The writing profession, just like the English language, is dynamic. New techniques, styles, and approaches erupt every day. To keep yourself up to date, you’ll need to engage in a lot of personal studies as well as grab a couple of certificates and degrees. The good thing about this, however, is that updating your writing skills is not expensive. You must not sit in the classroom of a university to acquire a creative writing degree. There are a good number of online writing colleges where you can get quality creative writing degrees, whether associate’s, bachelor’s, or masters. In this post, you’ll discover the best colleges offering online creative writing courses. You’ll also discover the cheapest online creative writing degree colleges. But first, let’s answer some of the questions concerning creative writing which you may be asking already.
Is a Creative Writing Degree Worth It?
Depending on what kind of creative writing you’re into, a creative writing degree may or may not worth it. When most people hear the term “creative writing,” what comes to their mind is story writing. Their scope of creative writing is limited to writing fiction because, of course, fiction writing requires a lot of wild imagination. And when it comes to wild imaginations, all you need to do is be crazy, right? They’ll further argue with you that some great story writers never went to the university to study creative writing. Michael Crichton, behind the story “Jurassic Park” never majored in writing. He majored in Biological Anthropology at Harvard. Even the popular thriller writer, John Grisham, studied accounting at Mississippi State University. However, some notable writers majored in writing or writing-related programs in college. C. S Lewis, who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, decided to pursue a literature in an English degree at Oxford after World War II. J.R.R Tolkein was an English Language and Literature professor in his time. Yet, you don’t only become a story author by acquiring a creative writing degree. The corporate world, for example, has grown to accommodate a lot of creative writers. Organizations need writers to sell their products to a wider market that are thrilled by good writing. But they handpick writers with a credible degree to certify them. So, the next question is what can I do with a creative writing degree
What Can I Do With a Creative Writing Degree?
There is a lot you can do with a creative writing degree that you may not have known. With at least an associate degree in creative writing, you can go into the following: Working in any of these specializations, you can get a creative writing degree job as a/an: You can also get jobs related to your creative writing degree as a/an:
Creative Writing Salary and Job Outlook
Although more people are aspiring to be writers, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that the job outlook for Creative Writers is really promising. Their 2016 statistics point out that there were 131,200 jobs that year for Writers and Authors. However, the typical entry to these jobs was a Bachelor’s degree. Additionally, BLS records the average annual pay of writers and authors as at 2018 as $62,170. They typically earn $29.89 per hour. Also, the job market for writers and authors will increase by 8% from 2016 to 2026. This creative writing job growth is as fast as average.
What are the Types of Writing Degree?
There are a lot of writing majors for which you can acquire a degree in school. In addition to Creative writing, you can also get a degree in Professional Writing, Technical Writing, Science and Medical Writing, Business Writing, Eglish/English Literature, e.t.c. However, since we are discussing Creative Writing, let’s tell you the kind of college degree/certificate you can acquire. Below are the kinds of creative writing degree you can attain:
Certificate
Certificate programs introduce you to the fundamentals of creative writing or writing in general. It helps you update your skills in certain writing specializations. You get certification on completion of the program and the program lasts anywhere from a few days to two weeks.
Associate’s Degree:
Associate’s degree, like certificate programs, also grooms you on the fundamentals of writing. But it advances to providing you a broader professional knowledge which is near what you would get attending a four-year bachelor’s program. It takes two years to acquire an associate degree in creative writing and you can complete it mainly online.
Bachelor’s Degree:
This degree is suitable for you if you’ve decided to take a writing career path. You’ll get comprehensive knowledge taking courses that will set you on the right track to becoming a creative writer. The Bachelor’s program takes four (4) years to complete, after which you’ll get a Bachelor of Arts Degree (BA).
Master’s Degree:
This degree is ideal for you if you want to grow as a professional in the writing field. You must have acquired a Bachelor of Arts degree to qualify for the Master’s degree. Courses towards a Master’s in Creative Writing takes two years to complete.
P.hD.:
This degree is ideal for you if you have decided to take an academic line in creative writing. You’ll be groomed in the technical aspects of writing and its theory to enable you to teach at a university or community college. It takes several years to complete a P.hD. but it generally lasts for four years.
Where can I get a Creative Writing Degree Online?
