THE GREAT CHEAPENING, Part III: Considering the solution to the current MFA glut
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
—Ernest Hemingway
According to the Associated Writing Programs, in 1975 there were three programs at which you could earn a BA in Creative Writing, 32 an MA, 15 an MFA, five a PhD, and one a DA. All totaled, you could study Creative Writing specifically in roughly 80 programs (including minors, but excluding AA programs). By 1984 that number had increased four fold to 320. In 2004, the number was 720, with 263 MA and MFA programs.
With the advent of online and low-residency programs, extension schools and satellite campuses, by some estimates you can, in 2009, study fiction or poetry at any of 1200 schools. For a degree whose primary function is qualifying recipients to teach at the university level (an MFA doesn’t get you ready, directly for any other job, since Google hasn’t yet created a fiction writing position), more than one-thousand programs churning out writers seems gratuitous.
There was a time, from when the New School and Iowa started those first writing programs, all the way until the 1980s, when earning an MA, MFA, or PhD, even in Fiction, virtually guaranteed you a job. This was also a time when writing programs were small, few, and staffed with highly qualified and well-published faculty. But sometime in the 1980s the expansion began. And the effect of the MFA’s popularity tipping, to reference Malcolm Gladwell’s examples, is less like the sudden plummeting of the murder rate in New York in the 1990s, and more like the explosion of syphilis in Baltimore: so many people were getting infected with MFAs that the system couldn’t handle them. That’s where we are now.
But what caused the tip? Why, between 1984 and 2009, did the number of institutions granting writing degrees dectuple (or even dodectuple)? On the demand side, the answer is probably as simple as the fact that a lot English majors wanted to keep being English majors. There’s a reason they didn’t study business. Over on the supply side, the explanation may be even simpler: it’s a function of money. Because adding an MFA requires no special equipment (like a chemistry lab), and because classes could be taught outside, weather permitting (or weather not permitting, in a bar), it’s cheap to add a Creative Writing program to your university. Even if you’re not turning out good writers, you can charge students of the humanities the same tuition as your physics majors, but make much higher profits.
While quality programs still exist (Irvine, Boston, Iowa, Syracuse, Columbia ((maybe)), Alabama, Austin, wherever “you” went, etc.) they get far outnumbered by those who shall remain unnamed, who realized, as per the logic in the previous paragraph, that there was a considerable amount of money to be made from offering an MFA. The phenomenon we’re seeing now, in direct relation to this expansion, is what’s referred to as degree inflation. USC began offering a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature, not because anyone can truly become a quantifiable “expert” at writing, but because the school needed to distinguish its new program from the herd. Just as a high school diploma isn’t worth what it was in 1975, nor is an MFA worth what it was in 1995. The boom, therefore, has resulted in a de-valuing of Creative Writing education at the graduate level, nullifying the salability of the degree. There are a lot more teaching jobs available for writers, now, but there are also a lot more qualified writers.
Following that line of reasoning, we may start to see a program contraction in the next few years. The market will have to correct these excesses. If there are too few jobs for MFA graduates (even during a strong economy), people will stop getting the degree. If the University of Northern Iowa doesn’t have a high enough caliber of professors teaching in its program, eventually people will stop applying. But while the market is waking up from its nap, let me present some ideas to help speed up the process. In the last article I stressed what I think is a genuine need to get students out of the university and into the world where they can gain experience to write about. Here are a few more suggestions:
1. One third of student course work at the graduate level should be outside the discipline of writing and/or literature. Emphasis might be in history, sociology, lab-science, anthropology, philosophy, or psychology, to name a few disciplines. This is to prepare students to be both qualified writers and competent critical/social thinkers. I also recommend that students spend a given number of hours (say, 40, minimum) performing community service or working in the social services, education, or the criminal justice system. This might ensure that the writer who wants to write about a murder meets an actual murderer.
2. Students should be graded on the effectiveness of their editing skills. All writers make mistakes, but MFA graduates that can’t edit their own sentences effectively (this is a large problem, I hear, even at Boston University) cannot reasonably be called Masters of Writing. The story, after all, starts at the sentence, and we all know that James Frey writes like he has down syndrome, not because he wants to sound “unique,” but because it’s harder to write clean prose.
