<p>what's your take on a degree from 'school of continuing studies/education' at top universities like harvard, columbia, and northwestern? do people, particularly those graduate from their regular programs look down upon?</p>
<p>Often, yes - and with good reason. Many top schools offer such programs as a service to the local communities, and offer a superior level of education when compared to community colleges and other typically local schools. Plus, you get to say that you have a degree from a top university! The downsides, however, are significant. </p>
<p>The format of the classes are generally poor, often 2-3 hours an evening once a week - which is impressively bad for actually learning anything. The faculty are often “adjunct” faculty, hired on a part-time basis from outside the university - eliminating the advantage of the world-class faculty and replacing it with experienced professionals who are too often poor instructors. Classes generally focus on lecture and discussion, minimizing labs and other practical work and generally skipping any advantages of the university’s facilities. The admissions process, meant to service the community, is based more on “ability to pay” than on rigorous preparation - lowering the quality of the classes so more can succeed as well as reducing the quality of your “college network”.</p>
<p>Just my opinion. Depending on your options, it may still be the best option, but I see these programs mostly as a cash cow for the schools - they pay sub-par faculty to teach badly designed classes during off-times while charging nearly their regular rate.</p>
<p>personally, would you rather have a degree from harvard’s school of continuing education or one from a second tier school like boston university or umass-amherst?</p>
<p>At Harvard’s extension school, the only graduate degree awarded is the “Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies.” While one may “focus” in a particular area, the degrees are not in specific disciplines, and are therefore worthless in academic contexts.</p>
<p>this is a decision that I struggled with</p>
<p>I could’ve gotten a Master’s degree from one of the ivies through the “school of continuing education” but I could not bear the thought of it not being from one the the real departments. As a result, I ended up pursuing a M.S. from the school of engineering at a lesser ranked and less prestigious school. At least I could confidently say that my degree is the real deal even though it’s not from one of the ivies.</p>
<p>in general, extension schools are an opportunity to learn a little something extra in your spare time. if i saw someone with a degree from one i would think nothing of it. there is no prestige with that at all. it would be 1000x better to go to a real university.<br>
in general i must agree with cosmicfish.</p>
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<p>While I can’t speak for the other schools, the Harvard continuing education programs are substantially cheaper than the regular Harvard programs - in fact, probably the cheapest of all of them.</p>
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<p>I don’t know that I would go that far as to call them ‘worthless’. Seems to me that plenty of people use continuing education grad programs to strengthen their credentials to be admitted to PhD programs.</p>
<p>[Program</a> in Molecular Microbiology](<a href=“http://www.tufts.edu/sackler/microbiology/faculty/coffin/members-JamieHenzy.html]Program”>http://www.tufts.edu/sackler/microbiology/faculty/coffin/members-JamieHenzy.html) </p>
<p>[Kimberly</a> Aldinger](<a href=“http://neurobiology.bsd.uchicago.edu/Students/Aldinger.html]Kimberly”>http://neurobiology.bsd.uchicago.edu/Students/Aldinger.html)</p>
<p>Furthermore, plenty of people who are obtaining master’s degrees have no intention of entering academia anyway, and are simply looking to bolster their cases for entering other careers.</p>
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<p>Who’s to say that a continuing education degree isn’t just as “real” as any other degree? If you followed the rules to obtain a degree, then you’ve earned a real degree. </p>
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<p>There isn’t any prestige going to most other supposedly “real” universities, for the fact is, most such universities are no-name, lower-tier schools. I agree with cosmicfish that the Ivy continuing education schools have neither the resources nor the selectivity that their ‘regular’ counterparts do - but they still have more resources and are probably most selective than most regular universities out there. True, most Harvard extension faculty are part-time adjunct faculty who aren’t top teachers (not that regular Harvard faculty are top teachers either, but never mind), but frankly, the same is true of the faculty at the vast majority of universities in the country. True, the admissions standards are relatively low as is the quality of the network - but, again, the same is true at the vast majority of other universities in the country. </p>
<p>Put another way: whatever deficiencies in resources may exist in the Harvard or Columbia continuing education, relative to the rest of the schools proper, they’re still going to offer more resources than, say, Northwest Missouri State University.</p>
