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Did anyone remember to celebrate the fourth anniversary of this ancient thread? This is one of those arguments that can never end because neither side is wholly wrong in what it defends. An AB and an ALB are substantially the same academic degree, and graduate and professional schools everywhere on earth rightly recognize this. Only Harvard has tried to tamper with the actual name of the degree and it looks oddly insecure or meretricious for trying to do so. Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, etc show more confidence in their examinations; are they really so much better at this? Obviously, knowledge is the same both in the day and at night, or else it is not, in fact, knowledge. The examinations for the day and night courses are the same; an A is an A, a B is a B, etc. In general, lazy students get bad grades, both by day and by night, and diligent students get good grades, both by day and by night. Insofar as an AB student is better than an ALB student, this shows in grades and standardized tests; if it does not show up in those ways, then there is no real difference. Likewise, some ALB students are indeed as good or better than some AB students, as Harvard College instructors who teach both have said over and over again. There are, of course, students of both kinds who do not work out at Harvard. The AB is for "traditional" students who have been good students all their lives, and the ALB is for "nontraditional" students who have been all sorts of other things; one cannot say from evidence who has been or will be more fortunate in life. There is a more or less important difference in social experience between living in a House and not living in a House while attending any university. Just how important this pleasure is, however, depends on the individual. What grieves the occasional student in the College is the false belief that just being selected for this social difference is so important to his or her life's prospects that sharing the same degree with someone who earned an ALB and yet has not been selected to sleep in one of Harvard's Houses might cause him or her to miss out on something terribly important later in life. The usual nightmare is that, if the world learns that Harvard not only teaches the well-prepared and studious by day, but also the merely heroically motivated to learn, then the world will cease to adore the assemblage of scholars, libraries, scientists and laboratories that the university is, and then, in that case, the hard work of students in the College will only be honored for its intrinsic worth. Hmmmm... The dreadful truth is that, although either Harvard degree is marvelous to have, neither guarantees life success or happiness. George Vaillant's fascinating longitudinal study of Harvard graduates shows that personal qualities that are never required for either an AB or an ALB matter far more. And that agrees with universal experience-- persons who attended obscure colleges can do well if they work hard on the right things, just as persons with either degree from Harvard can be deeply disappointed, if they turn out to be good students but bad, foolish, or unlucky human beings. "Enter to Grow in Wisdom" indeed! Quite apart from any degrees at all, I love Harvard as the community of scholars and scientists that would have changed my views on life even if they had not graded my exams and papers, and it is always a pity for me meet candidates for either degree who belittle this university and themselves by thinking of it as a "brand." To students in the College-- there are more grave terrors ahead in life than ALBs in the job market. To students in Extension-- Harvard's "brand" cannot make anyone something he or she was not before he or she came here, but there is knowledge and wisdom in this community that can save your life, if you have the courage to study and apply.
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