3. Students should be allowed to fail, and not just if they fail to turn in their theses. Anyone who does not show marked improvement during the course of his studies should not be allowed to graduate. If, for instance, a student was allowed into a program based on potential, if she doesn’t realize that potential, she shouldn’t get the degree. There will be casualties, of course, since the rubric for improvement is semi-subjective, but so it goes.
For now, I want to leave my suggestions there. I invite everyone reading this post, and the two previous, to add suggestions to my article. What can we do to make Creative Writing education at the graduate level as effective as it can be? How do we curb the excesses? How do we magnify the strengths?
March 17th, 2009 at 7:51 am
I’ve always like Auden’s formulation of the ideal writing program.
“In my daydream College for Bards, the curriculum would be as follows:
1) In addition to English, at least one ancient language, probably Greek or Hebrew, and two modern languages would be required.
2) Thousands of lines of poetry in these languages would be learned by heart.
3) The library would contain no books of literary criticism, and the only critical exercise required of students would be the writing of parodies.
4) Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archaeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking.
5) Every student would be required to look after a domestic animal and cultivate a garden plot.”
March 17th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
yea that sound real xiting kris robison xcept no on ewould wanna do all that shit cause its really boring
also in case yall were wondering the coment from the previous blog entry that got censored was a joke about finger banging
March 17th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
if your still curius about it i recoemend you e-mail kaelan and shell fill you in on the details
March 19th, 2009 at 10:18 am
When I sent part 2 of this series to a friend of mine who teaches at fairly esteemed MFA program, he included in his response that a great many entrants aren’t necessarily looking to become writers or even teachers, per se. He grouped them together under “Personal Development,” as they were motivated for purely personal reasons. Some wanted to publish lit journals, write family histories, memoirs (the personal kind for posterity, not general distribution). Still others sought to use the MFA in social work or therapy (prisons, nursing homes, serving at-risk youth, etc.) and other altruistic reasons. Others are at loose ends and have always thought about writing, and have enough chops to make the grade.
In all the instances he cited, none of the candidates necessarily saw the MFA as a “way to get a job” which is not to be confused with something that might enhance their skill set in an existing profession (art therapy, for example).
I say all this because Elijah sees the “MFA bubble” bursting. And that may come to pass, but not for the reason (too many MFAs, not enough economics to make it worthwhile) he thinks. If anything, in the current economy, the boom will increase since a lot of people with money are finding themselves at loose ends and have “always wanted to write.”
Word on the street is that submissions at major lit magazines are doubling and quadrupling. That must correlate to some extent with people considering getting an MFA>
March 19th, 2009 at 10:57 am
You make an interesting point about the lit journal submissions increasing. Since I help edit Flatmancrooked’s anthologies, I can attest to the fact that our submissions are growing exponentially. My feeling, though, is that the size of our slush pile does not indicate the health of the lit journal industry, such as it may be called an industry. More people are sending out stories because more people have MFAs and therefore think they should be published. But the general quality of submitted work does not seem to be increasing (though this is a subjective, unscientific comment based on only a year of reading subs). Nor are journal circulations increasing. People are getting MFAs, writing, sending out their work to get published, and then failing to purchase the magazines, journals, and anthologies that publish them, or in which they hope to get published. Writers don’t seem to see that supporting the publishers that give them a venue is the only way to retain that venue. Check out our article “Selling Paper” for a little more on this topic.
March 19th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
To Kaelan, on writers “failing to purchase” the journals in which they’re published, I offer:
“Carl Sandburg wrote me from Chicago, ‘It’s hell when poets can’t afford to buy each other’s books.’”
