Harvard Online Master’s Degree

Related topic, different country. I discovered last week you can take a MSc in Software Development with the Open University (a partially government-funded distance learning university in the UK): <a href="http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/qualification/f26.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/qualification/f26....</a><p>The really interesting part is if you have enough experience, you don't need to have an undergraduate degree to get into the prerequisite diploma course. So you get on to the diploma course which takes two years part time, then do the Masters project for a year.. no degree to Masters in 3 years. An education hack, if ever there were one. Who cares if you have an undergraduate degree when you have a Masters? (Genuine question - if there is a reason, let us know.)<p>The only downside, it's not cheap cheap. You're looking at about £1000 per unit and there are 8 units for the diploma. The Master's part is then £1900 ish. So that's about £10k ($16k) in all over 3 years. Still, only slightly more than a single year of undergraduate study in the UK from next year..<p><i>Note: Yes, this is really for people in the UK or Europe.</i>

There is an irony in people thinking that this degree awarded from Harvard is a lesser degree than the other types, when this degree is awarded purely on academic merit (since admission is based on you already completing some of the courses), whereas mainstream Harvard is based on the opinions of some admissions officers.

More recent:<p><a href="http://blog.markwshead.com/911/harvard-online-masters-degree-in-software-engineering/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.markwshead.com/911/harvard-online-masters-degree...</a><p>Thought this was posted here before but I couldn't find it.

Well, the real question is, what "value" is derived from said degree? Better job right away? Most of the times that isn't the case. I can understand the "value" in actually being on campus and interacting with the next Gates or Zuckerburg etc. Would attaching the Harvard section to your resume really make things that much better? Anyone have some stats/studies on this beyond anecdotal cases? The author doesn't really go into much details about what came out of his Harvard degree.

As an elitist alum, I don't like these programs one bit. I can't help but feel that they are, in a small but meaningful way, watering down the value of my degree. And even though it's petty, I'm chagrined that my diploma features English rather than Latin text.<p>Harvard's Extension School was designed to teach the greater Boston community, and I think it should be a vehicle to improve town-gown relations, by convincing locals to not perceive Harvard as "the other". I certainly don't think it should have as part of its mission handing out Masters degrees to people from Kansas over the Internet.