<p>A young colleague of mine recently left to do his one semester of on-campus classes at Harvard for his undergraduate degree through the extension school. He will continue working his current job remotely from Cambridge while he completes the on-campus requirements, then he will return home to complete the rest of his program online. Eventually, he will fly back to join the class of 2015 at the commencement ceremony in Harvard yard, a Harvard grad at last.</p>
<p>This young man matriculated to HES straight from high school to get a Harvard degree at a fraction of the cost with, according to him, “all the same benefits of the suckers who killed themselves to get in via the narrow gate and impoverished themselves or their parents in the process.” As far as he’s concerned, he has the same education as anyone who graduates from Harvard college, and woe to anyone who argues otherwise.</p>
<p>I recently saw this link in a thread on the Parents board in the college forum and have been thinking about it ever since in light of my colleague’s strategy:</p>
<p>Obviously, students who go through the extension school are not participating in or benefitting from all that the residential experience provides, and the online courses that they take are not all delivered by Harvard faculty (and even “Harvard faculty” covers a lot of ground in this program), and the program offerings are limited. I’m familiar with the extension school from my days in Boston (and you can check it out here</a>) and what it does and doesn’t offer BUT, in the end, the degree is from one of the schools of Harvard University. It is a legitimate Harvard degree, and those who don’t look too closely at the diploma will be none the wiser.</p>
<p>So, BS parents (and especially those who want an Ivy League degree for their kids), how do you feel about this? Why not just let your kid bypass all the BS and go straight to the head of the HES line? For those who want the Harvard name, there it is, cheap and shiny—and you get the commencement photos to prove it.</p>
<p>Which is why some folks consider a NESCAC education superior… Or you could attend one of my good friend’s classes (a Georgetown English prof) in Doha, Qatar with no admissions pressure at all, other than your checkbook, and emerge with a Georgetown diploma! The Harvard “scheme” pales in comparison to what many private and state universities are doing overseas to increase income with little to no impact on their “brand name”. Sorry to be cynical but many schools have been “selling” diplomas for years at this point.</p>
<p>Your diploma from Harvard and your resume will say “Harvard Extension School.” Don’t you think any employer will look? However, I guess you can join the Harvard Club locally and no one will be the wiser. Fortunately for HES graduates, most people put on their resumes “AB, Harvard” and that’s it. Then, the back office of the firm checks in with Harvard and Harvard confirms, yes, he/she graduated and that’s all Harvard will probably say. The employer has done his due diligence.</p>
<p>So, yeah, something in me agrees with the poster that HES is truly a backdoor to Harvard halo and if you can do it, it makes complete and total sense.</p>
<p>Plus: all that BS about all the connections and friends you make at Harvard? You can make up for that ASAP at the local Harvard Club.</p>
<p>I took a couple of Harvard extension classes while living in Boston years ago, and they were fabulous classes full of interesting folks. Much better than my undergrad days. I have had some friends attending the extension program too…we can’t say a negative thing. We all enjoyed the excellent classes, inspiring faculty, great discussions. If you live in the greater Boston area, worth checking out.</p>
<p>On-line courses seem a different thing, sorry have no experience there.</p>
<p>Please understand, a degree from the extension school IS a legitimate Harvard degree and DOES legitimately confer all the rights and privileges of a Harvard alum. Our local Harvard Club welcomes its extension school members. Harvard is not “selling” diplomas in any way that tarnishes its brand. This program was designed to extend the resources of Harvard University to the local community and beyond and to provide a good education using those resources to the non-traditional student. The problem as I see it (if there is one) is the student who tries to use the diploma in a “non-traditional” way.</p>
<p>I completely agree ChoatieMom, as someone who had an excellent experience working fulltime and concurrently working towards an online Master’s degree from a “big-name” university. I had an amazing educational experience and benefitted greatly from the program. I simply wanted to point out that the extension degrees are not a big deal compared to the outsourcing of undergraduate diplomas overseas. While many who attend Georgetown U have worked incredibly hard for admissions to the undergraduate school, I wonder how excited they would be knowing that they could have simply “signed up” for the same degree in Italy, Turkey or Qatar? In my opinion, there’s a big difference in expanding opportunities for local non-traditional students and “selling” a brand name. Only my opinion here.</p>
