In the past two years there are estimated to be some 200 approved degree candidates on file at any given time; between 80 and 90 of these are graduated annually, slightly over half being granted the A.B. after a minimum of six or seven years juggling schedules and multiple responsibilities to reach this retrospectively sweet moment.
A relatively recent concession to the quality and dedication of advanced degree candidates in the Extension does permit us access to Harvard faculty not directly teaching in Extension in one particular year: Independent Study. Credited as a half-course, it allows the serious student to explore an idea or a project under the guidance of any member of the Harvard Faculty, equivalent to the 91 r "Directed Reading." This spring I am researching and documenting recent developments in Chile with Professor Harvey Cox at the Divinity School, in conjunction with his course of "Religion and Society in Contemporary Latin America."
This Harvard degree of ours is paid in long, weary years rather than cash; it is a crowded economy flight that gets you there. Although the cost of wheat, like everything else, has risen, the $30 to $50 per half-course, or $130 to $160 for seminars, is still incredibly low for the price of the ticket. Yet, our quality education suffers from the lack of cultural breadth that a Harvard degree implies.
On the theory that productive learning is measured by the credit-mile, and extracurricular acclimatization is a luxury inconsequential to one's ultimate distinction. Extension degree candidates have no established access to such revitalizing facilities as sports, drams and music groups, clubs or scholarship funds, not to mentions, until now, a voice in The Crimson, Certainly the small--though growing--proportion of seriously continuing students would hardly deplete Harvard's physical and financial endowment. with many younger people breaking the traditional four year syndromes is embark on necessary remunerative work during their "college years," the option to participate fully in all aspect of University life, however irregularly, is as potentially important to present undergraduates in the College as to the graying heads grinding through the Extension program, at whatever chronological age.
Like its students, the Extensions has taken longer than the usual 21 years to come into respectable maturity. And like its middle-aged academic minors it suffers unrealistically--albeit understandably--from a certain unconscionable timidity in asserting its newly acknowledged stature along the traditional progression in full citizenship. It has finally achieved for members admitted so degree candidacy the privileges, partial but vital, of library facilities, parking places, its own half building in the Yard (Lehman Hall), with a lounge for TV courses, a donated infant library of its own, use of the cafeteria, below, and vocational and educational guidance services. But it still retains an sure more cinder-than-ella before the hard heart of the central University administration.
An artificial generation gap between the College young and their extended elders deprives everyone of valuable resources. In college activities volunteer participation by older student experienced in a particular field can provide not only solid advice (solicited or not!) but also access to job opportunities, at the very least a chance to explore the working world guided by a friend. For the busily aging "undergrad" who may be preparing for career change, sharing the learning process in extracurricular activities at the College can be crucial, especially gratifying in company of other admitted novices a rare circumstance indeed in the real world, where the forty-plus-year-old dares not acknowledge a fear of inadequacy and inexperience.
The response to my own tremulous assault upon the unsuspecting young at the Crimson sharpens my belief that suffering the uncertainties of embarking upon new seas and mastering a fractious new craft together can only benefit us all.
In these uncertain times it seems a waste of people power to deny any segment of society, by reason of race, sex, national origin, religious preference, or age, a channel of learning that does not depend on academic or economic performance or on familiar ties. Many of us pursuing later dreams need just as much encouragement and new experience as our juniors, and are often more open to new perspectives from unrelated younger friends than from our own recently-sprung progeny.
Harvard's aging foster-child needs sympathetic siblings for full development to integrated membership in this academic family.