Trying to understand Harrison Middleton University...

I've read through a number of threads on HMU and am still scratching my head about it.

Maybe someone has answer to one or all of these questions:

1) Are you stuck using the translations from The Great Books of the Western World or can you buy more modern versions with contextual and critical information? It seems to do without the scholarship on these writings would be madness.

2) Speaking of that scholarship, how far can you stray from The Great Books in your research?

3) I get the impression that you take an oral exam toward the end of the program and if you fail it -- too bad for you, you're dropped from the program. How hard is this oral exam?

Thanks.

 

Another thing I've been thinking about is the focus on only The Great Books. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the only reason there is a limited number of volumes included in the Great Books collection because the books were sold as a set by Encyclopedia Britannica? In other words, the selections are based, in part, on creating a reasonably sized and marketable set of books.

If that's the case, doesn't that seem like a rather arbitrary limitation for study?

I may be misinterpreting the program, so please let me know where I've gone wrong.

 

You could ask HMU or the dean about this....Just my .04 cents

 

Definitely could and probably will. A conversation here first might make any questions I ask more informed though.

 

EDIT: Nevermind.

 

Most doctoral programs require students to take "comps," a set of comprehensive examinations following their completion of the programs's required coursework. As for the other question...

"By using a combination of primary source documents from Great Books of the Western World, as well as other primary source documents from the Great Books Foundation publications, the Annals of American History, additional readings from the Bibliography of Additional Readings. The Doctor of Arts student will craft a program of study rich in primary sources crucial to the study of the great ideas. Using these primary source documents, the program of study focuses on extensive research activity on one or a combination of the great ideas: art, animal, aristocracy, art, astronomy and cosmology, beauty, being, cause, chance, change, citizen, constitution, courage, custom and convention, definition, democracy, desire, dialectic, duty, education, element, emotion, eternity, evolution, experience, family, fate, form, God, good and evil, government, habit, happiness, history, honor, hypothesis, idea, immortality, induction, infinity, judgment, justice, knowledge, labor, language, law, liberty, life and death, logic, love, man, mathematics, matter, mechanics, medicine, memory and imagination, metaphysics, mind monarchy, nature, necessity and contingency, oligarchy, one and many, opinion, opposition, philosophy, physic, pleasure and pain, poetry, principle, progress, prophecy, prudence punishment, quality, quantity, reasoning, relation, religion, revolution, rhetoric, same and other, science, sense, sign and symbol, sin, slavery, soul, space, state, temperance, theology, time, truth, tyranny and despotism, universal and particular, virtue and vice, war and peace, wealth, will, wisdom, world."
(from the HMU website)

It seems that you could use any source you wanted as long as you could justify it as being a valid, scholarly source.

 

This thread addresses some of your questions:

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/distance-learning-discussions/32564-harrison-middleton-doctor-arts.html

Like most Degreeinfo threads, this one is marred by frustrating digressions, but the first post does contain a lot of valuable information about the H-M DA program from one of its students, followed up by some questions at the bottom of the first page and on the second page.

 

Just noticed this thread. I will reply after a little rest, for I just got home.

 

Thomas-I am yet a new student and here is my answer for you:

The program is based solely on the GBWW. I have strayed away a little, as one will have to in order to construct papers, the Syntopicon will enable this.

As far as the oral exam, yes you are correct, it is a hit or miss type of exam, BUT there are always exceptions. My mentor told me that he has had some who are not orally savvy, and thus had to re-take the exam several times; with additional cost of course.

 

To digress...

Yes, as are most conversations everywhere. Too harsh Bill

Best wishes----Jim

 

Spoke with a to-be-unnamed representative of HMU and was very disappointed in the conversation. Questions were blatantly unanswered/dodged about the methodology. While many parts of the program intrigue me, I can't get my mind around depending on, rather than being inspired by, The Great Books of the Western World. It is too rigid for my tastes. Particularly when one benefits so greatly from context, annotation, academic criticism, and more modern translations.

I hope cravenco will update us about his experiences throughout the program. I think for many people this could be a very satisfying program.

 

I had the same reaction.

I'm interested in Greek philosophy, and notice that the Presocratics aren't included in the GBWW. That isn't really surprising, since most of these writings exist today only in fragments. Scholars approach them through kinda-canonical works like Diels' 'Fragmente der Vorsokratiker' (it collects the extant fragments) and the doxigraphical tradition (the Hellenistic and Roman-era secondary literature, which itself typically only exists in fragments). There's a huge modern literature on all of this as well. I'm currently reading Kathleen Freeman's classic 'The Presocratic Philosophers', a valuable commentary to the fragments in Diels in light of the doxographers. But inevitably, she has her own spin on interpreting things, so a serious student would have to consult other modern commentaries as well, along with the abundant periodical literature. My impression is that it might not be possible to study the Presocratic Greek philosophers at Harrison Middleton.

That's just one example that happens to be of interest to me. But the rest of the history of ideas starts to look similar when we examine things closely. Can we understand the famous authors without paying attention to the movements, tendencies, presuppositions and intellectual controversies of their own time? Can we ignore the lesser-known authors who come before, defining issues of interest, and after, reacting to our authors' work? Can we shrug off comtemporary correspondence and memoirs of our canonical authors by people who were familiar with their thinking and with them personally?

And obviously, those of us with interests in comparative and non-Western intellectual history will have problems with the GBWW approach simply by definition, since it doesn't include non-Western authors and texts.

My reaction to H-M is that I'm just not sure that the GBWW-centric approach would allow me to pursue the history of ideas in the way that I would like to pursue it. That's not to say that H-M might not be successful in its own terms or that it wouldn't be great for students who are more in tune with its approach.

 

In other words, instead of adopting a "one size fits all" and joining the rush towards being yet another degree mill, HMU offers a unique program that fits only a particular niche market?

How quaint. Oddly, it seems to be working for them and HMU appears to the casual observer to top the wish list of fantasy degrees on this board.

 

I'm glad you said this because I had the same reaction.

 

Everything you said after "In other words, ..." had nothing to do with what Bill or I said.

Assuming you aren't just being facetious, could you please develop your theory that critically analyzing primary sources with modern translations, annotations, and academic criticism represents a "one size fits all" approach? This puzzles me.

Also -- why so defensive?

 

I am pursuing it for personal enrichment.

 

You lost me with that one, Jacob.

 

HMU (particularly the DA) seems to be the program that I see mentioned most often on this board when people bring up "programs I wish I could do" etc. That's what I was referring to.

 

Wasn't being defensive "TJ", but I find it odd that you are antagonistic towards an institution that doesn't fit your idea of what an online university should be.

In an age where so many fly-by-night "universities" are popping up on the web, HMU retains their niche by stubbornly refusing to fit anyone else's idea of what they should be (or teach).

I get the impression from my interactions with them that they really don't care what anyone thinks of them. They're a proud non-profit, stubbornly sticking to the idea that the root of liberal education is (in part) based on the set of books that Dr. Adler defined as "The Great Books of Western Civ". Since they are owned by the Great Books Foundation, I'm guessing that's not going to change anytime soon.

Believe me, do your homework and I'm confident that you'll discover an institution that will be what you'd like them to be. I'm also confident in stating that HMU probably isn't it.

 

Oh, ok.

So I wonder why they just dont do it.