Harvard Extension School

I doubt that the undergrad students in the doctoral schools aero-programs got to learn bernoulli equations in the morning from a PhD test pilot/astronaut and then test 'em out on a glider in the afternoon.

Just to make certain bernoulli knew what he was talking about.

He did.

 

Harvard ALM like Columbia's MA....

It's worth mentioning that Columbia University has an MA in liberal studies (with various specializations in the humanities) has similar admission requirements.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsas/ap/main/pages/lib-stud-prg-list/index.html

Not quite "open," since you have to apply with an essay, etc. just like Harvard, only in advance instead of three courses in. But otherwise, it's about as open as Harvard's ALM. Does this make Columbia's any more prestigous than Harvard's? I think not.

There are, however, four structural differences between the two programs. Harvard's succors greater specialization (which is very unusual for the Master of Liberal Arts degree) - Columbia's, greater breadth. And the latter simply puts students into available classes (since they offer many more regular grad classes in evenings and Saturdays).

Columbia requires only the briefer "research paper" in lieu of Harvard's thesis. Accordingly, Columbia discourages the degree as a steping stone to further education, while Harvard acknowledges this utility.

Clearly, they serve similar populations but with different philosophies about how to achieve serious educational ends.

There are indeed a lot of prestige schools offering the Master's of Liberal Arts - Stanford, Nothwestern , Georgetown, Chicago, Wash U St. Louis, Vanderbilt - but virtually all discourage devoting more than 50% of study to one field as Harvard does. However, the diversity of extension faculty involved - a Divinity School prof's teaching Columbian conquest history, or a Med School prof's teaching environmental history, for instance - may make up for this seeming uniqueness.

 

I will finally have my B.S. next year, and I am starting to consider the next step. Although my current degree track is I.T., I am looking to switch the focus towards environmental studies; as such, Harvard is looking pretty good. Is anyone else currently going or have gone through this program? It would be nice to get a personal perspective on it.

 

Harvard's ALM seems to be "open admission" because it admits those who've already successfully completed three of their courses. It's been repeatedly said that their courses are VERY rigorous and that not everyone passes them, so if a student has already proven that s/he is of "Harvard calibre" by successfully completing some of their courses, what's the big deal about admitting him/her? Why does admitting all such students ("open admission" for those that have already been pre-screened) have to necessarily make the Extension School's ALM less prestigious?

 

Which in turn are essentially open admissions. Every university program requires that students pass its courses in order to graduate.

I don't think that there is any big deal. My only objection to Harvard Extension is how some of the program's more vocal proponents try to act as if it were some kind of easy-entry back-door to what's presented as if it were a title of academic nobility.

Well, for one thing, that's precisely what defines schools as 'fourth tier'.

Many universities out there are rather easy entry, attract lots of part-time students who are trying to work their classes around their jobs, then suffer tremendous drop-out rates. That bumps them right down in the rankings. I do agree that it's an entirely legitimate educational model though. Most of my own higher education has been in these kind of programs.

What defines schools as 'top tier' in USNews' estimation is high initial selectivity so that the student cohort is an elite bunch to begin with. Then these students study in close proximity to one another full-time, interacting very intensely in a highly stimulating intellectual climate. Finally, a prestige program has to have high yield, with few dropouts or stragglers that take too long to earn their degrees.

Contradictions occur when programs that would be lower-tier if they stood alone become riders on the name of higher-tier universities employing a very different educational model.

My 2003 USNews rankings book tells me that Harvard had 6,650 full-time and no part-time undergraduates. 90% of them were in the top 1/10 of their high-school class and 3/4 of them have SATs above 1380. One quarter of Harvard undergraduaes have SATs above 1570 (1600 is a perfect score.) Then there's the social class aspect. Many of these kids come from America's wealthiest homes and many are children of business and government leaders. (When employers favor Harvard graduates, one common reason is the high level networking and contacts that they bring.)

Whatever problems exist seem to arise when proponents of prestige universities' extension divisions suggest that the schools' names mean that extension students somehow equate to the above characteristics.

 

I'm knee deep in the ALM/IT-IMS. I'd be happy to discuss over DegreeInfo's direct messaging.

