For years the University has sponsored a myriad of "continuing education" programs--the Summer School, the Alumni College, Business School Executive programs and so on--most of which involve a cost or measure of selectivity, or both, comparable to Harvard College. Harvard also sponsors a night school--the Extension School--which this fall, under an open admissions policy, enrolled 4700 students who will pay about $20 per credit hour for Harvard courses that could eventually lead to a bachelor's degree.

With the appointment of Michael Shinagel as director of continuing education last fall, the Faculty has renewed its committment to continuing education and given direction of programs to a man who would like to see Harvard assume a national leadership position in the fastest-growing area of higher education--programs such as Harvard's Extension School.

Founded by President Lowell in 1910 in conjunction with the city-wide Lowell Institute, a public education institute funded by the Lowell family, and the Commission on Extension Courses, a consortium of local colleges including Simmons, Boston University, Mass. Institute of Technology, Boston College, Wellesley and Tufts, the Extension School has been solely a Harvard operation from the start. The Lowell Institute provides a small amount of funding (about 7 per cent of annual revenues) and the Commission a helpful facade of community cohesion and a pool for the extension school's faculty.

Over 160,000 men and women have matriculated over the years--1000 have received degrees--to hear Harvard greats ranging from philosopher Josiah Royce at the turn of the century to Oscar Handlin in the present. Most people are surprised to even learn that the school exists, says Thomas Crooks, former director of the Summer School. "Except for some flurry on the seventh floor of Holyoke Center at registration time, a few lights on in Yard classrooms at night, and the Commencement Exercises, the program is largely invisible," he says.

For most of its 66 years, the school has undergone relatively little change. Except for the Faculty awarding the school degree-granting power (for the Bachelor of Arts in 1960, the Associate of Arts in 1971 and the Certificate of Advanced Study in 1976), a general expansion of programs in the '60s, and the introduction of Extension alumni to the Commencement parade, the school "has piddled along on its own friendly turf for years," Crooks says.

When Reginald Phelps, professor of German Literature and former dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, announced his impending retirement from his position as the Extension School's director several years ago, the move touched off faculty concern over national trends in extension education. Shortly before, the American Council on Education Report on Financing Part-time Students announced that in 1972, for the first time, the number of part-time adult students exceeded the number of traditional full-time students in post-secondary education. This led to a report on continuing education authored by Crooks, the reorganization of continuing education programs, and a successful search committee effort to locate a new director to head them. George Goethals, senior lecturer on Psychology, an instructor in the Extension School and a member of its Faculty Advisory Committee, said the committee was aware at the time that "this was a community responsibility of Harvard's--good courses at a low price" and that unification of the continuing educations programs was implemented specifically to provide national leadership opportunities for Harvard.

The concern of those closely involved with extension education traditionally has not been matched with a similar interest on the part of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as a whole, though Dr. Leonard Kopelman, an instructor in the program and assistant senior tutor of Leverett House, says he's "never heard a negative comment around the Faculty" about the School. "Bok and Rosovsky consider continuing education important," he says.

According to several observers, the problem is that many faculty aren't even aware of the school's existence, and the administration's reorganization efforts have failed to distinguish between community education for lower-income working people and enrichment programs for full-time students and degree holders. The Faculty, however, is only indirectly concerned with the school. Outside of approving courses and instructors, primary responsibility is held by Dean Rosovsky.

Rosovsky says the Faculty is really waiting to see what Shinagel is going to suggest, and feels the Faculty will most likely go along with whatever he proposes. Shinagel was chosen as an administrative centralizer, Rosovsky says: "We're not yet satisfied that we know exactly where we're going; neither does Shinagel at this point." Rosovsky is sympathetic to the Extension School's aims: 'It's good for the University to make available some of its knowledge and talents and minds to the community." But he insists that "we stand for a certain kind of quality in education--liberal education is something that you can probably get more easily here," he says, as opposed to a heavily pre-professional and technical orientation at a place such as Northeastern. "We should try to differentiate our product, to do things we can do better than other people," he says.

Shinagel, a tutor in Eliot House in the early '60s and an associate director of the Office of Graduate Career planning from 1959 to 1964, left the chairmanship of the English department at Union College to assume his present post. He is charged with reorganizing and overseeing all of the Faculty's continuing education activities. But he brings a special commitment to the public education idea as embodied in the Extension School, to which he devoted half of his time last year.

"Harvard can really play a significant role nationally in continuing education--it has to," he says. Shinagel is presently working on a five-to ten-year planning proposal for the school, but has undertaken a substantial amount of innovation already. His biggest plans are for a new Center for Continuing Education slated to open next year, a proposal that will allow the school to bring in people to teach in non-credit seminars and innovative programs such as "Preventive Medicine" and "Professional Bridge" that wouldn't normally be acceptable under Faculty auspices, the introduction this year of a Certificate of Advanced Study for the equivalent of a year's work beyond the bachelor's level, and the expansion of the school into granting graduate degrees in areas not covered by other Harvard faculties, like offering a master's in Applied Arts or Liberal Studies.

Shinagel would also like to expand enrollment to fully cover heating and other maintenance costs for classrooms now subsidized by the Faculty, something he hopes will be helped by the new Tuition Assistance Plan for Harvard employees and an advertising campaign. But there are limits to expansion, and Shinagel wishes to avoid alienating other schools in the area who fear competition from Harvard's low-cost program, the least expensive in the Boston area.

Shinagel is disappointed that continuing education and the Extension School aren't being considered in the Task Force evaluations in progress. Harvard "should not divorce itself from realities," he says, "the Task Forces are lacking in peripheral vision." But he sees the need for a "sense of timing," and is waiting to see what the Task Forces come up with before pressing his case. The faculty was torn apart by the events of the late '60s, he says, "it has yet to re-define itself in the sense of mission. Whether the Task Forces will achieve this or not, I don't know," he says.

In the meantime, the Extension School continues to contribute a rather substantial effort to public education. While the median family income for Harvard undergraduates has been estimated by one source at around $50,000, that for Extension students is around $10,000, and one-quarter of the Extension students have family incomes of $5000 or less. Extension students come from throughout Boston's metropolitan area, and nearly all either work or hold down family responsibilities full-time. The ratio of women to men in the school is about two-to-one, and about three-quarters fall between the ages of 17 and 36. The school's oldest student was born in 1894, its youngest in 1962.

A specific objective of the school is to provide college-level opportunities for particularly talented high school students, but low cost and night-availability of classes are primary. Two hundred and fifty recent immigrants to the U.S. are enrolled in the Extension School's language courses. About 7 per cent of the students come to the school already holding a bachelor's degree, over 16 per cent with a master's. For most, the purpose is enrichment, but 60 per cent of the 6 per cent who do receive degrees go on for further graduate work, many of them at Harvard.