Don't misrepresent where you went to school.

[brodie]

If the prestige of a college matters to an employer, then they likely know the difference between a prestigious school and its extension or professional school or an entirely separate school within the same system that has lower admissions standards. Those employers do not like to be lied to or misled. You probably could have gotten the job based on your work experience if you hadn't lied or fudged the truth.

If an employer does not know the difference between the prestigious or flagship school and its offshoots, then prestige likely doesn't matter to them. Most of their employees probably graduated from non-prestigious schools.

If you went to UT - El Paso, then that is what should be on your resume. Don't just put University of Texas. If you went to Texas A&M - Commerce, don't just put Texas A&M. If you went to CSU Global Campus, then don't omit "Global Campus." If you went to Harvard Extension, then Harvard tells you how to list your degree appropriately to avoid confusion. 

Also, if you completed a non-credit certificate at Columbia, then don't tell everyone that you studied business at Columbia. Tyra Banks got herself into trouble by making people believe that she was attending Harvard Business School when it was only an executive certificate program. 

A politician also got himself into hot water when he wasn't straight forward about attending Harvard Extension. All of this came to mind because this cop tried to brag to me about getting accepted to Harvard. It turns out he went to Harvard Extension which does not have competitive admission. He was just trying to make it seem like he was better than me because we don't exactly get along. Nice try. I know the difference. 

As somebody who has personally on-boarded somebody claiming an HES degree as a HGSAS degree, I can tell you that this is pure bullwack. What a complete waste of time and energy her fraud was. I wasted a ton of time looking into the issue. Harvard’s own standards have always made it clear to grads that their HES degree is not a Harvard College degree. Period… It’s willful ignorance on the part of HES grads that it will be overlooked. Anyone who doesn’t know how to represent an HES degree on a resume is a liar.

It happens every few years where my firm gets an HES grad misrepresenting their degree. The latest “MA Anthropology – Harvard,” which after a little checking (we have learned to ALWAYS be suspicious), ends up being an MLA with a concentration from HES. When confronted they always plead ignorance and make the same BS argument about how they took classes on campus at Harvard taught by faculty and blah, blah, blah. Some are otherwise good candidates, but they are still committing resume fraud. I would take an honest UMass or UConn grad over HES any day. Had they listed their true HES credential on the resume and sold it in the interview, they would be fine.

http://blogs.harvard.edu/lamont/2017/11/...l-degrees/

http://floridapolitics.com/archives/2199...st-harvard

While I accept this premise, I think it can easily get pretty tricky especially the further away you get from the rather well established "extension" or  "Global Campus" programs and branch campuses of various reputes. Those are cut and dry, Harvard Extension isn't really Harvard as most people imagine it, Purdue University-Calumet isn't really Purdue in an even more real sense, and UNC-Asheville is even less related to UNC-Chapel Hill than any of the rest. This is straightforward, but that isn't always the case. 

Take for example the University of Iowa. A name brand school that is mildly prestigious insofar as any school with a billion dollar endowment, lots of famous alumni, at least one top ranked grad program, and a 70,000 seat football stadium has prestige)... a degree from Iowa isn't Harvard, but it should open some doors. Iowa operates an online/off campus program for non-traditional students through it's University College, this program is only open to students who are over age 22 with some college credit and provides them with a general studies program to earn a degree. This is very similar to some of the programs you mention, and I cannot imagine it is competitive. However the University of Iowa lumps the University College in with it's other academic units (College of Liberal Arts, College of Education, etc.), someone earning a degree from the college gets to go to Iowa City and graduate with everyone else. What are those graduates? Are they Iowa alumni? A lower class of Iowa alumni? Does one general studies degree from Iowa mean more or less to grad schools and employers (especially outside of the state of Iowa) than another? Should these people put "University College" on their resume even though you wouldn't put "College of Liberal Arts and Sciences"?

And then, of course, there are those employers who don't believe in the value of any degree not earned in person. If I attend Arizona State online, should I mention that? Some employers may think it's misleading to claim I went to Arizona State if I've never set foot in Tempe. Should I ensure that they have the opportunity to weed me out on that basis? This isn't the same as being dishonest, but it gets to some of the same issues more broadly about the way that this can be kind of arbitrary in certain cases.