{"id":1054,"date":"2012-02-05T01:27:18","date_gmt":"2012-02-04T19:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2012-02-05T01:27:18","modified_gmt":"2012-02-04T19:27:18","slug":"death-of-an-mfa-program-an-insiders-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2012\/02\/05\/death-of-an-mfa-program-an-insiders-view\/","title":{"rendered":"Death of an MFA Program, an Insider&#039;s View"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So as is becoming known throughout the university world and blogosphere, Penn State cut the funding for its MFA program, of which I&#8217;m the director, and we&#8217;ve chosen to cease admitting new students, rather than expect them to pay many thousands of dollars for a degree that is not a sure ticket to huge paychecks. We&#8217;ve been a fully funded program for many years, and during that time have not cheated our students, but have offered an excellent education in creative writing, practical teaching experience, and no debt.<br \/>\nBut the times have changed.<br \/>\nI see it in terms of the future world described in H.G. Wells&#8217;s <em>The Time Machine.<\/em> Our lit students are fully funded, and I didn&#8217;t want our creative writing students to become the Morlocks to their Eloi.<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s much I could say about this, but won&#8217;t. We fought for a year to get our funding back, and failed. Does this say something that, when budget-crunch time comes, the arts are first on the chopping block? Of course it does. Is this a disgrace? Of course it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So as is becoming known throughout the university world and blogosphere, Penn State cut the funding for its MFA program, of which I&#8217;m the director, and we&#8217;ve chosen to cease admitting new students, rather than expect them to pay many &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2012\/02\/05\/death-of-an-mfa-program-an-insiders-view\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-education","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}