You can get a creative writing degree online primarily through online colleges. You can also get them through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platforms like Coursera and Udemy. However, this would depend on the kind of creative writing degree you want. MOOCs don’t give you a BA, MA, or P.hD. degree. They are primarily for short courses which either give certificate after completion or do not give certificates. Nonetheless, you would have acquired some form of formal education after taking a course on a MOOCs platform. This is because although anybody can teach a course on these platforms, experts in the field (who have more practical experience) are the major individuals who advertise courses. However, if you would want to acquire a globally accepted online degree in Creative Writing, you’ll need to enroll in an online college. Meanwhile, you would have to ensure that the school you’re going for has accreditation. Generally, here is a list of online places where you can get a creative writing degree:
Accredited Online Creative Writing Colleges
Accreditation is what tells you that a school is of high quality. When a school has relevant accreditation, their degree is of high esteem and would be respected by future employers and governing entities. The fear of online colleges in time past is that they don’t get accredited. That is not the case anymore as most of the schools offering online courses these days are institutions of higher learning with a physical location. These schools are not only subject accredited but also regionally accredited. The schools we will be sharing with you in the next sections have accreditation from a relevant subject or regional authority. Thus, you can bank on them for quality online creative writing courses. We will discuss these accredited online creative writing colleges in the following subheadings:
Creative Writing Associates Degree Online
If you’re interested in taking short online courses in creative writing towards an Associate of Arts (AA) degree, you should consider these universities.
Online Creative Writing Bachelor’s Degree
Here are universities you should consider if you wish to acquire a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing.
Online Creative Writing Master’s Degree
Creative writing in the Master’s level is usually towards establishing a professional career in writing. Schools in the US offer their online Creative Writing Master’s as either a Masters of Art (MA) or a Master’s of Fine Art (MFA) degree. The difference between both of them is that MFA is more intensive than an MA and consequently takes more time to complete. However, both degrees develop you to take your writing career to a professional level. Here are online colleges where you can acquire an MA or MFA degree in creative writing.
Best Online Creative Writing Degree
There are a lot of colleges in the USA offering Creative Writing Degrees. However, not many of them offer their courses partially or wholly online. Thus, we select our best five (5) online Creative Writing Degree colleges from the schools we have mentioned above. The criteria for selecting our best schools amongst those we’ve listed are on the following: Meanwhile, clicking on our selected schools will take you to their English, Arts, Humanities, or Creative Writing departments offering their online creative writing courses. Here are our best Online creative writing degree colleges:
Cheapest Online Creative Writing Degree
It is not easy ranking the cheapest online creative writing degree colleges. This is because an Associate degree will be cheaper than a Bachelor’s degree. Consequently, because of the duration of the degree program, a Master’s program will be cheaper than a Bachelor’s. Thus, we have ranked the cheapest online creative writing degree colleges that offer a Bachelor’s program. The reason for this is that most job entry requirement in the writing field requires a bachelor’s degree in writing discipline. Also, a Bachelor’s degree is a very popular degree. Universities record a higher enrolment of undergraduates than graduate students. So, based on this, we will proceed to list our five (5) cheapest online colleges where you can conveniently get an accredited B.A degree in Creative Writing.
Conclusion:
You can get an online creative writing degree through online colleges or MOOCs such as Udemy. However, online colleges provide you more quality degree which employers around the world accept. MOOCs, on the other hand, is ideal for upgrading your creative writing skills. Though some, like edX, may offer certificates at the completion of your courses, notable universities are the ones providing these courses on the platform. Furthermore, before you decide on where to get your online creative writing degree, consider the college’s accreditation. This post is a guide to help you make the best school selection, taking into consideration, cost, specialization, and quality. Feel free to use the comment box if you have any question regarding this post, or if you have other contributions to make. Cheers! There are many jobs you can do with a creative writing degree and they include the following:> Blogspot. > Copywriter.> Web Content Editor. > Journalist. > Proofreader/Sub-Editor. > Content Marketing Specialist. > Social Media Specialist. Most Bachelor’s degree programs require four years of full-time study and expose students to general education coursework and classwork in their chosen writing specialty. In the case of creative writing, you may have to major in the English Language. There are a lot of marketing demands for professional and competent freelance writers. According to Marketing Mag, content marketing is set to be a $300 billion dollar industry by2020. Writing as a hobby may be totally different from studying Creative Writing. The later is much more academic than many people think. It’s also much more difficult. There is much more to creative writing than just having a story idea. There are many online degrees in creative writing that can prepare you for a career path that includes editing, copywriting, advertising, public relations, and publishing.
References:
All the universities which we mentioned in the post all have links linking to their relevant websites.
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