How Harvard Is Trying to Update the Extension School for the MOOC Age

You could call extension schools the original MOOCs. Universities first opened these offshoots more than 100 years ago, and at the time they were innovative—throwing open the campus gates by offering night classes without any admission requirements. Extension Schools were the original attempt by higher education to offer a low-cost version for the non-elite. Thanks to a recent push towards online courses, Harvard University’s Extension School now has more students than the rest of Harvard combined. Well, unless you count the students in MOOCs, those free online courses, which are offered through a different division of the university. Let’s face it, the number of different types of degrees you could get from Harvard is getting confusing, and the same could be said for many other universities as well. EdSurge recently sat down with the dean of Harvard’s Extension School, Hunt Lambert, to ask him to sort through all these offerings and give his vision of where his school is headed.