MFA or self-study? Weighing a writing degree against the alternatives

What a creative writing MFA gives you, what it costs in time and money, and the alternatives, from workshops and online courses to a year of self-study.

Yusuf Brannigan24 January 20268 minute read

Sooner or later most people who are serious about writing fiction ask whether they should get a degree in it. The question usually arrives with a lot of feeling attached. For some it is a hope (two years to do nothing but write), for some a suspicion (a credential for something that cannot be taught), and for many a worry about money and time they do not have.

I do not think there is one right answer, and I am wary of anyone who says there is. A Master of Fine Arts in creative writing can give a writer real things. So can a good workshop, a determined writing group, or a year of disciplined reading. This piece sets out what each path offers, what it asks of you, and who it tends to suit. It makes no promises about careers, because no path can. Plenty of published novelists have MFAs; plenty do not.

What an MFA program offers

An MFA in creative writing is a graduate degree, usually two or three years in a full-residency program, in which students write a book-length manuscript (a novel, a story collection, a book of poems) under the guidance of faculty writers. The oldest program in the United States offering the degree is the Iowa Writers' Workshop, formally founded at the University of Iowa in 1936, according to the Workshop's own history page. Programs differ in a great many ways, but most offer some mix of the following.

Time

This is the big one, and many graduates say it mattered most. A funded program, in particular, can give you two or three years in which writing is your main job. For someone who has been writing at five in the morning before a full workday, that is no small thing.

Workshop

The seminar where students read and discuss each other's work. Good workshops teach you to read closely, to take criticism without collapsing, and to see your own pages as a stranger would. Bad ones can push everyone toward the same safe kind of story. Most experiences fall somewhere between.

Mentors

Faculty who read your work carefully, often over a full year or more. A single good reader who understands what you are trying to do can change how you write.

Teaching experience

Many programs give students the chance to teach undergraduate classes, sometimes as part of their funding. This is useful experience if you want to teach later, though an MFA alone is no guarantee of a teaching job.

Community

The people you study with often become your readers for years afterward. This may be the longest-lasting thing a program gives you.

Costs, and the funding question

Costs vary so widely between programs that any figure would mislead. In general terms, a program costs you tuition (unless it is funded), living expenses, and the income you give up while you study. Some programs offer full funding to every admitted student through tuition waivers, stipends or teaching assistantships; Iowa's site says it offers equal funding to all its students. Others offer partial funding or none, and an unfunded degree can mean significant debt.

Many writers and teachers advise applying only to funded programs, or at least weighing the debt very seriously before accepting an unfunded place. Funded programs are usually more competitive, because they admit small cohorts.

Low-residency programs

A low-residency MFA asks students to spend short periods on campus, often around a week or ten days a couple of times a year, and to work by correspondence with a faculty mentor in between. They suit writers who cannot leave a job or family, and they offer close one-to-one mentorship. They usually offer less of the daily community of a full-residency program, and funding is less common.

The novelist Salvatore Scibona, whose profile appears on this site, took the traditional route: a bachelor's degree at St. John's College, the Great Books school, and then a master's at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His first novel, The End, still took him about ten years. A degree can give you time and readers. It does not make the book arrive faster.

The alternatives

Community workshops and evening classes

Many cities have independent writing centers, library programs, and university extension classes that run short workshops, often over eight to twelve weeks. They give you deadlines, a teacher and a room of readers, without a two-year commitment. Quality varies, so look at who teaches and read some of their work first.

Online university courses

Some universities offer writing courses through online platforms. One example is the Creative Writing specialization from Wesleyan University on Coursera. It is a series of four courses (The Craft of Plot, The Craft of Character, The Craft of Setting and Description, and The Craft of Style) followed by a capstone in which you draft, revise and complete a story, narrative essay or memoir piece of 8 to 15 pages. Each course is taught by a working writer from the university. Courses like this are self-paced and structured around short assignments. They do not offer the sustained individual feedback of a degree program. Access terms on the platform, including what is free and what requires a paid certificate, differ by course and change over time, so check the course page itself.

