A graduate writing degree, unsurprisingly, turns out a lot of opinionated writing. Sample manifestoes from blogs and chat rooms: “Why you should hate the creative writing establishment (…as if you needed any more reasons)” and “14 Reasons (Not) to Get an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (and Two Reasons It Might Actually Be Worth It).” In scholarly circles, the boom and its implications have been a subject of heated debate since at least 2009, with the publication of Mark McGurl’s “The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing.” In it, Dr. McGurl, a Stanford English professor, describes the M.F.A. as the single biggest influence on American literature since World War II, noting that most serious writers since then have come out of graduate-school incubators.

Chad Harbach followed with a 2010 essay, “MFA vs. NYC,” in the journal n+1. Last year, he edited a book of essays, with the same title, on the credential’s influence. Mr. Harbach describes two centers of American fiction: New York City, the traditional hub, and M.F.A., the encroaching university writing program, or “the M.F.A. beast,” as he calls it. Even writers without the degree, writes Mr. Harbach, who earned his from the University of Virginia, have “imbibed the general idea and aesthetic. We are all M.F.A.s now.”

That’s not necessarily a negative notion, according to Dr. McGurl and Mr. Harbach (who received a $650,000 advance for his first novel, “The Art of Fielding”). But it seems to trouble many others, especially aspiring novelists and poets. With so many highly tutored creative writers already out there, is success possible without the instruction and literary connections that are cultivated in M.F.A. programs and that a volatile publishing industry — now evolved around program graduates and sensibilities — has come to look for and expect?

To M.F.A. or not to M.F.A.?

“It is a deadly question,” says the literary critic Anis Shivani, author of the 2011 book “Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies.” “Everyone who wants to be a writer in this country has to confront it, even if you rebel against the M.F.A.,” he says. “If you do the degree, opportunities open up.” Without it, he warns, you may be able to publish in small presses but are more likely to be “condemned to obscurity,” particularly if you write literary fiction and poetry. And your writing will change, he says, and not necessarily for the better.