If you are trying to decide between creative writing MA and MFA programs, though, there is some benefit - if you want to teach - to going for an MFA (over an MA only).
My understanding is that you can certainly get adjunct jobs with an MA, but that to qualify for tenure track jobs, at most institutions, you have to have a terminal degree.

If only so confusion can reign, I'll add it's easier to start out in teaching with an MA in English-Creative writing than it is with an MFA. You're not likely to impress a community college or small state school with your MFA and lack of publication record. And if they expect you to teach four classes, only one of them being a creative writing class, they'll need someone more suited to teaching literature or comp -- an MA candidate, even if they come from a writing-intensive MA program, like Davis.

As for tenure track jobs at most institutions, if your publication record is impressive, they'll take you. Zadie Smith doesn't have an MFA. Nor does Salman Rushdie. Neither Stephen King or a whole slew of writers. You publish well enough, and that might be a collection and a story in BASS, and you'll get a job.

If you look at places like University of Wisconsin, which sponsors post-graduate fellowships for students with a recent MFA and no book, you'll see they've accepted MA students. They don't advertise it, but they accept them -- or at least have accepted them.

An MFA guarantees nothing.

"Well of course an MFA guarentees nothing. Neither does an MA, a Ph.D., or any other degree."

Well put. That's what I should have said -- and what I meant.

I just think it's circular thinking -- and defeatist, the type of thinking no writer should have -- to suggest that an MFA opposed to an MA allows you to get into a job search that requires a terminal degree, because as soon as you have a collection, you trump the terminal degree, so why not just choose the program that's right for you, whatever it may be? Otherwise, you're hoping for something you shouldn't be hoping for: that your degree will get you where you want to go, not your writing. Jobs are too tough to get. You shouldn't expect to get one without a book, unless you're just looking for a part-time gig without benefits in a place that'll slave you to death with a workload that won't allow for writing the collection you need to be saved from the part-time gig, thereby making that part-time gig a full-time thing.

"Do you want to go because it will improve your writing?"

That could be an MFA as much as an MA program. That could be a Ph.D. program in anthropology, which was good enough for Bellow and Vonnegut. My point being: don't go expecting to be taught how to write. This was my mind-set. I went to have the time to write, to be around other writers. It happened, yes, to be at an MA program. And if it was any different than an MFA ... I'd be shocked. The world is a petty place. Some school have petty reason for maintaining their program as an MA as opposed to an MFA.

These are all good, helpful points/issues. I'll tell you: I want to go to school in order to have time to write and to better position myself to get a job teaching. And I think that's the boat most of us are in. I think we can go ahead and take it for granted that everyone knows there are no guarantees in life. And that most writers need day-jobs. I see no reason to be ashamed of this.

So here's my dilemma: I have gotten into an M.A. program that I feel is "right" for me, and I've gotten into a very prestigious M.F.A. program whose poets' work leaves me cold. Tell me what you think I should do.

So here's my dilemma: I have gotten into an M.A. program that I feel is "right" for me, and I've gotten into a very prestigious M.F.A. program whose poets' work leaves me cold. Tell me what you think I should do.

(And yes, there's going to be some nitwit who points out that some Nobel Prize winning author didn't have an MFA and she teaches at.... Well, I'm not holding my breath on the Nobel OR the Pulitzer. Though I'd take one if someone offered).

Look, I don't want to become the subject of one your anger-management sessions, but I was just trying to provide another side to the story. Is there room for that in this forum? Or must you call anyone who disagrees with you a nitwit?

You suggested if you want a tenure track job in CW you had better get an MFA. I believe that's wrong, even if they advertise this, and so I'd like people looking for information to at least hear me say that. I've formed my opinion based on my talks with other writers, people who've sat on hiring committees. Me, I went to a fully funded MA program that gave me something not all MFA programs do, even the prestigious ones: experience teaching creative writing to undergraduates. During my two years in the program, I didn't have to work and I wrote only one literature paper. I focused entirely on writing, and worked with very well published authors, taking four workshops over six quarters. If a hiring committee interviewed me, they'd see my experience is the equivalent of an MFA. A lot of the time you will see this phrase on a job search ad. "Or equivalent."

So, based on this experience, I said choose an MA program if that's right for you -- and certainly not all MA programs are the right choice; I'd only go to a fully-funded one with a top-notch faculty. But if you find one like I did, and then if you get a collection published -- which you'll need for such a tenure track job -- you'll be all right in the end with a little old MA.

In my above post, I started at the obvious -- Zadie Smith, Rushdie, no MFA -- and sank down from there to a writer with a collection published, a story in BASS. Get that, I said, you'll be fine. You're stuck on Rushdie. And though you're free to disagree with me, how about you let someone disagree with you?

In Reply To

"The real issue isn't how you feel about the poets' work, but whether or not they are good teachers. If they're good teachers, you won't be learning to write like them anyway, but like yourself. "



This was my experience. A big name drew me to my program, and she was extremely helpful when working on my thesis. But the people I hadn't heard of (despite their NYT notable books) proved the better teachers in workshop, showing me how to look at my writing in new ways or challenging me to get better in ways that infuriated me (but in the end produced results). One writer I speak of writes "women's fiction," the other writes from the point of view of a sexual orientation different than mine. I say this because coming in I didn't imagine they'd be a great help, being writers who were so different than me. But all that's balderdash. Writers are writers. They all go through the same things. And only some are great teachers.

The Catch 22 is you can't know who the good teachers are until you get there; you can only hope to hear good word of mouth and follow it. Then too a lot of it depends on the mix of the students in your class -- you learn just as much outside of workshop as you do inside it. It's another intangible you can't predict. So that's where reputation comes in, I guess.