<p>You can delude yourself into thinking you are a Harvard grad, but you won’t have had all the wonderful experiences that a real Harvard student has. Your best resources are going to be the people who you went to school with, not someone you meet at the Harvard Club! You will already have many great connections from the people you went to boarding school with.</p>
<p>And, you won’t be listing AB, Harvard. It will be ALB, Harvard. There are other ways to get privileges at the Harvard Club. Unfortunately, plenty of folks will only see the H name. On the other hand, the ones you might be out to impress will get the difference. Your choice.</p>
<p>If something is too good to be true, it probably is. HES is another revenue generating source for the university. I looked at the courses, most of the faculty looks like adjunct. Outsourcing within the country. I rather have a degree from a state university honors college where at least the regular professors teach.</p>
<p>I don’t know how much revenue is being generated. When my D was 14 and didn’t have any English classes at our local school, she considered taking a class in Enlightenment Literature through HES…not an online class, but one that would have required me to drive to Boston once a week. It couldn’t have been expensive because it was viable for us. She ended up doing a writing course through a different university that was more like an old fashioned correspondence course.</p>
<p>HES seems more like a community service, providing continuing ed for adults and enrichment for kids at a reasonable price. I really don’t think anything nefarious is afoot.</p>
<p>Nothing nefarious on Harvard’s part at all but, in addition to “community service”, Harvard confers both bachelors and masters degrees via this program, and there are definitely nefarious intentions on the part of some of those who try to pass themselves off as Harvard College grads relying on the ignorance of companies not familiar with the program. I did not mean for this topic to go where it is going (God bless CC’ers); I meant to discuss whether or not BS parents would consider this way to a Harvard diploma as an acceptable alternative for their kids if they covet the name above the experience.</p>
<p>But, I must admit, I am particularly rankled by my young colleague’s comments and attitude because I was a hiring manager in Boston many years ago, and this issue came up again and again when job candidates, who may have been perfectly qualified for an opening, did not feel the need to clarify that their degree was from the extension school when the interviewer specifically asked about their experience at Harvard College. These candidates were always passed over based on what my company felt was an integrity issue regardless of skill fit, but many candidates would stand firm on their belief that there should be no distinction because, in the early days, Harvard did not formally specify the correct way to present an HES degree on formal correspondence. Now, the university is very specific in this regard:</p>
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<p>Anyway, back to my original curiosity. Given that HES is, indeed, providing a legitimate Harvard degree with very egalitarian access, is it good enough for your kid or is a Harvard degree only meaningful if you can also boast of entrance through the front door?</p>
<p>There seems to be a lot of pressure on Harvard Extension from the other Harvard Colleges to mark the Extension degrees with the somewhat stigmatized title “Degree in Extension Studies” and the degree earned as either an ALB or an ALM rather than a BA or MA. That said, the Extension degree is a legitimate Harvard degree from a legitimate Harvard college. (Harvard is comprised of several “colleges” each within a specific area for those unfamiliar with the school).</p>
<p>Funny anecdate #1 - recently back in New England, met a fascinating a Brazilian-American woman and her German husband. After a couple of minutes she announced, “You didn’t go to Harvard!”, and I, a bit dumbfounded replied, “No, why do you ask?”, “Because you didn’t mention it in the first two minutes of conversation!”</p>
<p>Funny anecdote #2 - just dropped off our son at his NE prep school and went to the parent mixer. Met a lovely couple and introduced ourselves. After 30 seconds or so the gentleman asks me, “so, what do you do?” and appears a bit bored as I answer the question then responds, without prompting, “I teach at Harvard…”. Chuckle. Gal from #1 proven right in spades, at least with this particular gent.</p>
<p>The classes may well be good, but this is not a good strategy for adding “Harvard” to the resume. The word “extension” would be an immediate tipoff so the applicant would need to omit that for the strategy to work. </p>
