Today's a bit of a different blog post than "usual" (what even is usual! I incoherently post once in a blue moon about random things.). I just finished the most recent episode of the "If This Goes on Podcast" and the while Cat and Alan's talk with Cadwell Turnbull was a delight, the real heavy-hitter came at the end, where Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki talks about African Publishing (that's Publishing on the African continent as I understand it, rather than African fiction, although you could argue that most Publishing done on the African continent is probably African. Anyway, moving on...) in a special column.
Most of the things he said struck me very hard, because, even though I'm not African, I could definitely feel the pain behind it.
The first thing he talked about is how publishing is US-centric and how it can be incredibly difficult to get into the business if you're not there. I won't go into too much detail about this other than to say he's definitely right. I was only lucky enough to work in Publishing over the last three years because a UK publisher was looking specifically for someone in the country where I currently live. That, however, was an outlier position in outside sales, and more academically inclined than I would have ideally liked.
Of course, it's not the only position you can get here with a publisher, however, if we're talking fiction, the options are severely limited. There are a few smaller publisher and one literary agent here who take English works. I'm not sure about the local language market as I don't speak the language and have no interest in publishing in it.
The even more pressing point Ekpeki addressed was the difficult of getting an MFA program if you're not in the US/if you're an international student. This problem has been bother me for some time, and it's not limited to the US.
In 2020, I did an MA degree myself, however, it took me quite a bit of searching to find it, and it wasn't what I wanted 100%. Don't get me wrong, it was good, but it wasn't as useful as it could have been, through no fault of the university (ok, some). The thing is, this was a literary MFA in creative writing, with a heavy focus on literary writing and poetry, and I was frowned upon (reflected in my grades as well as other comments I received that I won't go into detail here) for writing "genre".
Now, the obvious question is: Why would you take it if it's not the kind of creative writing MA you wanted to take? And the answer is two-fold. Firstly, and not as important for this post, I like trying out new things and I learned a lot even if it wasn't what I actually wanted to learn. There's definitely a benefit of taking some high-brow literary fiction classes as well as all the fun genre courses. And poetry did turn out to be less complicated than I always thought it was.
The other, more important reason, the same issue Ekpeki explained he felt was the problem with being African (imo interchangeable with "international" in this case) and trying to get into courses in the US: my MFA was affordable.
And that's an issue that gets my blood near the boiling point.
Why? Because I've a) been in the situation before, as described above, and b) it's absolutely unacceptable in EDUCATION (of all things!) to ask a president's ransom for teaching (of which the teachers don't see even 10% anyway). I've also been personally trying to look into more degrees I could take out of interest (I have many interests) but they're both impossible to afford and extremely inaccessible to people who don't live in the same location as the university.
Here's an example: (I was recently looking into doing an additional degree in something eco-geo-centric (like environmental science, geology, geo-something) but I've also been keeping an eye on supplementary MFA courses in Creative Writing over the years. In order to keep this post somewhat on track let's take a random MFA example from the internet.)
I googled "best creative writing MFA" and came up with Iowa University: https://grad.admissions.uiowa.edu/academics/creative-writing-mfa-english
The first thing that immediately strikes me (which Ekpeki also mentioned) are the application fees:
Then let's look at the resident/US student costs:
And let's compare them with the international student costs (I'm looking at the "without assistanceships part because who really qualifies for these?):
As you can see, international students pay a lot more in tuition fees, and I really can't see why. All the international-student specific fees in the leftmost column don't really add up to $10k.
The above is just one example but I've seen plenty more. In the areas I was also looking (environmental sciences and so on) the trend is even more pronounced. A course taught in the US/UK might cost somewhere between 3-7k (UK mostly) but for international students it's 13-17k (and this does definitely not include living costs!).
So, considering that I, a white person who's not had a too-hard life (if you discount childhood poverty) after becoming an adult cannot afford this, how can anyone from any country with a less stable currency than the euro even dream of affording this? Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki explains that what we can get for a short story sale in the US can feed an entire family in his part of Africa for a year.
And still US and UK universities both are shouting from the rooftops about equality and diversity, which strikes me just as ridiculous as the company meeting in which 20 (mostly) straight, white people discuss how POC and BIPOC-spectrum people can feel more included in day to day company life. (Here's a thought: How about you ask the people you want to feel included?)
Anyway, I digress and return to the topic at hand:
There is no reason for international students to have to pay more than
national students for being taught a certain subject. It doesn't matter
if the people the teacher is speaking to is from Africa, China, Sudan,
or the US. Their time is (should!) always be worth the same. There are
no more administration costs for international students than national
students. Data input is not that difficult even if you have some special
forms for internationals. (Forms, I might add, that the university only
has to check and register, but not fill out or do anything significant
with, as that labour too falls on the student.)
Therefore I can only agree with the gist of Ekpeki's assessment: They want our money, but they don't want us.
It's the only conclusion we can make about universities and various other institutions: They spout a lot of bullshit about being diverse and inclusive because it's required nowadays if you don't want to be shunned, however, they don't really care to hear anyone's voices, only the sound of proverbial coins hitting their proverbial bank vaults.