<p>MS in Medical Informatics - Northwestern School of Continuing Studies vs Milwaukee School of Engineering
MS in in Bioethics- Columbia School of Continuing Education vs Medical College Of Wisconsin</p>
<p>same degree programs, one offered by a school of continuing education at a top 10 university, another by a regular school at a 3rd tier university. which would you choose?</p>
<p>sakky, i must disagree. i would consider going to a continuing education program only for a little extra curricular activity. they are not meant to be the same as university- even if you just consider the name that is obvious. they are generally for professionals that want to move up one step in their careers or for people looking to brush up on their language skills. further, and this is first hand knowledge, there is little if any selectivity associated with the program. also they are not going to offer more resources because the resources are not theirs to offer. frankly, i find your suggestion that other universities are not on par to a continuing education program at X university to be insulting and belittling to many wonderful programs that are overlooked in the lemming rush to attend a name brand. i have gone to big names and small names and i find that my education at both have been wonderful.</p>
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<p>Frankly, speaking, the same could be said for most other schools. Let’s be perfectly, if brutally, honest here - many (probably most) schools aren’t that hard. Many college are far more famous for their raucous partying atmosphere . Hence the lists such as the infamous Playboy Magazine and Princeton Review Top Party Schools.</p>
<p>[Party</a> school - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_school]Party”>Party school - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Furthermore, many college students don’t really want to study, and are really ‘double majoring in drinking and dating’ than in actually learning anything. Some schools are notorious for student bodies that don’t really study, but are there only because their parents expect them to attend and so are just looking for an easy degree. For example, regarding the University of Mississippi:</p>
<p>*“A lot of students don’t come here to get an education. That’s a major problem, but probably not the university’s fault,” /i]</p>
<p>[Top</a> 10 Schools Where Students (Almost) Never Study - MSN Encarta](<a href=“http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/college/Default.aspx?article=never_study]Top”>http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/college/Default.aspx?article=never_study)</p>
<p>Now, to be fair, obviously not all students are so slothful. And certainly if you want to earn top grades in a rigorous program, you must put your nose to the grindstone. But many students aren’t interested in doing well and certainly aren’t looking for a rigorous program. They just want to slide by with a C average in Leisure Studies (which is an actual program) on their way to an easy degree, and that’s not that hard to do. Certainly we can all recall some students who pursued easy subjects and put in little effort, yet graduated anyway. I surely can. They didn’t get top grades, but they still graduated. </p>
<p>I’ll give you an example. I knew a guy who went to Berkeley, but where the word “went” was nominal only, as he was actually running his own small business on a full-time basis (note, he was a re-entry student, being in his late 20’s) and would rarely ever attended class, nor would he put in any effort on the homework. Instead, all he did was pick and choose a program that offered courses in which he knew he wouldn’t have to really attend or do much of the assigned work and still pass. For example, one of his courses required two papers which were to be based on assigned books in the course syllabus, which instead of doing, he simply skimmed a bunch of user comments of those books on Amazon.com as well as a few SparkNotes and then reformulated what he read into his own words. {Ironically, he earned a higher grade on those papers than a few people who actually did the reading.} He wasn’t learning much, but he wasn’t trying to. He just wanted to pass those courses and graduate so that he could say, for business purposes, that he was a Berkeley graduate, which he eventually did. He didn’t graduate with top grades, but he didn’t care, he just wanted an easy degree. Berkeley is supposed to be a top school, so if this happens at Berkeley, this surely happens at other schools. </p>
<p>So, whatever you may want to say about the Ivy continuing education programs, they’re no worse than the programs at many other schools. After all, that guy I mentioned above was basically treating Berkeley as an extracurricular activity while spending most of his time running his business. </p>
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<p>So? There is little if any selectivity in many other schools also. How hard is it to get into a state school? Fort Hays State University (in Kansas) admits a whopping 96% of its applicants. Northwestern Oklahoma State University admitted 100% of its applicants for the 2008-2009 academic year - it was effectively open admissions. </p>
