Universities

In the UK, Creative Writing programmes have been established in higher education for over thirty years, and for much longer than that in the US. Yet an independent quality assurance benchmark recognizing the unique teaching methodologies of Creative Writing in the UK was established only in 2016. Meanwhile, writers outside academia have attacked its teaching methods, assessment criteria, and outcomes as inauthentic and invalid since the subject’s inception. Originally conceived as practice-based and student-centred within the values of a socially inclusive education system, Creative Writing’s foundational values are now being repositioned as transactional expectations through a neoliberal focus on fees generation, marketization, and privatization of higher education. This chapter explores the consequences of these changes for writing tutors and student writers and for the discipline itself.