BREAKING: Last MFA student in USC Roski drops out
HaeAhn Kwon joins nine other students who previously withdrew from the program
The last student in USC’s MFA program at Roski has chosen to drop out.
Following last year’s decision from nine out of ten students to withdraw, HaeAhn Kwon joins them. In an open letter to Provost Michael Quick, Kwon explains that Roski’s MFA curriculum is “dismantled and disorganized” and “a case in which yet another educational community is dissolved by a corporate agenda.”
A response on behalf of the Provost penned by Associate Vice Provost Robin Romans cites the “lengthy conversations” with Kwon about the lack of classmates and her understanding of the circumstances. Romans goes on to say that Kwon’s “numerous accommodations to offset the lack of MFA colleagues” were granted, but she did not take advantage of “impressive networking opportunities.”
In May of 2015, seven students posted an open letter to USC’s administrators regarding their decision to leave, expressing their disappointment in the Roski school. According to the letter, they “became devalued pawns in the university’s administrative games” and found their choice to be “only a tiny part of the larger issues of the corporatization of higher education, the scandal of the economic precarity of adjunct faculty positions, and the looming student-debt bubble.”