Harvard Extension School

[siserune]

<p>Note that by “illegal scam” I am referring to the requirements for AA and ALB admission,
as discussed in an earlier thread:</p>

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I think the point is that HES is in effect running a scam with its admissions process, and that were any other entity (or a third tier college) doing the same it would be shut down by the Attorney General.</p>

<p>HES’ application fee for its undergraduate certificate programs (AA and ALB) is several thousand dollars and several hundreds of hours: the cost of at least four courses plus attendance and work required to earn high enough grades in those courses. For that they don’t promise anything except to consider your application.</p>

<p>That’s almost two orders of magnitude costlier than any normal college degree granting program in the United States. It’s a scam if they don’t provide information that allows people to get a realistic idea of their chances. Thousands dollars to CONSIDER you for admission, then string you along for one or two more semesters (“try again in Spring of 09”, as with the poster above)?</p>

<p>Insofar as HES is selling this to the college applicant population with the fewest other options, the “nontraditional students”, it is exploiting the circumstances of those students. To the extent that HES’ lack of candor leads applicants to miscalculate the cost/benefit and engage in fruitless, time consuming and extremely expensive attempts at Harvard Extension degrees instead of getting cheaper and universally understood credentials (GED’s, SAT, GRE, AP, etc) that would get them into many other programs, it’s destructive.</p>

<p>This being a scam has nothing to do with HES’ academic qualities compared to the rest of Harvard. However, the motivation and probable reason for the continuation of the scam have everything to do with the marketing game that HES plays using the Harvard brand.

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