Winkleman: What does an MFA offer visual artists?

With commencement season upon us, Edward Winkleman muses on the current state of higher education in the visual arts and wonders if an MFA offers artists something that they couldn’t have gotten from a BFA program:

One of the issues raised again and again during #class was how much it cost to get an MFA, yet how little that education (unlike if you get a JD or MBA) guaranteed any promises of a certain level of income. Now, of course, there’s chatter about PhD programs becoming the new baseline, but not much yet in the way of widespread offerings for such. It’s certainly not an uncontroversial issue, given the record of return on investment. Moreover, as plenty of artists only have a BFA (not sure how they stack up against artists with MFAs successwise…anyone?), and a few I know of do quite well, I began to wonder : is there a parallel in being a good artist to being a good citizen? Can the case be made that all one really needs to know you can get from a BFA program.

Read the whole thing here and check out the additional discussion in the comments section.