Are creative writing degrees worth the money?
Below the grand opera of its politics, below the bombast, dysfunction, and partisan rage, a new generation of authors is writing America, and thousands of them are choosing to do it from within the US college network, as students and teachers of MFA (Master of Fine Arts) programs – the 'largest system of literary patronage for living writers the world has ever seen'.
The Iowa Writers' Workshop was founded in 1936. In 1975 there were 15 American colleges offering creative writing MFAs; in 2008 there were 156. In 2016 – the most recent year of data – there were 244, not to mention the ever-expanding constellation of other degree-conferring creative writing programs, from BAs to PhDs, almost 2000 in total. Every year, US colleges process more than 20,000 MFA applications, and send between 3000 and 4000 graduates out to shape the future of American letters – as writers, publishers, teachers, and readers. The rise of the creative writing program, argues Stanford Professor Mark McGurl, "stands as the most important event in post-war American literary history".
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