Each of the degree programs at HES if different with respect to residency requirements.

For instance, the ALB program now requires that 16 semester hours are earned in courses that are offered in person rather than via distance ed. This wasn’t always true.

The ALM in IT requires that at least one semester is spent in residency. In practice, this means that one or two courses are completed while a student is attending during the summer.

Most of the other programs (ALM/Liberal Arts, ALM/Management, etc.) require that you take 5 or 6 courses (basically half of your courses) that are only offered on campus.

In practice, this doesn’t mean that you have to physically MOVE from where you are. You just have to be close enough to get to classes and to on-campus resources to make the whole thing work.

Plenty of students commute from NYC, New Hampshire, or Rhode Island to complete the program.

Of course, if you live far away you’re going to have a tougher time. Plane fares and travel are only going to get more expensive. My suggestion is to investigate the summer semesters to see if the courses you need will be offered. Those sessions only last 8 weeks and the time goes by fast.

Travel between Cambridge and NYC is easily achieved with a combination of Amtrak and the MBTA Red Line. They interconnect at Boston South Station.

My suggestion is that if you need to take courses on campus, try to pick two classes that are on the same evening so you can cut the amount of time you spend in Cambridge down to one night a week. I did that, and I was flying up every week from Washington, DC.

Another suggestion is to see if you can bring the kids along. I don’t know if you have a car, but an entire semester is only 16 weeks. You might find that there are more options than you think for bringing your children along to Cambridge. Ask the HES office for suggestions. Your problem is not unique. Lots of students at HES have children too.

The last time I was at Harvard I met a new Ph.D from MIT who was having a hard time getting a job. He wanted to know if I could help.

If you’re worried about getting a job, then maybe you’re right. Harvard grads are heavily recruited mainly because they confer bragging rights. Another reason is because there are networks of folks in top positions at top firms who extend their personal network by hiring grads from their alma mater.

But the essence of my statement is correct. If you were an immoral, selfish person then Harvard won’t cure you of that. If you were shy and unconfident, a degree from Harvard might help convince you otherwise, but then again, it might provide opportunities to avoid people by concentrating on the minutia of some obscure subject.

I can tell you this: completing a degree…any degree…will convince an employer that you are capable of doing sustained work and seeing a project through to completion. Absent anything else, that’s usually all they have to go on when making a hiring decision.

And I doubt your facts. Quite a few students leave Harvard and go on to graduate school. And not every student who goes to Harvard College gets into Harvard Medical School. One of my colleagues is married to one. Not every graduate of Harvard College gets into Harvard Business School. I know plenty of those. And there are tons that apply and never get into Harvard Law.

Don’t read more into the degree than is there.

“No more than five distance education courses may be counted toward the degree. Students are expected to spend at least two semesters in residence at Harvard Extension School or Harvard Summer School.”

Ha– yea right— a degree from Harvard will make a poor man, a rich man– a middle class to an upperclass etc etc etc

Its a fact— 99% of all Harvard grads are working within 3 months of graduation— top jobs at that— when I graduated with my Bachelors, I was unemployed for 8 months until I finally landed a job.

The profundity of your answer proves to me that indeed Harvard produces qualitative graduates. My biggest challenge that I face is putting together a package that allows me to travel from NYC to Cambridge and back in one day/night, for I am responsible for bringing my children to their respective schools in the am. I am tentative and it is my own prodigious sepulcher that grows with my procrastination. The ” special student status” is indeed attractive as I am keen on taking Moral Reasoning with Sandel. Keep your eyes on the prize and thank you.

I’m going to try and answer your questions as best I can.

First, let me tell you that you are absolutely not alone. Don’t for a second feel like you made the wrong choice to follow the path you did. Whatever led you to the life you have now, that’s all history. Keep looking forward. HES is my third try to finish my education. I sometimes feel like I missed the boat and I grow wistful remembering my early college years as a 19-year old. It’s hard sometimes not to be jealous of the youngsters in Harvard Yard who are in one of the best places to get a head start on their lives. Then I remember how unfocused and chaotic my life was and how hard it was to get a clear picture of who I was and who I wanted to be.

I’m all past that now.

Second, studying Government and Law aren’t beyond you even at this stage in your life. If for nothing else, you can pursue a degree and focus on those subjects to see if you really do desire further study. Law schools take in plenty of people in their 30-s and 40-s. Politics is filled with people who got into the game late in life. Government institutions need your life experience. Focus on your strengths.

Finally, as far as HES goes, keep in mind that the program that they offer is largely based on a liberal arts curriculum. As such, it’s going to focus on some mix of the humanities, writing, and critical thinking rather than some of the pre-something programs offered by other schools to prepare students for professional programs like medicine and law. That said, they also (for reasons which should be clear based on their intended audience) offer a range of courses that are primarily focused on teaching a specific career-related skill like programming with a certain tool or performing financial analysis. If you examine the course offerings of the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, you’ll note that their offerings are much more theory-based. They teach principles and leave the ultimate acquisition of any specific skill up to the student during their career. The typical HES student is already well-entrenched in a career and is trying to either adapt to the changing requirements of their profession or prepare themselves for a new one. A significant fraction of students are simply trying to complete a degree for which they will see no immediate impact on their career. They simply wanted to complete their degree in a way that didn’t force them to give up their career or impact their family life too greatly.

