The Publishing Spot has interviewed author Tony D’Souza. Here he is on whether or not to get an MFA (his is from Notre Dame):
In the seventies, if you had a Iowa MFA, you could go to another school and start your own MFA, in the eighties you could get a job in the expanding MFAs, even in the early nineties your MFA could get you a full-time job at the university level.
But now? With an MFA you are lucky, really lucky, to get a full-time job teaching English 1 at a community college. Some of these programs really fleece people. Three years, $60,000. But still there are lines of people trying to get in.
Oughts as in the years between 2000 and 2010. Oughts as in, maybe I ought not get that MFA after all.
Thanks for the link, I really enjoy reading your blog.
I went to grad school for my journalism masters, and it turned out to be a really helpful way to improve my writing and orient myself in the writing community in New York.
Despite my good experience in an MFA of sorts, I always tell people what Tony D’Souza said as well. It’s a good thing to remember.
The only thing less important than an MFA is one man’s opinion of the importance of an MFA. Who gives a shit what one person says about anything? He ought to work on that stumble-bum of a paragraph about the cornfield. Sounds like fucking Yoda.