Devil's Advocate - Creative Writing

Creative writing was my favourite subject at school. There was nothing to learn, you just made stuff up so you couldn't get it wrong, it was almost as good as being on holiday. Similarly, in big school, English could be 'about' anything, there didn't seem to be anything to know and once I'd reached the limit of my interest in Maths in about the second year then it was ready to become my main subject hencefort and in perpetuity.
However, none of that means I wish I'd done Creative Writing at University. Having apparently imported this spurious non-subject from American campuses, it is now endemic in British Universities with whole courses of students becoming 'qualified' poets. As if the world needs more of them, producing further yardage of the precious poetry that they've have learned to make.
Michael Donaghy's book of essays attacks the industry in no uncertain terms but it has to be admitted that quite a number of my favourite poets earn their living, or a substantial part of it, by appearing on or administering creative writing programmes. J'accuse (amongst others) Sean O'Brien, Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Roddy Lumsden but the list goes on for a very long time. It's not a bad way for poets to be given patronage, these meaningless sinecures dispensing pointless wisdom to hapless wannabes. But on the other hand it's an utter waste of time and makes no sense at all.
These qualified poets, emerging from University clutching their degree certificates, are too numerous to be accommodated in the same industry. Their graduate collection, in most cases, begins gathering dust there and then and employment outside of the Creative Writing industry is the likely option all too soon.
But that is assuming that Creative Writing can be taught anyway. The impulse to write comes from within and the way to do it needs to form itself naturally, certainly by learning from examples but not those provided by a Professor or Junior Published Poet in a classroom. The poet develops by finding their own models to imitate or avoid as the case may be and will learn from their own mistakes. Even if the mentor does impart some wisdom or influence that only makes it worse because subliminally or unintentionally they are going to make the apprentice poet more like them, closer to their own image, potentially subverting whatever talent there might have been in the novice.
But, of course, in the end there's no point failing the young bards in their early steps towards immortality. They'll pass, I'm sure. But it must occur to them that they can't all be due to be the voice of their generation.
Some of them (and I have heard this first hand from a tutor) even need to be prompted with ideas of what to write about. Imagine that, 'Right, then, Hughes. If you can't think of anything to write about then why not try a few animal poems. A Fox, a Hawk, a Jaguar. Maybe then do a whole book of them about a Crow.' You never know what might happen.
So I do rather wonder what the point of it all is, all these reams of verses, and all that hope and belief. There is enough poetry being written without actively encouraging more. It would, of course, be an untenable and awful thing to do but the world might benefit more from a severe critic in each English department taking a look at the work of young poets at an early stage and telling them not to waste any more of their valuable time.