Writing groups

Three to six writers who meet regularly, exchange pages and give honest notes. A good group costs nothing and can last for years. A bad one can be worse than none: too gentle, too harsh, or too irregular to help. Groups work best with clear rules: how many pages, how much notice, how feedback is given, and what happens when someone stops submitting.

Self-study

A planned course of reading, writing and revision that you set for yourself. It is free or nearly so, and it fits around any life. Its weakness is the absence of other readers and outside deadlines, which is why most people who study this way pair it with a group or an occasional class. A one-year plan is below.

A comparison

Path	What you mainly get	Time asked	Cost in general terms	Tends to suit
Full-residency MFA, funded	Time, workshop, mentors, teaching, community	Two to three years, usually relocating	Low direct cost; lost income, moving	Writers who can leave a job and want a cohort
Full-residency MFA, unfunded	The same, without the stipend	Two to three years	High; often debt	A narrow few, after careful sums
Low-residency MFA	Close mentorship, short residencies	Two years alongside work	Moderate to high; funding rare	Writers with jobs or families
Community workshop or class	A teacher, deadlines, readers	Weeks at a time	Low to moderate	Testing the water; a specific project
Online university course	Structure, craft lessons, assignments	Self-paced, weeks	Free to low	Beginners; writers who want fundamentals
Writing group	Regular readers, accountability	Ongoing, a few hours a month	Free	Writers with drafts in progress
Self-study	A reading and writing plan you control	As long as you choose	Free to low	Self-directed writers, ideally with a group

A one-year self-study plan

This is a sketch, not a syllabus. The craft books are ones I find useful; swap in your own. The constant through the year: write on a regular schedule, and read every novel you read twice, once for pleasure and once to see how it was made.

Month	Focus	Reading	Writing
1	Reading like a writer	Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer (2006)	Copy out two pages of a novel you admire by hand; note what you see
2	Short forms	George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (2021), seven Russian stories with commentary	Write one short story, start to finish
3	Character	E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927), on flat and round characters	Character sketches for a longer project
4	Point of view and voice	Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft (1998; revised 2015), with its exercises	Rewrite one scene in three points of view
5	Plot and structure	Two novels you love, with a scene list for each	Outline a novel, loosely
6	The draft begins	John Gardner, The Art of Fiction (1983)	A daily target; start the novel
7	Keeping going	Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird (1994)	Draft; bracket what you cannot write yet
8	The middle	Our piece on finishing a first draft	Reverse outline at the halfway point; keep drafting
9	Finishing	Any novel whose ending you admire, read twice	Draft to the end, however rough
10	Rest and read	Novels only, nothing about craft	Short pieces, nothing on the novel
11	Structural revision	Our guide to revising a novel in passes	Read-through and scene list
12	Review	Reread your notes from month one	Plan year two: revision, a group, perhaps a class

A year will probably not produce a finished novel. It can produce a full rough draft, a habit, a shelf of craft books you have actually used, and a much clearer idea of whether you want a degree. That last point matters. Many people find that a year of self-study tells them exactly what they are missing (readers, deadlines, time), which makes the choice of what to do next easier.

How to decide

A few questions worth answering honestly before you apply anywhere:

What do you most lack right now? If it is time, a funded full-residency program is the clearest answer, if you can get in and can move. If it is readers, a group or workshop may be enough. If it is fundamentals, a course or a reading plan comes first.
Can you afford it without debt? If not, look hard at funded and low-residency options, or at the alternatives.
Do you want to teach? Then the teaching experience in some programs is a real benefit, though it is not a job offer.
Do you have a project? Programs work best for people who arrive with something to work on and leave with a draft.

Whatever you choose, the work is the same: reading closely, writing regularly, revising patiently and finding a few people whose judgment you trust. A degree is one way to organize that work. It is not the only way, and it is never a promise. When you get to the point of sending the book out, our notes on query letters for literary fiction take up the next step.

Yusuf Brannigan

Yusuf writes about learning the craft outside and inside classrooms: workshops, degrees, reading like a writer, query letters and the first steps toward publication, without promises.