Harvard at Bargain Basement Prices

simba
Fri, 18 Nov 2005 08:15:06 +0000

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/national/18harvard.html?hp&ex=1132376400&en=e239dc08a0f85fad&ei=5094&partner=homepage

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 17 - Laura Shortill had a 3.6 grade point average at her Buxton, Me., high school and her SAT’s were “fairly average,” she said. “Nothing astronomical.”

So when she applied to Harvard, Ms. Shortill knew it was a stretch. And she had a backup: Harvard.

Although Ms. Shortill was accepted elsewhere, including Johns Hopkins, when she was rejected by Harvard College, she moved to Cambridge anyway. She enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program at Harvard University Extension School - for a fraction of the admissions requirements and a fraction of the cost.

“I had Harvard as my reach school,” said Ms. Shortill, 20, “and I had Harvard as my safety school.”

Harvard Extension School, with its mission of making a part of Harvard broadly accessible, is unusually inexpensive, charging about $550 per lecture course compared to about $4,000 per course at Harvard College.

…

Students have access to Harvard faculty, even Nobel laureates like Roy J. Glauber, a physicist who has taught extension classes. At least 52 of the 128 credits required for the extension bachelors degree must come from courses taught by Harvard instructors. And some courses are virtually identical to those at Harvard College, professors say.

Ms. Shortill, majoring in classics, is taking the course Ancient Christianity with Helmut Koester, who teaches the same course at Harvard College and Divinity School.

Ms. Nurse takes a course called Justice taught at Harvard College by Michael Sandel, a well-known political scientist. It is videotaped and is one of 75 courses offered online for extension students.

And Mr. Perro said he discovered that a high school classmate attending Harvard College “had one of the same instructors for an expository writing course.”