Harvard Extension School Students Rally for Degree Name Change

[Jonathan Whatley]

Sorry to hear you are going through this but you knew the type of degree you signed up for which was a Harvard Extension School degree which was clearly outlined as a Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) in Extension Studies , Field: XXX. People can’t play the victim when they knew what they signed up for , you as the student / customer had a choice to choose a different university if you didn’t like the degree or how the degree name sounded.

"play the victim" is needlessly loaded language.

The fact that HES students accepted a condition doesn't disqualify them from arguing for a change to the condition, especially for future students who will come after them. Indeed, although it means they're not impartial, it suggests they have some insight about the condition and its consequences.

People attend Harvard Extension School to try to gain a back door to Harvard university and gain the prestige that is associated with it. 

I spent years at Harvard Extension as an on-campus student in a non-degree program. I saw hundreds of fellow non-degree students attend for the quality of the courses, mostly in science, and their credential value on a transcript without seeking a degree. Most of my classmates were nontraditional-age adult post-baccalaureate pre-med and other pre-health students. (I served with and was eventually president of our pre-health student society, where we organized extra-curricular programming including med school visits and other academic, social, and volunteering events and activities.)

Harvard Extension also offers a number of programs with no direct and sometimes even no close counterpart in other Harvard schools. For example, the only master's in journalism at Harvard is the Master of Liberal Arts with field of study in Journalism at Harvard Extension.

We all know Harvard extension school is the easiest Harvard school to get accepted to which has an open door policy for new students. They typically will allow students to be conditionally accepted and require them to take a few classes with an average of a B to gain full acceptance. Compared to the other schools at the university they have a competitive application process which vets out candidates in an intense selection process only allowing the best of the best to study at Harvard University.

Harvard Extension pre-admission courses are more intense and selective than many university selection processes!

It's true and significant that students at other Harvard graduate schools are just about uniformly stellar.

Most students at Harvard College, the traditional undergraduate program, are also stellar. There is a lower end there worth acknowledging.

Harvard College also has the limitation of consisting of materially 100% traditional-age students. Harvard College simply will not admit materially any applicant who doesn't enter directly from high school at a traditional age. Under 1% of students are transfer students, and most of those started college at a traditional age and are still traditional-age. Every year there are also approximately 100 students admitted to Harvard College from high school who defer for one gap year, with a smaller number deferring for two years for reasons like military or religious service if Harvard College approves.