<p>So, again, whatever you want to say about the selectivity of the Ivy continuing education programs, at minimum, it’s no worse than that of many state schools. </p>
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<p>Absolutely 100% false. They have the greater university’s resources to offer. </p>
<p>Take the Harvard continuing education program. All of its students have full access to the entire Harvard library system, which is the largest university library system in the world. You can’t even enter the major libraries of the Harvard system such as Widener Library if you’re just a member of the general public, much less actually use the facilities within, for they require Harvard ID access. But Harvard continuing education students, because they are provided Harvard ID cards, have full access to every Harvard library, including check-out privileges and access to the rare book collection.</p>
<p>I think even more valuable than the physical assets is the wide-spread electronic database access that the library has to offer. As a simple example, Baker Library at Harvard Business School houses numerous Bloomberg Terminals, which cost about $1500 per month to rent, and is how Mayor Michael Bloomberg became a billionaire. But to utilize those terminals requires that you have walk-in access to Baker itself, which means you must be a Harvard student, continuing education students included. I suspect that even the regular (that is, non-continuing education) students at most schools don’t have access to Bloomberg Terminals, considering its expense. But Harvard CE students have that. </p>
<p>[Bloomberg</a> Terminal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_Terminal]Bloomberg”>Bloomberg Terminal - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>That’s just one example. Harvard CE students have access to a bevy of other resources, such as the Harvard athletic facilities, 24-hour access to the campus computer labs such as the two in the basement of the Harvard Science Center, and the campus-wide shuttle transportation service. Now, do they have the access to the complete range of resources as do the ‘regular’ Harvard students? No, of course not. But even the partial access they do have is still better than the full access at many other schools, for those schools simply don’t have many resources in the first place. For example, I am quite sure there is no comparison to be made between the resources available as a Harvard CE student and what you could get as a regular student at Northwestern Oklahoma State University.</p>
<p>While this isn’t immediately relevant to the topic at hand, I’d like to comment on one portion of cosmicfish’s post:</p>
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<p>This is actually the format of many classes at top-notch terminal/professional Master’s programs, and I find this to be an excellent way to learn. My undergraduate classes were an hour and a half long, normally held twice a week, and it’s amazing how little you can actually cover in what sounds like a decent amount of time. The three-hour blocks allow for extended discussions, cover a lot of material and give students more time to cover even more material on their own throughout the week, which is great for subjects where current (rapidly changing) events are routinely woven into classroom discussions.</p>
<p>I think it also bears mentioning that many ‘regular’ schools with standard daytime instructional hours feature shockingly poor teaching. </p>
<p>Take Caltech, the alma mater of my brother. He had a positive experience overall at the school, but he also freely admits that the quality of the Caltech teaching is quite low. Caltech faculty members are noted for their research abilities, and that intense research atmosphere is what attracts students. But not the teaching - being of such poor quality that my brother determined that he was better off simply skipping lecture and instead using that time to simply read the book, for lectures would only serve to make him more confused. Nor is my brother the only one saying it - the Princeton Review has noted Caltech to be the #1 worst teaching school. Heck, one Caltech grad student here (can’t remember his handle) noted that if you have a passion for a certain topic, the (ironically) worst thing you can do is take a class on that topic at Caltech, for doing so will only squelch that interest. </p>
<p>The point being that there are badly taught courses anywhere. I don’t know that the Ivy continuing education schools offer teaching that is any worse than do many other schools. The true heart of the problem has nothing to do with continuing education per se, but rather that most faculty at research universities are hired and promoted predominantly for their research potential, with teaching acumen as an afterthought at best.</p>
<p>^^ Concurred. I also wouldn’t write off adjuncts as poor instructors - this depends on the subject, of course, but their “day jobs” can prove exceptionally useful when it comes to providing a “real world” perspective in the classroom. I’ve had two adjunct professors who were both phenomenal. One would do backflips for his students if requested and would go out of his way to help out in any way he could; you could mention a book you’d like to read and he’d come in the next week with his personal copy, telling you you can keep it for however long you like. The other would go out of his way to include his students in his “day job”, and you came out of each class feeling like you’ve spent a year learning all the nitty gritty details of what he actually did for a living, which was pretty awesome stuff. Again, I understand that this is probably more useful for terminal/professional degrees, but adjunct faculty can still be exceptional instructors.</p>
