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Message from the Dean

Now in its centennial decade, the Harvard Extension School, often described as Harvard University's greatest community resource, offers part-time study in the evenings on an open-enrollment basis.

In 1909 President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard founded the academic evening program of University Extension as an experiment in what he termed "popular education" to serve the "many people in our community who have not been to college, but who have the desire and the aptitude to profit by so much of a college education as, amid the work of earning their living, they are able to obtain." In its first year of operation the Harvard Extension School sponsored 16 courses and enrolled 863 women and men from the community.

Today President Lowell's "popular education" experiment is an established tradition at Harvard. The Harvard Extension School currently sponsors some 560 courses in more than 50 fields and enrolls nearly 14,000 women and men annually. It offers the undergraduate degrees of Associate in Arts (AA) and Bachelor of Liberal Arts (ALB), the graduate degree of Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) in 20 fields of concentration (including the program in information technology), and several graduate certificate programs: Special Studies in Administration and Management (CSS), Applied Sciences (CAS), Technologies of Education (CTE), Public Health (CPH), Museum Studies (CMS), and Publishing and Communications (CPC). Although degree and certificate programs are available, it is worth noting that fewer than 10 percent of our students become candidates. Most of our students enroll for a course or two each year for personal enrichment and professional development. Whatever the motivation of our students, we are pleased to serve them by our assortment of course offerings.

Unlike the Extension students of 90 years ago, most of whom had never attended college, today's students in the Harvard Extension School are singularly well-educated: three out of four have a bachelor's degree, one out of five has a graduate degree, and one out of twenty-five has a doctorate. The age range of our students spans from the early teens to the early nineties, with an average age of 32 years and a median of 29 years. Students commute from hundreds of communities in the Commonwealth and neighboring states, but more than 40 percent of them reside in Cambridge and Boston. The majority of our students (three out of five) are women.

Although the Harvard Extension School for most of its history was a local institution, today with our graduate certificate, master's, and distance learning programs we increasingly are becoming a national and international institution. Last year, for example, more than half of the 241 graduates of the Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management program represented 33 countries. Today's Harvard Extension School is becoming "internationalized" as adult learners from many regions of this country and overseas study together evenings in Harvard Yard. In addition, the Extension School will this year sponsor 26 distance education courses available over the Internet using state-of-the-art streaming video and audio technologies. Last year 17 distance courses enrolled students living in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, as well as in all regions of the United States.

The Harvard Extension School today is no less committed to what President Lowell in 1909 labelled "popular education," that is, education to serve the greater community through evening classes, open enrollment, coeducation for all ages, part-time study, and affordable tuition for the highest-quality Harvard instruction in a broad range of subjects. On behalf of the Harvard Extension School faculty and staff, I invite you to study with us this year and wish you every success in your studies.

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