My own definition of placement is hard to state as a number and of little use except perhaps to others who teach young artists: How many of our students are still making art—and making it well and ideally to the notice of others—10 years out?

This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education is a couple of years old, but Elise Blackwell nicely sums up the quandary that I’m most interested in–how does an MFA program resolve its academic standing (which involves answering questions about placement rates of program graduates) with its status as a program for artists, people who might not measure their own success by academia’s metrics?