Since I’ve had a very varied educational experience, one of the things that I pick up on when looking at schools is their history and how that affects their current positioning. As you may already know, I’m completing an undergraduate degree at the Harvard Extension School. The Harvard Extension School developed out of a series of lectures that eventually led to a whole program for delivering education to working men and women. Thus, HES is rooted in a process that began over 170 years ago and has grown to encompass a wide variety of disciplines in the liberal arts and sciences.
CVN is different thing altogether. For one thing, it’s comparatively young. The program itself only began in 1986 as part of an effort to eliminate the travel requirements for faculty who were trying to offer education to students who were a part of industry.
It was created as a tool to expand the reach of Columbia’s engineering school beyond its physical Manhattan Campus location. Leading corporations in the engineering industries often approached the school to send faculty to teach courses on-site to their employees. Columbia found it increasingly difficult to continue to accommodate these requests, as limited faculty resources, bad weather, and other logistical concerns made this scenario very challenging.[1]
One result of this limited history is that the program itself is very small when compared to Harvard Extension. Columbia regularly enrolls about 1,500 students each year compared to the 13,000 at HES.
Another aspect of CVN is the tight connection to the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. CVN is a program for graduate engineering students. There are no liberal arts classes in history, literature, or religion. The only classes offered are engineering or science classes in related disciplines, period.
One important note is that this exposes a fundamental difference between CVN and HES. While HES is a department of the Division of Continuing Education at Harvard, CVN is a part of the Fu School.
Columbia does have a Continuing Education school that is closer to how most people think of HES. Their programs are not connected to CVN in any way. The administration, admissions, and registration are handled separately.
In my next post, I’ll talk a little about what I’ve learned of the CS program at CVN and hopefully talk a little more about the classes that are offered.
[1] Evan S. Jacobs and Al Mahmud Shahjahan, “Columbia University Graduate School
of Engineering and Applied Science: Columbia Video Network,” TechTrends, November/December 2007, Volume 51, Number 6, p 40-44.