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A whopping 14 fiction jobs and 3 poetry jobs posted at the Creative Writing jobs wiki at this point v. 1000's of MFA grads/year. academicjobs.wikia.org/wiki/Creative_…
Three of those 17 gigs are "open rank" meaning they're going to someone already established. Almost all of them require a book.
Obviously not everyone who gets an MFA desires a teaching job, but lots do, when students asked me about grad school and I queried their motivations, they said they wanted a job/life like the one they perceived I had.
This is when I told them I'd never made more than $40k/yr teaching (and often less) and my novel brought me all of $10k for 8 years of off and on work and I lived off of a well-employed spouse, editing McSweeney's (at the time) and other freelance hustle.
I could appear to live that life for a time because of some privileges, but for many it wouldn't have been sustainable. It isn't sustainable.
I never told students not to go get an MFA, but I absolutely told them that they should not expect to get a sustainable, decent-paying teaching job in the aftermath. They would need to find another route to continue to pursue their writing.
I wonder what adjustments programs are making recognizing that there is no path through academia anymore for MFA holders outside contingent teaching. What is owed students in this world?
I've never taught in an MFA program, so I don't know the answer to that question, but from my perspective, I owe students honesty about the lay of the land when it comes to sustainable work.