<p>I think the important point here is “it depends”. It depends upon the student, it depends upon the program, and it depends upon the other students in Continuing Education classes. If the CE classes are administered through CE but the professors are full-time professors from the university, then there really isn’t much difference in teaching quality. When compared to non-Ivy universities, may CE programs at the Ivies are very selective. Also, we cannot forget about the students. If you are taking, say, a degree in international relations…would you rather sit in a class with older, professional, career experienced, internationally traveled people OR would you rather have youngish people who are sharp, driven, well read, little international travel, little experience doing much but going to college, and get completely drunk or high on most weekends?</p>
<p>It reminds me of the people who say a degree is “just a piece of paper”. Well, most of the people who say that don’t have degrees. But if someone does and they still have that attitude, then they completely wasted their opportunities at university. All this is to say, I would go to a CE program at an Ivy in a heartbeat, as long as I was prepared to make the most of it and the program didn’t have obvious problems.</p>
<p>Disclosure</p>
<p>I have an engineering masters from a “continuing ed” type section of a top-20 private university. My comments are based on my experiences and that of my co-workers, many of whom have gone through that and other nearby programs.</p>
<p>Faculty</p>
<p>There is never a guarantee of good teaching faculty - many “great” universities emphasize research to such an extent that teaching becomes quite poor. Also, some adjunct professors are quite accomplished in their fields and may be very good teachers. But all this shows is that there are no absolutes. In my experience the teaching quality of adjunct faculty is lower than that of the regular faculty. While they can and do offer insight on practical matters they are often weak on theory and struggle with the educational methodologies. They provide anecdotes and tips that a regular professor could not, but then skip over some of the fundamentals you need to be able to USE those tips.</p>
<p>Oh, and there is zero faculty overlap - none of the part-time faculty teach full-time students, nor vice versa. While in theory part-timers may take regular courses on a space-available basis, in practice spaces are non-existent and occur during working hours at locations 30+minutes from most work places.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, the majority of my grad classes were less challenging, less instructive, and in most cases covered less material than my undergrad classes. In some cases I can compare course to course, as I was required to take in grad school classes I had already completed as an undergrad - they were initially unsure about the amount of overlap and would not exempt me.</p>
<p>Format</p>
<p>I have never met anyone who thought the 3-hours once-a-week format was good. My sister in law has a masters in higher education and was hired by another major university to beat their educational practices in line with modern research. On her hit list - classes over 75 minutes at any level, because students just start to drop out. The only good reason for that format is when the subject matter just cannot be sub-divided, such as when a single proof requires 2 hours to perform. 60-75 minute classes 2 or 3 times a week is far superior.</p>
<p>With part-time programs the reason for the format is convenience - you (and the instructor) only waste one night a week instead of partially wasting two or three.</p>
<p>The format is survivable when it is the only thing you are doing - if you are a full-time student you are hitting the class early in the day, and may not have been much engaged beforehand. For part-timers, you are hitting this 3-hour class after an 8-10 hour workday. I had classes where the professor had to stop the class because most of us were asleep.</p>
<p>Resources</p>
<p>You do gain access to some university resources in their entirety - I could use the libraries, and career services and such. But for my school the teaching locations were overwhelmingly 10+ miles off-campus, to accommodate the student base. So great libraries 30 minutes away were just not a practical asset for regular use. Anything required regularly for classes (like lab equipment) was provided at the part-time locations and was therefore sparse and poor in quality.</p>
<p>Selectivity</p>
<p>Despite the fact that the school in question is very competitive for its full-time program, I have not yet heard of anyone with a 3.00+ gpa being denied from the part-time program. I have not been at all impressed by the caliber of my classmates, the majority of whom are within 2-5 years of getting their undergrad.</p>
