After reading a recent post from Ian Lamont over at Harvard Extended, I’d like to talk a little bit about how Harvard Extension students are perceived by the rest of the school.

By far, the predominant way that HES is used is as an adjunct to further study somewhere else or to add incremental knowledge rather than to serve as a complete program of study. Most students who take classes at HES either already have undergraduate degrees from somewhere else and are getting themselves ready to enter a graduate program or are trying to round out a gap in their education to serve some particular function. In either case, a degree from HES isn’t the goal.

The upshot from this is that HES students are all painted with the same brush by the other parts of the university: part-timers who are not doing serious academic work and are not committed to their studies in the same way that someone who applies for admission and maintains a full-time course of study within the university. A nasty side-effect of this is a certain feeling by others that it’s OK to consider HES students as “fair game” for insults and derision from those that are.

One example is the almost casual way that Alexandra A. Petri uses HES students as a punch line to make a point concerning the strange course selections that make up the Core at Harvard College:

This emphasis not on a common base of reference but a common set of “approaches” leaves Harvard students seeking to fulfill the Core with the choice between rigorous introductory courses geared towards prospective concentrators and unbelievably abstruse Core classes about topics like Boll Weevils in 1680s Holland. Few survey courses remain that offer a comprehensive view for students not planning to pursue further studies in given subjects. This phenomenon has the bizarre result that, often, only concentrators can put their knowledge in context. Most non-concentrators are marooned on islands of specific knowledge in a sea of ignorance, along with one or two other non-concentrators and someone from the Extension School who is starting to smell funny.

I’m sure that Alexandra thought she was being funny with that little quip. Sadly, Alexandra isn’t the exception when it comes to opinions about HES at the College. There is precious little knowledge of the programs available to HES students and how favorably they compare to the traditional programs available at Harvard.

I suppose that doing a better job with getting the message out about HES would help somewhat but that will only take us so far. As long as the administration abets the negative stereotypes that are allowed to circulate about HES, things will stay the same. A large part of the Harvard “brand” is the perception that it’s the ultimate educational credential. Whether or not this really is the case is almost immaterial. Students at the College seem to suffer almost universally from the delusion that they are among the “chosen.” To believe otherwise would be to admit that they were duped into paying a premium price for an education that is only marginally better than a comparable state school education. It’s only natural to engage in a bit of elitist daydreaming.  John Kenneth Galbraith wrote “The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth. Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great — a little understood thing.”

Fortunately, those of us who actually have a little experience with how far an educational credential can take you know otherwise. Somehow I managed to build a career that included several Fortune 500 companies and an assortment of international assignments with nary a degree to my name. What served me well was a certain drive to succeed and a willingness to learn from experience. Those qualities aren’t unique to residents of the Ivy League. A good dose of maturity doesn’t hurt either.

Which brings us back to Alexandra. Her byline quotes her as a member of the class of 2010. If we stick with some reasonable assumptions about her age, she’s likely to be all of 20 years old. As such, she’s barely old enough to realize how insignificant her perspectives are at this stage of life. Her writing reflects a narcissism that few adults can indulge in without finding themselves spending more than a few lonely nights wondering why people aren’t more enamored of their “wit.”

Far more troubling is the effect that the ill-formed opinions of 20-somethings have on people who are trying to decide how and where they should try to complete a degree. If you’re considering completing a degree at HES, remember that you’ll be sitting in front of the same professors and doing the same work as the College students. That’s what counts.

But drop me line if you happen to sit next to Alexandra in any of those classes. I want to know if she smells any better than I do. If her columns are any guide, the answer is “probably not.”