M.A. in English

The English M.A. degree program at WKU prepares students for careers in teaching, for continuing graduate work toward a Ph.D. in English, and for other careers—like editing and publishing or technical and professional writing—that involve strong communication skills.

WKU offers a tuition discount to P-12 teachers. This educator discount reduces tuition costs by 1/3.

To receive the P-12 Educator Discount:

1. The student must be classified (in banner) as a resident of Kentucky.

2. The student must be admitted to one of the eligible programs (listed on the CEBS webpage).

Note: Non-degree status does not qualify for the discount.

3. The student must have a teaching certificate indexed to the current application.

* Qualified teachers should email a copy of the teaching certificate to Julie Harris or Barbara Chaffin in Graduate Admissions at the WKU Graduate School and they will manually attach the teaching certificate to the application.

Follow this link to learn more about WKU's P-12 tuition discount for educators: https://www.wku.edu/ketd/

Our graduates have entered Ph.D. programs in English at universities around the USA. It’s a pleasure to see several recent graduates now employed full time in tenure-track positions at colleges and universities, having earned their Ph.D. degrees elsewhere. Other graduates have chosen to teach at community colleges immediately upon leaving Cherry Hall, the temple of language and literature on top of the hill that gives us our nickname.

Our graduate students are an active and close-knit group. New students report finding faculty and fellow students welcoming and supportive. We currently employ 7 students annually as graduate assistants who get teacher training through our mentoring program, tutoring experience in the Writing Center, and teaching experience in year two of the program when graduate assistants are instructors of record for courses in Introduction to College Writing.

The M.A. in English curriculum is straightforward, with coursework promising to develop employable skills in some of the most in-demand areas of English studies: composition and literature pedagogy, with a taste of TESL (teaching English as a second language) and literary/cultural theory in Introduction to Graduate Studies.