot of different questions here, and most of them have been discussed at length many, many times before. Search through the forums, and you'll find a treasure trove of material to help you make your decisions. There are many people, both here and out in the "real world", who believe that a BA is actually a superior degree to a BFA. While a BFA will give you more concentration and focus in your classwork, it also eliminates lots of other requirements. In my opinion (and it's only that), a
Stage Manager is actually better served with a BA than with a BFA. When you get right down to it, the most important and most difficult part of a
Stage Manager's job is being a "people person". Sure, paperwork and calling skills and
blocking recording and prop
tracking are important, but having excellent interpersonal skills and being able to work with all manners of people under tremendous amounts of stress is really the most important part of the job. By no means is a BFA, or a MFA, or even a BA, a "requirement" for becoming an SM. Some of the best SMs out there got degrees from the state college down the
road from their
house, or even a two-year community college, and they're doing fine. In the same vein, there's SMs who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to the best schools with the best programs, and they're probably never going to make a career out of
stage management.
Full disclosure: I'm currently pursuing a BFA in the Theatrical Production Arts
track at Ithaca College, and the
Stage Management program here is actually a BA, so my judgement is likely skewed. I don't know any hard statistics off the top of my head, but I know the program has turned out a surprising number of SMs who are now very in-demand on Broadway, on tour, and at theatres across the country and world. The only other school I know of with a strong SM program is Emerson in Boston - there are certainly many others, but as I never looked at schools for
stage management, I couldn't tell you.
Personally, I wouldn't rely on any website that puts Full Sail at the top of a tech/design list. But that's a subject for another day.