- Ezra Pound in “A Retrospect”
March 19th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Before I considered applying to MFA programs, I was well aware that my favorite writers also worked as teachers. This implied that no matter how good my writing became, a university teaching position would not be guaranteed. But then again, I’m not looking for an MFA to secure anything for me other than a window of time allotted specifically for my development as a writer. When I asked Junot Diaz about his opinion on MFA programs, he said, “There are a lot of dicks.” Perhaps it isn’t the MFA programs that are the problem, bu the expectations students have upon entering them. An MFA won’t secure a good job. It isn’t a testament one’s ability to write good stories or poems. It isn’t any real symbol of accomplishment. But it could, if one manages the experience wisely, be crucial for a writer’s development in understanding craft, technique and tradition. And then it’s over, and you either keep writing or you don’t. It is true, though, that creating an MFA program is very cheap. You can even create your own. Just get some space, then some books, some paper and some pens. Maybe a desk. Turn your cell phone off. If you have a computer, use it, but only when you need to. Then read and write a lot.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Maybe the solution would be MFA programs for readers instead of writers.
But I contend that people will always want stories and so there will always be people to supply those stories.
The problem is monetization of content.
Back in the old days, there was the patronage system. Then, after Gutenberg, printed matter became a viable commodity and writers could live off sales and royalties and all the complex variations derived therefrom.
What’s happening now is a DE-commiditization of printed matter. People will pay only for the high-end stuff now. (Or what is trotted out as high end.) Who can blame them? Music and film (see iTunes and hulu.com) are finally finding viable models for monetization, and now it’s up to us lit types to find our own.
Will it be Kindle? Think about selling one-offs of short stories or novels in the long tail economic model. Worked for a lot of indy bands. Maybe it will work for us too.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Yes, Kindle Pulp. I like it.
Dibs!
March 20th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
hmm… lots to consider in here but i dont need degrees cause im already p. rich and i got a p. steady income from stealig bikes from hipsters and sellig them to ez pawns and then theres my pending lawsuit wiht wall-mark b/c i fell wen i was racing a shopping cart around and i crashed into a nascar display
March 20th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
i dunno the details are kinda hazy you can contact my lawyer if you concerned or w/e
March 31st, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Reading, writing, with instructions to continue.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I’m a little late to the party, but as I consider whether or not to apply for an MFA next year, I found this article to be interesting.
I’d also like to throw another wrench into the discussion.
Back in the old days the MFA application process could be used as a kind of competency test. Say I’m an aspiring writer in 1985. I apply to Iowa, Irvine, Boston, and Columbia. I get summarily rejected. That’s probably a good indication that my craft isn’t up to snuff and/or I just don’t have the “it” in order to make a run at a literary career. Maybe I work my tail off and reapply again the next year, but probably I get started down another path. And that’s fine. I also wanted to play centerfield for the Giants, and even though I still rake for my beer league softball team, at some point I had to hang up the proverbial cleats.
In 2009, if you play your cards right, and you’re a reasonably gifted writer (say, in the 60th percentile of the thousands of applicants) you WILL get in somewhere. Maybe not Iowa, maybe not Cornell, but somewhere. This is good for a lot of people. But for others, what they need to hear is — Sorry, you’re not good enough. It might sting like hell, but if that’s the case, then so be it.
You might say, Well, then just apply to Iowa, and Irvine, and Cornell, and Michigan (or whatever the very best schools are), and if you don’t get in then you’ll know you’re not good enough.
Except, that’s not true anymore. Because of the crazy proliferation of programs — and by extension, applicants — it’s become a sheer numbers game. Iowa sees over 1500 applications every year (I think). That’s insane. If your application is among the top 100, that’s qualitatively no different than being among the top 25 who are ultimately accepted. At some point, these readers’s decisions become a matter of personal taste rather than skill or talent or whatever. Same goes for all the other top tier schools.
A glance at MFA message boards bares this out. You have people getting accepted to Iowa who got rejected by the other 8 schools they applied to. Or accepted into Irvine, Arizona, and Long Beach St., but rejected by FSU, Syracuse and Michigan. What do you make of that if your a prospective applicant? Even if you get into Iowa, what does that mean in the big picture?
Ultimately, what I’m personally looking for with the MFA is some license, some validation, from an established writer that says, You can do this. You have the requisite skill. You are talented enough to dedicate what might be several very frustrating years to the act of writing.
If I’m not good enough, I want someone to tell me that, too.
I don’t think MFA’s serve that basic function anymore and it bums me out a little bit.
May 9th, 2009 at 4:03 am
i tink your good enough jon you seem to have a lot of skill w/ punctuation and spelling