Final Clarification on that MFA Stat

UPDATE: Jesus Christ on a stick, I should never have tweeted that stat.  That'll learn me.  David does the final-final explanation in the comments. He's going to post the full piece over at the new play development blog. apologies for all the confusion.

At some point over the diversity convening, someone in the circle paraphrased a quote from Todd London's "OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE", a forthcoming study about the lives and livings of playwrights.  I posted their quote on Twitter.  A lot of conversation about the accuracy of the stat etc. ensued.  I tried posting a clarification based on my own knowledge of the study from the TCG conference.  More conversation re: the accuracy ensued.

So now, once and for all, is a clarification about the stat, for those of you who are interested...It's true that 9 of 10 writers with an MFA in their study got them from 7 programs. Also that a huge percentage of people in their study had MFA's. But I think we were talking about it as though 9 of 10 writers, period, had MFA's from these programs which is not what they found or claim. They also acknowledge that the suggestions for names of the participants came, in a significant part, from MFA programs themselves (as well as TCG member theaters and New Dramatist members) so it's not a reliable stat for the whole population.

Comments

[David]

Your almost there with the clarification, Isaac. 9 of 10 of the playwrights with advanced professional training in their survey got it from one of 7 institutions: Columbia, Yale, NYU, Brown, UT-Austin, Iowa, and Julliard (which doesn't offer an MFA but does offer advanced professional training.)

The distinction here is that 63% of the participants had "advanced professional training". So it's not a stat about 90% of all surveyed playwrights having degrees from one of 7 schools. It's a stat about 90% of the playwrights with that training attended one of seven programs.

Either way there's a tremendous narrowing that's happening and a huge impact from these 7 schools on what contemporary playwrighting looks like.

I've requested permission to post the entire section from their report on the blog at http://npdp.arenastage.org and when I have that greenlight I will do so.

[Mark]

I'm actually still confused, after all the discussion, on just what this stat means. Is it:

a) Professional theaters are disproportionately producing plays by graduates of these seven programs.

b) Graduates of these seven programs are disproportionately represented in this survey.

c) Graduates of these programs are so large in number that there are more of them than there are graduates of other MFA programs.

d) both (a) and (b) Graduates of these programs are disproportionately represented in the survey because they are disproportionately produced by professional theaters.

At a base level, I'm unsure what this data point is supposed to be telling us.