Profs to MFA rankings: drop dead

The New York Observer reports that the 2012 MFA power rankings, set forth by the spreadsheet-loving folks at Poets and Writers have been hotly contested and detested by MFA professors the country over in small mob form, through the logistically simplest method: the good ol' open letter.

From the article:

Almost 200 creative writing professors have signed an open letter to Poets & Writers, criticizing its 2012 rankings of MFA/PhD programs. Poets & Writers is the bi-monthly magazine of the non-profit organization of the same name.

According to a statement attached to the letter, Poets & Writers first offense is that it does not take into account a program faculty’s reputation (reputation being the only thing a university or a career in creative writing have to offer anyway).

The rankings are based on polls of prospective creative writing program students about where they’re planning to apply, as well as the scholarship and financial aid money the schools offer.

“It’s analogous to asking people who are standing outside a restaurant studying the menu how they liked the food,” said Leslie Epstein, novelist and Boston University program director.

“If the Poets & Writers list were entitled ‘MFA Programs Most Frequently Applied to by Readers of One Blog’ that would be accurate. I’m puzzled that Poets & Writers, a fine publication, continues to publish this misleading list,” said Deborah Landau, a poet who is unlikely to win the Jackson Prize this year.

It’s perhaps not surprising tensions are high. Poets & Writers, the journal of author interviews and prize application deadlines, is mostly circulated among creative writing students and professors that make up the list. However, most of the top ten programs are represented among the undersigned.

Read the letter itself after the jump. Then read the list of signees, which is what you're probably most interested in anyway. Don't lie.

Not to be outdone by a mob of professors, poet Samuel Amadon has penned his own open letter to prospective MFA students on Coldfront, in which he says (contra the "Power Rankings"):

I can tell you there are 29 professional baseball teams that are better than the Houston Astros, but not that there are 49 MFA programs better than Boston University, and certainly not that there are 59 schools better than the University of Maryland. Why? Because the Astros have actually lost more baseball games than anyone else in the league, but the Poets & Writers rankings are based on what people who haven’t actually attended these MFA programs think of their websites.

You’re not getting an MFA to get funded by an MFA program, nor to have a good teaching load, nor to move somewhere with an ideal cost of living. You’re getting an MFA to have your writing taken seriously by serious writers who you respect. There’s no way of knowing ahead of time if someone is going to be a great teacher and especially not if they’re going to be a great teacher for you. But I swear that anyone who tries to tell you teachers are not the most important part of an MFA program has been spending too much time on the internet. Don’t buy it. Put the rankings down.

(image courtesy of the Missouri Review)