Endre Friedmann

There're plenty of poorly-paid, temporary teaching jobs in higher education. An MFA will help you get one. The more interesting question, I believe, is using the MFA to get a better paid, permanent teaching job with middle class wages. The growth in recent years of low-residency (summer) MFA programs, the growth in doctoral programs in the visual arts, bears investigation. FWIW, most college-level courses nationwide are taught by instructors who are not paid middle class wages for their teaching/research/publication/service. A willingness to spend a year homeless while traveling the country is -- in a perverse way -- excellent preparation for a career adjuncting, excellent preparation for an impoverished old age.

While I don't know about funding, RIT has more lab and studio space than anyone on a per capita basis: that was true during the days of film, and is still true now. FWIW, they'll solve your claustrophobia.

The Yale photo shows are only on display for, IIRC, one or two weeks, tops, in New Haven. As per a decades-old tradition, they show in May. (Unlike the painters and sculptors and graphic designers, some of whom show in *March*. March in New Haven is a horror.) With luck, some ambitious graduates will figure out how to move their show down to Manhattan for a few weeks into one of the (many) empty storefronts.

For humanities PhDs seeking academic employment, read Marc Bousquet at: http://www.theminnesotareview.org/journal/ns7172/interview_bousquet.shtml

I don't know if this is still true, but after I got out of Yale in the early 1980s the new Dean of the School of Art explained in a newsletter that -- for each dollar of tuition billed out (before any money rolled in) -- the School rerouted thirty-nine cents toward internal, student-funded scholarships. I interpreted that as unwitting wealthy students acting as the overwhelming source of free aid money for poor students.

Insufficient coffee this AM and I apologize for bad numbers: over the course of three decades Yale's School of Art has turned down more than 20,000 applicants in painting/printmaking/sculpture/graphic design/photography. Papageorge's photography program has rejected only five to seven thousand of those applicants. Some percentage of those students inevitably earn advanced degrees and tenure. It is not pragmatic to earn Yale's MFA and then seek tenured employment from someone who - as likely as not - was rejected by Yale. At my age I've heard more than a few of my tenured colleagues exclaim how their academic careers would have more swiftly advanced if only they'd earned an MFA from Yale. Papageorge was notorious for not wanting his students to go into teaching.

In thirty years of teaching, Yale's Papageorge has probably *refused* admission to more MFA applicants than anyone else in photography. Papageorge has also isolated himself from most other teachers, excepting the ones he's hired. And the handful of tenure-track hires he's made at Yale have all (quietly) bailed on his program without tenuring in. After three decades and twenty thousand rejects, there are more than a few tenured academics who've suffered his rejection and who won't go near his graduates.

Don't confuse admission to Yale College (the undergraduate institution) with admission to the School of Art. In my experience (Yale MFA 1983), there's *no* relationship, except that the applicants are all ambitious or well-connected or both. If anything, Yale's undergrads are much more academically-accomplished, much brighter, much more intellectually-curious, than most of the typical baccalaureate/BFA holders admitted by the School of Art. In my major, the Director of Graduate Studies (equivalent to a department chair) sought admits who were bright and ambitious and hard-working and glimmering with potential or with talent. Such a task is fraught with difficulty and has imperfect results. I'm sure the Director regrets some admits.

<cynicism> Some schools are smart businesses, offering variety based on their students' goals. Pay attention to the credit load and the time to completion. As a rule, shorter MS degrees are for folks who've already got their full-time academic job in the pocket, and simply need a quick and dirty master's degree to get their meal ticket punched, to finish tenuring in, to get a promotion in rank and salary. Longer MFA degrees are for the suckers who are grooming themselves, intending to go on the market for full-time academic work. </cynicism>

"Some graduate-degree-earners have been known to find work in their fields, but many end up teaching in the very schools that issue these degrees of questionable value," Comey said. "In this way, the grift sustains itself." http://www.theonion....rdegrees-scheme,1193/

@nathancotephoto: I apologize for my wordiness here. My sense is that there's plenty of teaching work for MFAs old and new in the USA. It's the kind of work that's in question. IMHO, what's rare is full-time teaching work with middle-class pay and benefits. What's also rare is leveraging an MFA and part-time teaching experience into full-time teaching work with middle-class pay and benefits. These things are so rare that new full-time hires can take inordinate pride in beating the odds. Sometimes lightning does strike. But, if you don't mind cobbling together a very small income with few benefits, there's tons of work "adjunct" teaching. Your students won't distinguish you, as an adjunct, from the full-timers. (Actually, it's the full-timers who are most alert to this status.) These part-time jobs will leave you impoverished in your old age, so you don't want to work at them for more than a few years if you can help it. This is especially true if you're not anticipating a healthy-sized inheritance or marriage into wealth or steady gallery sales. So yes, you can teach.