Some folks will point to this distinction as evidence that the College is superior to HES. They see a school that doesn’t proactively perform admit/deny actions on specific students as somehow lesser, as if something everyone can do (or some school everyone can attend) isn’t worthwhile.

Those people are wrong. If HES degrees were easy to get, then half of Boston would have them by now. Cost certainly isn’t a barrier. Neither is access. The only probable answer is that the program is difficult and uncertain enough that only those who are truly committed can ever complete it. That’s not to say that it’s impossible; nothing could be further from the truth. But a successful student at HES is going to be a unique kind of character: someone who cared enough about their education to do it mostly on their own along a path that isn’t easy to complete by any reasonable standard.

Try not to think of the College as providing access to the upper echelon. Many of the students there were well entrenched in the higher reaches of society before they ever set foot in Cambridge.

I found Harvard to be welcoming but presenting a certain expectation that I would understand what standard was required of me when it came to coursework. That didn’t change while I was taking classes. Instead, I changed to meet the standard.

At HES, if you choose wisely, you can take classes that are offered simultaneously to the College students. You’ll be graded by the same standards and you’ll be competing with the College students for grades. Take that as a challenge. Few people are aware of this important detail. Same class. Same Professor. Same work. Same tests.

Whether or not some potential friend, colleague, mate, or employer will see the value of your experience is almost completely up to them. The best way to ensure that they have a high opinion of Harvard Extension is for them to have a high opinion of you.

Yours is in its own right is the most honest review of HES that I have read. Kudos to you.

I was enticed into a career on Wall Street midway through college and never finished my degree, after a few years of laboring I decided to pursue my passion and worked hard at a career as a classical vocalist. Now I am married with children and slightly under 40, and feel as through my maturation process that “the jig is up.” I lament never finishing my degree and honestly, the thought of maintaining a travel log of being apart from my family is not very attractive any longer. I would like to pursue a course of study in Govt./Law. I have excelled in the two online courses that I have taken at HES with a perfect record, but still am curious about what weight does the Harvard night school carry qualitatively? The quantitative aspects do not lie- but is the core value of the qualitative course of study (using the overall value and quality of course offerings, professors, and program requirements as factors) equivalent to what the expectations are in the kingdom of the upper echelon, or are we to liken it to a “Harvard Community College”?

Thanks for your blog and all the best.

You’re completely wrong about what it takes to get a degree from HES. IN fact, I’m sure you aren’t being entirely truthful about your assertions.

I’m not sure if you’re a troll or not, but you’re posting from an APNIC IP address, so I’m not sure you have the experience you claim with respect to both programs.

Your perception of the relative status between the College and HES is woefully outdated. A significant portion of my coursework was in actual Harvard courses that were offered to both communities via video. The professors warned that the grading standards were the same for both groups. My impression was that there isn’t a significant difference between the HES courses that were only offered to HES students compared to those offered only to College students. I did equally well in both types and worked about as hard.

I also take issue with your statement that “… it’s more of a mockery to graduate from HES than Columbia.”

If your impression of the working world is one in which college transcripts have any significance beyond your first job, you’re either completely immature or ignorant of how the real world works.

When I tell you that not a soul where I work (a Fortune 500 firm) cares about the degree you earned, I’m not exaggerating. It simply doesn’t come up. People care more about what you can do than where you came from. A Harvard diploma might serve as a convenient predictor of future performance, but it’s hardly a mark of certitude in future achievement. There are plenty of graduates of Harvard that only manage a meager performance once the real world gets a hold of them. I’ve worked with plenty of those folks.

And don’t confuse CVN and HES. I’m comparing their approaches to selecting candidates for entry into the program and the orientation of their programs toward distance learning. I’m trying to give people an inside view of how these programs work. I’m not measuring prestige levels.

Comments that denigrate a school where people work hard to learn difficult subjects aren’t welcome here. Both HES and CVN are trying to improve access to degree programs. I welcome their efforts and hope that more schools will follow.

Your statement here is wrong. At CVN, by taking non-degree courses you can demonstrate your work which eventually will help your application process for a degree (but not a guarantee) - there’s a time limit. For HES, you don’t need to demonstrate anything at all to get a degree, you’re accepted automatically even without a GED (like you said). Plus, it is rare for HES students to be admitted to Harvard College. Close to never.

I have taken classes at HES.

Trust me, it’s more of a mockery to graduate from HES than Columbia.

People know HES admission is –not– the same as Harvard College. Big companies know HES is not the same as Harvard College. Thus, job seeking will be worse compared to Columbia. Especially when HES Diploma is different than Harvard College. Having “Harvard Extension School” can only do a damage to your reputation.

CVN is different. The diploma is the same (The Fu School of Engineering). You have the option to attend classes on campus. No where on the diploma that indicates “Columbia Video Network”. I must add that the CVN engineering classes online are harder than engineering classes on-campus. I did not compare apples to oranges.

Overall, I think CVN is worth more than HES. CVN is not the same as HES. It’s just another form of professional education targeting for working individuals.
HES for me is the same as community college in terms of admission, classes setup, and prestigiousness level.

The reason I am going to start taking classes at Harvard Spring 2009 is because I just wanted to add more of a flavorable education to my repetoire.

I am a behaviorist by nature and so Harvard’s psychology classes appeal to me. - All the best Richard on your choice of grad school.

I ‘m sure you will pick the best one for you.

Sincerely, Michelle