Studying for the future : training creative writing postgraduates for life after degrees

In the creative arts, we are teaching, and our students are learning, specialist subject areas at a time when only a small minority of creative artists can make a living from their creative work and the academy is offering fewer and fewer permanent tenure-track positions. In this environment, this paper considers an important question: What futures can, or should, higher degrees by research in the creative arts discipline of writing be readying our postgraduates for? Comparing the current situation in Australia with those in the USA and UK, we posit a range of professionally relevant approaches to the design of research postgraduate degrees, and consider how the work of both students and staff in research degrees can be both future-focused and time efficient.