"Also, and maybe most importantly: writing is just writing! Writing is just a practice that improves over time, like doing yoga, and sometimes MFA programs help a person with this and sometimes they don't. Writing is a vital and fundamentally democratic art that nonetheless requires programmatic interference to not favor the privileged; writing is a skill that is useful in so many other arenas other than the teaching of short story craft. Writing is a proposition that is not worth fussing over in grand "Can Writers Really Have It All?" style but is certainly worth nurturing for the insane glimmers of genius and transformation that will be waiting once we put the dumb think pieces down."

--Jia Tolentino defends the mighty MFA.