MFA enrollments surge because therapy is costlier and less credentialing than a degree

Evidence

Almond describes creative writing workshops as involving “direct engagement with inner life, as well as a demand for greater empathy and disclosure. These goals are fundamentally therapeutic.” Seen in this therapeutic light, we can understand some of the outsize growth of these programs: our culture is enduring a mental health epidemic without accessible mental (or other) health care, and, while the student debt crisis betrays that degrees are scarcely more accessible, graduating with a BFA and debt at least gives one a credential that mental health care does not; after all, there’s no CV line for completing therapy. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 143