How many authors have...?

Question

How many popular authors have college degrees? Does it benefit a writer to have a BA or an MFA more than not?

Answer 1

I would think that the practice and constructive criticism aspiring writers can get in college would be useful, though perhaps not necessary to their future success. I looked up a few well-known authors to find out if they attended college:

-- John Grisham (The Firm and other legal dramas) earned a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting.
-- J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter) studied French and Classics at University of Exeter.
-- Dan Brown (DaVinci Code) earned a double major in Spanish and English from Amherst.
-- Ann Brashares (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) studied philosophy at Barnard College.
-- Janet Evanovich (detective novels) studied at Douglass College; I'm not sure if she finished a degree.
-- Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie) graduated from Brandeis and Columbia Universities.
-- David Weisner (recent winner of the Caldecott Award for Flotsam) earned a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design.

I gathered these names from my own sense of popular authors and from bestseller lists (NY Times and Powell's Books). Then I checked their Wikipedia articles to see if they had attended college. It appears that most bestselling authors graduated from college with one kind of degree or another.

Answer 2

Some authors are literary professors who treasure their MFA like a child. Others have degrees and careers in fields completely unrelated to writing. Still others have never been to college at all.

Whether you need a degree depends on the strength of your skill, as well as what you will be writing. If you intend to write educational materials, I would hope you'd have some higher learning background.

On the other hand, there is not a requirement for fiction writers, essayists, autobiographers or poets to have any particular education; your books will stand or fail on their own merits and your skill as a writer.

Answer 3

I don't know... but I do know a lot of authors. Some have degrees, but a lot don't. I left school at 16, and have had over 200 books published in a career spanning four decades and counting. I'd say the degree means almost nothing, since no publisher I have ever worked with has EVER cared about my education. No editor ever asks if I went to university. All they ask is that I write a good story in a literary and entertaining fashion.

Answer 4

There's no way to count that.