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Is an Online Creative Writing Degree Worth It? (2026)
Whether an online creative writing degree is worth it depends on your goals, and individual outcomes may vary. Agents, editors, and most hiring managers can read the work before they hire you, so the manuscript does most of the persuading and the diploma does less than it does in licensed professions. That does not make the degree pointless – it makes its value conditional. It is most clearly worth it when you need a workshop with real critique, time to finish a manuscript, or the MFA that college teaching searches treat as the terminal artistic degree. It is worth less when you already have pages and are hoping the credential will substitute for publication. It is the wrong degree if you want a stable workplace writing job – that is professional writing. This page walks through the factors to weigh rather than a single answer.
Back to Creative Writing Program Guide
What kinds of roles does a creative writing degree typically support?
The work divides into a few recognizable shapes, and they differ substantially in stability and pay.
View the data behind this chart
| Occupation | Projected job growth (2024-2034) |
|---|---|
| Writer and Author | 3.6% |
| Editor | 0.6% |
| English Language and Literature Teacher, Postsecondary | 0.0% |
Writing and authorship is the occupation the degree names. Writers and authors had a median annual wage of $76,910, with the 10th percentile at $44,310 and the 90th at $139,870 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). OEWS counted 47,940 wage-and-salary workers. Employment Projections, which include self-employed workers, counted 135,400 writers and authors in 2024, projected to 140,300 in 2034 – 3.6 percent growth – with 13,400 openings per year (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). Read the two employment counts together: a large share of this work is self-employed, and freelance income is variable.
Editorial roles improve and shepherd other people’s work. Editors had a median annual wage of $77,920 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). Projected growth is 0.6 percent from 2024 to 2034, with 9,800 openings per year (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). Workshop trains you to say what a draft is doing. That skill transfers. A creative writing transcript alone is a thinner editing credential than one paired with professional writing or journalism.
Postsecondary teaching of English language and literature, including creative writing, had a median annual wage of $78,760 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). Projected growth is 0.0 percent from 2024 to 2034, with 5,100 openings per year (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). Teaching creative writing at the college level typically wants an MFA plus publications. Tenure-track jobs are scarce. The MFA is not a teaching license, and 0.0 percent growth is the occupation saying so.
Career outcomes vary widely by employer, geography, specialization, and individual experience. For general context, consult the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook.
What about freelance and publication?
This deserves a direct answer, because it is where a lot of literary careers actually happen and where marketing around writing degrees tends to go quiet.
A substantial share of writers and authors are self-employed. That is a real career, and for people who build published work or a client base it can pay. It is also a business the workshop does not run for you: submitting work, finding paid assignments, setting terms, and absorbing the months when nothing lands. Income is variable. If you plan to freelance, treat the business half as a skill you will have to build separately, and be skeptical of any program that presents freelancing as simply “flexible work.”
Publication is not a commencement prize. Magazines, presses, and agents evaluate pages. A degree can raise the quality of those pages. It cannot require anyone to take them.
Do I need the degree, or just the manuscript?
This is the fair version of the question, and in this field the answer leans further toward “manuscript” than in most.
Writing is directly inspectable. An editor can read twenty pages and form an accurate judgment, so demonstrated work outranks the credential in most hiring and in almost all publishing.
What a formal program reliably provides is harder to assemble alone: a deadline you cannot quietly miss, readers who are not your friends, and an instructor who will say when a piece is hiding. If you already write, already finish, and already have been edited hard, the marginal value is smaller – unless you need the MFA as a teaching credential. Colleges hiring to teach writing still screen on that credential; the job market is still scarce.
How should I think about cost versus expected benefit?
Cost varies significantly by institution type, residency status, degree level, and how many credits transfer in, so there is no single national figure that applies to every student. Rather than relying on a published annual rate, request each school’s total program cost estimate and factor in:
- Total credits required and tuition per credit
- Whether transfer credit can reduce the number of courses you need at the bachelor’s level
- Which technology fees are billed on top of tuition
- Whether residencies require travel
- How the time commitment compares with your current work and life obligations
Weigh that against a specific question rather than a general one: what does the degree give you that your current situation does not? If the answer is “a workshop and a finished manuscript,” a program with a real thesis requirement is worth paying for. If the answer is “a line on my resume that will make me a novelist,” look hard at whether anyone you want to work with actually screens on it. See Affordable Online Creative Writing Degrees for ways to reduce total program cost.
Does degree level change the picture?
Yes.