<p>But then if you want to be considered for jobs that are aimed at recent grads of top-ranked schools, you will be interviewing with others who went to Harvard or whose friends did and they will ask what house you lived in, and when you cannot answer, they will realize the deception.</p>
<p>And if you want to be hired as an executive later in life, you will learn that professional recruiters call schools to reference-check degrees, and they will almost certainly catch the difference.</p>
<p>A better strategy is to go to your local state college, perform spectacularly, and be admitted to a Harvard graduate school. In many professions that carries even more importance.</p>
<p>There’s legit and there’s legit. Absolutely, H is the overarching umbrella for HES. That doesn’t make the programs equal. In addition to my own degrees, I have a certificate from a multi-year program at a college that’s tops in its field- a known name. On receiving that, I was told by the Big Dog that I would be considered a grad of that college. Sure, for fundraising and alumni things, I get the mailings; there are on-going services available to me. I don’t try to “fool” folks that I went through the same rigors as an undergrad kid does. </p>
<p>I’m not a bs parent. It IS an interesting discussion.</p>
<p>IntlDadof2, in contrast to your story #2, I have a friend whose uncle is a professor at MIT. When anyone asks him what he does, he just says that he is a math teacher.</p>
<p>So it sounds like a shortcut to a Harvard degree? With such a degree, if one keeps trying, chances are at least some employers/colleagues/whoever is the stake holder will be “fooled” and one will benefit. Except the burden is that you know what you are doing if you are consciously doing it, and you carry that burden for the rest of your life.</p>
<p>After looking at the teachers backgrounds, I don’t know why any one would want this degree. They are all hired guns, not harvard profs. </p>
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<p>Yes it is. They advertise heavily and the class sizes are huge, which translates into $$. They didn’t build their endowment by doing community service, this is a private college just like the private BSs.</p>
<p>My friend from undergrad worked as a staff member at Harvard and got her master’s from the Extension School. I think it was a great way for her to earn her master’s while working full-time. Many staff members do this.</p>
<p>As for undergrad, my impression is that non-traditional age students are the main target, although I don’t see why young people couldn’t do it, too. But it depends on the student and their desired experience. A young person living in the Boston area who is living independently and working full-time with no desire to live in the residence halls would be a good candidate, whereas a student lazing around at home with Mom and Dad while taking a class here and there online might not be.</p>
<p>If I was advising my daughter about this topic, I’d encourage her to look into the Associate’s degree program and to find out if she could complete one from HES while still in high school to give herself a credit boost (and maybe also a bit of a prestige boost) when applying to colleges, but I’d also remind her that the probability of her entering Harvard University as a full-time, “normal” residential student after having completed it is still in the low single digits. However, if she’s looking for an associate’s to complete to get ahead and make some room in her undergraduate schedule to study abroad, etc., then why not HES as opposed to our local community college?</p>
<p>This reminds me of the time over a hundred years ago when, then, Harvard president, the esteemed (some would say ‘notorious’), Charles Eliot dreamed up the Harvard Classics – a collection of 88 (?) books comprising all the greatest ones ever written (hence, “Classics”), that, if read thoroughly, would confer on ‘everyman’ an education equal to any (including Harvard).</p>
<p>What noblesse oblige to think so much of the teeming masses that one would conceptualize such a thing! These are great books indeed – from the ancient Greek philosophers right down to Darwin – and I have no doubt that digesting them would certainly raise one’s conscious being to undreamed of heights. Maybe even high enough to outgrow the Harvard ‘shell’ – almost as if there were life, there were great thinkers even before Harvard tried to monopolize it…</p>
<p>“Anyway, back to my original curiosity. Given that HES is, indeed, providing a legitimate Harvard degree with very egalitarian access, is it good enough for your kid or is a Harvard degree only meaningful if you can also boast of entrance through the front door?”</p>
<p>ChoatieMom: Is there a way to get in through HES and then transfer to the “regular” University? Because that would be fantastic!</p>
I rather have a degree from a state university honors college where at least the regular professors teach.</p>