<p>Comparison to other schools</p>
<p>It all depends on what your options are. If you are comparing a Stanford continuing ed program to a garbage program, Stanford is definitely coming out on top. But in my area there is a good state school that also offers a part-time program, and I found out recently that locally the state program is held in higher regard.</p>
<p>I would be very wary of travelling to an area because of a continuing ed program, but if you are looking for one in your area that Ivy might be your best shot - or not.</p>
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<p>I would still contend that you all are placing too heavy of an emphasis on a supposed correlation between full-time professorhood and teaching quality. I doubt that any such positive correlation exists within the research university environment, simply because professors are hired and promoted almost exclusively for their research ability, not their ability to teach. In fact, the correlation may well be negative.</p>
<p>I’ll give you an example. I remember sitting in my college math courses and wishing that I was being taught by my high school math teacher instead. Granted, he wasn’t an eminent mathematics researcher as those college professors were, but at least he could convey mathematics knowledge in a manner that was fun and interesting, something that those professors evidently could not. Nor do those courses require such research eminence. These were not advanced graduate seminars on the cutting edge of number theory or analysis. These were just the basic lower-division calculus, differential equation, and linear algebra courses that all engineering students were required to take, teaching basic mathematics concepts that have been well established for over a century. My old high school math teacher could have easily taught those courses, and done so better than the professors did. </p>
<p>To provide an historical example, take the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. Despite a well-documented lack of social skills and an already-bizarre personality, he nevertheless placed as an assistant professor of mathematics at Berkeley - the youngest professor ever hired by Berkeley at that time - whereupon he would earn universally negative teaching marks from the students for his poor classroom skills. But it didn’t matter because his research was widely considered to be brilliant, so much so that he was a leading candidate to win tenure, which meant that he would have fostered poor teaching upon future Berkeley math students for the rest of his life, if he hadn’t lost his sanity completely and become the Unabomber. </p>
<p>To be fair, obviously there are some highly prominent researchers who are also stellar teachers, Richard Feynman being perhaps the most famous example. But there is no necessary connection between the two. Some top researchers are excellent teachers, while others are terrible. Hence, I don’t see why the lack of full-time professors is necessarily a problem for CE programs. Like I said, I would have probably learned more if I had taken math courses from my former high school math teacher had he taught within a CE program.</p>
<p>sakky, i don’t understand where you are getting your information regarding ce. i also fail to understand why you are so fierce in your defense of all things ce while at the same time dissing every non-name brand school. what’s your deal? why is this such a personal issue for you?</p>
<p>Although this exact assertion was not made, I would like to clarify this. As an undergrad who attends UF, I can vouch that “top party school” does not equate to “easy” or consisting of a student body that is only interested in partying/drinking/dating etc. While yes, there is a portion of students that are singularly interested in those pursuits (it is college after all) there is a high amount of students that are very serious, and many of the classes reflect that. Note that while UF may be the top party school, it is nowhere to be found in the top 10 “schools where you never study.” </p>
<p>I just wanted to clarify so that a reader who read the post hastily would not be misled to believe that top party school = weak academic school.</p>
<p>Edit: This is in response to sakky’s post on the subject-quoting is not working for me at the moment apparently.</p>
<p>from my understanding, master programs at school of continuing studies are professional oriented. would getting a degree from this type of school be a waste of time should i plan to pursue a phd in the field. i’m not talking about master of liberal studies programs but an actual master of science/ master of arts ones. i’m working in the public sector and interested in these following programs;</p>
<ul>
<li>northwestern’s master of arts in public policy and administration</li>
<li>columbia’s master of science in fundraising management</li>
<li>johns hopkins’ master of arts in government</li>
<li>uchicago’s master of science in threat and response management</li>
</ul>
<p>For PhD study, a continuing ed degree is just worth less, not worthless. Most schools will still accept it against the credit load of the PhD, but may count it less if they actually try to match up courses. It is still better than nothing!</p>