Students come to Critical Theory and the Arts motivated by intensities of inquiry, intellect and an ongoing engagement in problems of social reality and the arts. There is nothing impractical about this. On the contrary, knowledge engages us in life, and it could not be otherwise. Graduates from this program discover that the MA degree prepares, qualifies and recommends them for many life possibilities and kinds of work that more narrowly specified craft or career programs which, though they have their own advantages, do not. Students are able to seek—and have achieved–teaching positions at various levels (including some kinds of college teaching); work in many areas of the arts, in galleries and museums and work in foundations; students go on to seek advanced degrees, including the PhD, in areas including art history, literature, philosophy, sociology and psychology; to find themselves inspired to establish new educational programs themselves (one recent student is founding her own artist residency); students may discover an impulse to become public intellectuals; to invent a life for themselves that no one may have thought of yet; and other students return to their engagement as artists with new perceptions and critical insight.