How is Harvard Extension School 'really' perceived?
Hello,
I will start this post with an apology because it will be a long post.
I am asking this question (probably been posted over and over, and I apologize for adding another to it, and thank you in advance).
I'm a college instructor and considering getting another Master's degree in Computer Science at HES. I want to increase my quality, and learning from one of America's top education institutions naturally sounds appealing to me.
However, my concern is that how this will be perceived in real life. I read through many online posts such as reddit already and the responses are very up and down. Since I will be teaching in college, I'm afraid that my degree reputation does matter.
Here's one offensive quote I got from someone with a PhD and is a recruiter for a research institution in the U.S. (I used ChatGPT to translate it from Korean to English since we were communicating in Korean)
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"People who come from the Harvard Extension School also tend to cause a lot of incidents.
It’s gotten to the point where Harvard itself has had to start by saying, “The Extension School is not Harvard.”
Even in New York, there are many people committing fraud while attending the Harvard Extension School; it’s probably even worse in Boston.
There are many gaps in these graduate programs.
Why do they even run something like the Extension School? They should just use a completely different name.
They probably expected this kind of confusion anyway while still using the Harvard name.
Is the Extension School basically like a community college level? I think of it more like a paid lecture program—like a cram school where you just pay money to take classes. The only requirement is paying tuition.
My older child graduated from Harvard. At a big party at a friend’s house, I was invited… and a Chinese girl warmly greeted. Later he found out she had been attending the Extension School and pretending to be an undergraduate student. She fooled everyone for years.
Now the kids have figured it out, but she still seems to show up everywhere like that. No one directly calls her out in front of her face, even though they know she’s fake—people just whisper behind her back. I wonder if that’s just American manners…
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+ I know he's full of sh*, I’m not that dumb to take something that’s clearly heavily biased at face value. However, I'm still dumb enough to be concerned about how the program I will be dedicated to will be perceived to others.
At the same time, I'm deeply saddened that Harvard's only online options are a separate schooling from other STEM degrees with a different degree names. Georgia Tech's online Computer Science seems to not have any boundary between online and on-campus students, and there is only one degree - M.S. Computer Science.
I'm still early in my personal growth...and I have to admit that I yet can be sensitive to how others perceive me. I want to move past that and develop more confidence and maturity. I’d appreciate help learning how to critically evaluate negative opinions in a more balanced, thoughtful, and grounded way instead of internalizing them. -- I hope that makes sense.
Thank you!