This REALLY caught my attention!!!!!!!!!!!! Harvard. Is there ANY way in anybody's opinion that Harvard will ever waive the semester residency requirement or has anybody out there ever petitioned to have it waived? Why the requirement of one semster? Snobbishness? This would be an incredible coup for DL.
Well, they now offer two of their 32 s/h grad certificates fully online, which is a change (even though their faq hasn't been updated). I have to think they will eventually offer the ALM with limited residency (less than a semester). Tony P.S. How's that for a very qualified position? LOL
Tony, Which 2 certificates are the ones completely online? I could not find anything on their website about this.
It's exceedingly unlikely. The requirements for the degrees and certificates are subtly but significantly different in a number of ways, most having to do with interacting with Harvard faculty. I can't imagine the university awarding a degree to someone who didn't have at least a semester's residence, and I know many faculty who would object to such a change.
You could do a single Summer semester, which is less than two months, then the balance online, although this would only be available for the MLA in IT degree. That's as close as I bet Harvard will ever get to pure online. But really, if someone got within a class or two of their Masters at the most famous university in the world and couldn't find some way to fanangle one long Summer vacation, shame on them. What boss or company wouldn't find a way to let a person bend a rule and accumulate two or three years of vacation to finish their degree at HARVARD? Hey, if a person worked for a company so asinine and inflexible as to refuse that request, the employee should just quit, finish the Masters, and go to work for a competitor--who would likely consider it a coup to hire a newly-minted Harvard grad.
It depends Well, while I somewhat agree with you it depends on a few other things as well, no matter what university one is attending. In my case my company is as flexible as they come but being a Financial Advisor I have clientele that I must attend to on a daily basis and I don't think that a two month leave of absense would set well in these markets. After 22 years the one thing that I have learned is that the key to growing and maintaining a practice is not to lose touch with your clients. Too much competition out there. Secondly there is the issue of family. I have a wife and two sons, one being a 1 year old. A two month leave would not set well with ME let alone my wife. While I would love a Harvard degree, family and eating come first.
Re: It depends I have a larger question: you've got the CV to dream of anyway: 4 degrees, including a JD, an MBA and an MS? Some from nationally-known schools? Come on, what are you trying to do? Leave us completely in the dust? Anyway, I know where you're coming from, I've got a wife and small kids also, and I've also got some clients that are rather shrill with me if I don't tend to their needs as well. But if you really want the Harvard MLA in IT, and you're quite a tech-head and can handle it, then start taking your classes online when the next term starts, then drag the wife and kids along when you go to Cambridge in 2 years or so for your 7 week residency--that's a beautiful area, I'll bet they'd love it, an extended vacation. As for the clients, there's always a cell phone, online, etc. I bet they'd be very understanding when they heard the situation. If you were advising me on my finances, I'd want you to complete that Harvard degree, who knows what you might learn that would benefit me as your client? I'd be willing to have you online or via phone. For that matter, they do have online video conferencing nowdays. If you have a few good clients that just can't do without seing your bright shining face as well as hearing your chipper voice, you could surely set it up. If you really want that Harvard degree, you can make it happen and simultaneously accomodate just about everyone. Just a thought.
The residency requirement is almost a decoy. If they dropped it today the problem remains. There are enough non-DL core courses to warrant at least 1 (very full) semester on campus. If the courses are not offered concurrently then you are stuck doing additional semesters. Don't be fooled by the summer school. Their offerings are extremely limited, DL or otherwise. Highly improbable you could pull that off. Just wait until these classes go distance? Even more unlikely. In the ALM in IT, for example, the courses make heavy use of the case method. Casing doesn't easily lend itself to distance. I'm sure Harvard has explored the idea of eliminating the residency requirements. But even if the cultural hurdles are overcome, not much is gained. In other words, its not worth the effort.
I haven't checked this for some time but the Summer courses were also substantially more expensive than the regular extension courses. If someone was planning on loading up on Summer courses in order to blitz through some "residency requirement" I think they'd accumulate a hefty tuition bill. Aside from all that, I'd like to offer an opinion on the overall ALM program. I do not think of this program as a "DL program with a residency requirement." Rather, it is an extension program with some online course offerings. I do not believe that it was conceptualized as a DL program and I do not believe it will ever be offered entirely through the online modality. Someone asked, "Is this snobbishness?" The answer is, "Perhaps." Jack
It might depend on the field pursued. I've looked into some fields that had no summer courses offered whatsoever and you're absolutely correct, but other fields are represented by plenty of summer offerings. For examp, there are 8 graduate government courses being offered this summer at Harvard. Of course, you couldn't take them all and there's also the matter of the proseminar and a few other requirements to get the MLA, but all-in-all, I don't think it would be that challenging to obtain the MLA in Gov't via summers plus a couple online classes per year. If your point is, however, that one couldn't manage to pull off an MLA in a non-IT field via distance plus one summer, however, I'd say you're quite right, that would likely be impossible, and for all their talk of increasing online offerings, they're still pretty sparse with the exception of IT. As for the price, I believe the summer courses are half again more than the standard extension offerings: something like $2100 versus $1400, more expensive, but still only about $500 and change per credit hour, perhaps the greatest value in American education.