 

In two recent threads (this one and the one about the most prestigious DL degree) there has been some back and forth regarding Harvard College, Harvard Extension, etc. Regardless of your opinion on those matters you may be interested to read the small article in the Aug.29 issue of USNews and World Report (it's the one with the "America's Best Colleges" cover) entitled Is Harvard Overrated? The article cites problems with the core curriculuum, inaccessability of professors and the quality of instruction and advising. Despite this Harvard was rated #1 in the rankings listed in the same issue (tied with Princeton). Here's the breakdown of the top 10.

1. Harvard
Princeton
3. Yale
4. University of Pennsylvania
5. Duke University
Stanford University
7. California Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
9. Columbia University
Dartmouth College

No big surprises.
Jack

 

Other than Harvard, do any other "Ivy League" or top Colleges offer extension school options.

Name recognition is one thing which bothers me about online learning. i'm swaying towards a local affiliate of Texas A&M or UT System online MBA programs, purely because the name is well known. Although I may get a similar education at Ashworth or some other place, the name recognition (or lack of it) is something which imfluences my decision.

I'd be delighted to get a MBA from a top school via extension school, if the price was right!

 

Dartmouth has a Masters in Liberal Arts that's part of an extension and can be pursued over summers PT; Columbia has an extension program with online degrees or certifications; UC-Berkeley has a number of Extension program certificates available online; NYU has an extension program (but I don't think they call it that) that offers online Masters, such as the Masters in Management and Systems or some such name (Pricey, but well-regarded); Johns Hopkins offers extension school courses for PT learners, and some degrees available online in health care management (I believe a Masters); Tulane offers some online degrees via extension; someone told me that Georgetown does as well, several programs including even a Doctorate in Liberal Arts or some odd-sounding title like that via extension (but not online).

If you're really stuck on the DL MBA, you don't have to go extension, you can go through the regular programs. Top DL MBAs online (note: some require extensive residencies: i.e. a few weeks here and there): Duke, Emory, Purdue, Arizona State, Indiana, Florida, Syracuse, UMass, UConn (MS in Accounting). Not all of these are Ivy (though Duke's awful close), but all are solid "impact on the resume" schools. You also have some fair-to-midland schools in the UT System & A&M system that offer online MBAs very inexpensively for the DL or online learner. I'd start there, quite frankly.

 

Big surprises in this Top 10 listing are: Where are Brown and Cornell?

 

11. Washington University in St. Louis
12. Northwestern University
13. Cornell University
Johns Hopkins University
15. Brown University
University of Chicago
17. Rice University
18. University of Notre Dame
Vanderbilt University
20. Emory University
Univ. of California-Berkeley
22. Carnegie Mellon University
23. Georgetown University
University of Virginia
25. UCLA
Univ. of Michigan-Ann Arbor

I think I'll stop there.
Jack

 

Gosh, I always thought that Top 10 meant the Ivies plus two tokens that the Ivies will admit are reasonably okay schools. But Ivy League schools at numbers 13 and 15? Good grief!

 

I'm a little surprised about Cornell, but Brown has always been considered the weaker sister of the Ivies.

Of course, "weaker" being strictly relative here! It's a far better school than I've ever attended.

 

I thought UPenn had that honor!

 

They aren't the best Ivy, but they're certainly helped along by the prestige of the Wharton School of Business. That alone puts them above Brown and Cornell and such.

 

Is Williams underrated?

The current US News Rankings actually list three "number one" schools for undergraduates. Harvard and Princeton are tied for "number one" in the "National Universities" category. And a third school, Williams, is "number one" in the "Liberal Arts Colleges" category.

Williams (and schools like it) compare quite favorably with the Ivies at the undergraduate level, if such issues as the core curriculum, accessability of professors, and quality of instruction and advising are considered.

 

Of the top undergrad schools listed here, and other top 20 schools how many of these have distance learning programs?

 

I know of a few top schools: Columbia, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Emory, Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, NYU, MIT, Georgia Tech, Wisconsin-Madison

Some of these programs have lots of restrictions and residencies and most of them are horribly expensive.

 

So you're saying that Harvard's academic value has nothing to do with what you do at Harvard, only with who you are and what you did before you studied there?

That's just asinine.

 

BTW, my family includes a grandfather who studied at Harvard, a distinguished Harvard professor of psychology, a Nobel laureate professor at the med school, and the donors of a wing at one of the Harvard teaching hospitals.

I'm networked up the ying yang. I chose my program because I wanted to learn something.