At the bachelor’s level, the degree does two jobs at once: it is the general four-year credential many employers require for any professional role, and it is the workshop training. That combination makes it a straightforward value proposition if you are choosing an undergraduate major and literary writing is the interest. Pair it with applied writing coursework if you also need a workplace path.
At the master’s level, the calculation splits. An MFA makes sense as concentrated studio time and as the terminal artistic degree for teaching searches. An MA makes sense as a more academic graduate degree. Neither is required to write for a living. Treating the MFA as a ticket to a tenure-track job is a misreading of the market: postsecondary English teaching is projected at 0.0 percent growth from 2024 to 2034 (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34).
How does creative writing compare to related paths?
- Creative writing is original literary work in a workshop: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, screenwriting, oriented toward a manuscript.
- Professional writing is the workplace-writing degree: rhetoric, editing, documentation, content, and applied genres. Choose it if you want writing as employment inside an organization.
- Journalism trains reporting, sourcing, verification, and news judgment. Choose it if the work you want involves finding out what is true and telling the public.
- Liberal arts with an English concentration pairs literary study with optional writing practice. Choose it if literature is the center and workshop is a supplement.
- Communications is broader, covering how organizations, media, and audiences exchange information.
- Technical communication narrows to documentation and information design. Choose it if software, engineering, medical, or scientific documentation is the job.
Who might reconsider a creative writing degree?
A creative writing degree may not be the best fit if you:
- Expect a specific salary, publication, or teaching post to be guaranteed simply by earning the degree
- Want documentation, proposals, marketing copy, or content strategy as your primary work – that is professional writing
- Already write with a strong, revised manuscript and are not targeting college teaching
- Need a predictable freelance income in the near term – freelance income is variable
- Are considering an MFA primarily as a route to a tenure-track creative writing job without a plan for how scarce those jobs are
How can you evaluate fit before enrolling?
- Clarify the work – a manuscript, college teaching, editing, or workplace writing. Those goals point at different programs, and two of them point away from this silo.
- Audit the workshop – confirm original work is the core, and ask how critique and revision actually run online.
- Distinguish MFA from MA if you are applying to graduate school. They are not interchangeable.
- Prepare the writing sample as the admissions decision.
- Verify accreditation – confirm recognized institutional accreditation through the U.S. Department of Education database. There is no programmatic accreditor for creative writing.
- Request total program cost estimates from multiple schools rather than comparing per-credit rates alone; see Affordable Online Creative Writing Degrees.
- Stay honest about teaching – MFA plus publications is the typical ask; tenure-track jobs are scarce.
Frequently asked questions
Is an online creative writing degree respected by employers?
Generally, yes, if the program holds recognized institutional accreditation. Many employers do not distinguish between online and on-campus transcripts from an accredited institution. In this field the question matters less than usual, because the manuscript is what people evaluate – the delivery format of your degree is rarely the deciding factor. College teaching searches care about the MFA and publications more than about online versus campus.
Can I work as a writer without a creative writing degree?
Yes, and many do. What a degree provides is structured workshop, rigorous critique, and time with a manuscript, which is a faster and more reliable route to better pages than assembling that practice alone. Publication and most writing jobs still hire on the work.
Is creative writing the same as professional writing?
No. Creative writing develops original literary work and an individual voice, typically through a workshop model culminating, at the graduate level, in an MFA. Professional writing trains you to write on assignment for organizational audiences under constraints you did not set. Employers hiring for documentation, editing, and content roles look for the second.
Will an MFA get me a teaching job?
It is typically the minimum artistic credential for teaching creative writing at the college level, usually paired with publications. It does not create a job. English language and literature teachers, postsecondary, have projected 0.0 percent employment growth from 2024 to 2034 (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34), and tenure-track jobs are scarce.
How do I know if a creative writing degree is worth it for me specifically?
Consider whether you need workshop you cannot build alone, whether you need the MFA as a teaching credential, whether the program’s total cost fits your budget, and whether the work you want is literary or workplace writing. Individual outcomes vary, so weigh these against your own circumstances rather than a general average.
Related pages
- Creative Writing Program Guide
- Online Bachelor’s in Creative Writing
- Online Master’s in Creative Writing
- Accelerated Creative Writing Programs
- Affordable Online Creative Writing Degrees
- How Online Creative Writing Degrees Work
- How to Become a Writer
- Creative Writing Programs by State
Data verified: September 1, 2026. Salary, employment, and tuition figures on this page are sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS May 2025; Employment Projections 2024–2034) and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard (2023 cohort). The source agency and data year are cited inline with every statistic.