Flannery O’Connor, a product of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop herself, had harsh or at least cautionary words about MFA programs. It’s not that O’Connor had a problem with training or competence, but her ideas in 1960 are perhaps more true today.
In the last twenty years the colleges have been emphasizing creative writing to such an extent that you almost feel that any idiot with a nickel’s worth of talent can emerge from a writing class able to write a competent story. In fact, so many people can now write competent stories that the short story as a medium is in danger of dying of competence. We want competence, but competence by itself is deadly. What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class.
Notice that O’Connor doesn’t say that competence is deadly. Instead, “competence by itself is deadly.” Plenty of people have the vision but lack the competence. Some have the competence without the vision. May I suggest the value of combining the two?