Another Harvard College AB/Extension School ALB comparison

This week I received a comment on an older post, comparing the Harvard College AB degree with the Harvard Extension School's ALB degree. "Chris" says forget about the differences in the two undergraduate curriculums or the academic abilities of students -- he found that cost and the Extension School's original mission set it apart from the College:

Back in 2000 I worked as a student assistant at the Office of the Governing Boards, Loeb House. I had a very candid discussion with one of the Fellows regarding the Extension School and the school's status at Harvard. For the most part, the President & Fellows of Harvard College do feel that the degree programs at the Extension School are a strong component of Harvard's philosophical mission. Unlike most other Ivy League institutions, Harvard is the ONLY university to offer a true, world-class education to academically-enabled non-traditional, adult learners. While Columbia and Penn do have programs aimed at non-traditional students, the cost and slim evening course offerings are prohibitive to many working adults. According to this Fellow, the primary goal of the Corporation, as far as the Extension School is concerned, is to keep the programs affordable to adult students that may already be over-burdened with a variety of real-life expenses. The fundamental difference between Harvard College and the Harvard Extension School is NOT in the curriculum (as the ALB is heavily modeled after the traditional AB) but in the cost of attendance. If you compare the cost of attendance at Harvard College with the cost of attendance at the Harvard Extension School, you'll immediately notice a stark difference. That difference is of phenomenal benefit to the academically-enabled non-traditional student. We will earn a bachelor's degree from Harvard University, study with a world-class faculty, have access to a variety of resources (libraries, email accounts, facilities, many clubs/organizations etc.) and we will become alumni of Harvard University, just as anyone else graduating from the University.

I don't agree with Chris' statement about the curriculum -- the Extension School can't match the sheer number or breadth of offerings available to College undergrads, and the Extension School does not have the core curriculum or many opportunities for specialization -- but his comments about the attitude of the Harvard Corporation toward the Extension School is interesting. The Corporation is a small but powerful group that makes many important decisions about University affairs, including choosing Harvard's president. I don't think the Extension School figures prominently in the Corporation's meetings, but if the governing body truly is dedicated to the Extension School's original mission of providing affordable access to non-traditional students, that's a good thing. The Extension School is a fabulous deal, providing access to world-class faculty and facilities at a relatively low cost, and it should stay that way.

However, one thing that the Corporation and the rest of the University needs to realize is the Extension School has outgrown its limited community and academic mission. For decades it was populated by casual students from neighboring cities and towns as well as a minuscule population of students interested in getting an associate of arts degree. While the casual population remains (see "The Extension School's 88% dilemma") there is now a significant contingent of undergraduate and graduate students attempting to complete the requirements for the ALB and ALM (graduate) degrees. Forget the outdated student profiles promoted in this 1951 Crimson article -- nowadays, the ALB/ALM student body includes many high achievers and people from all over the world interested in taking advantage of the school's stellar academic offerings. Extension School undergraduates sometimes match or outperform their College counterparts, and among my own graduating class for the ALM/liberal arts degree were a Harvard Divinity School graduate, a Harvard Medical School instructor, and students who had already earned JDs from two of the top law schools in the country before coming to the Extension School.

Chris touches on a few other points, including work/life/school balance, and his experiences in the Harvard clubs of Boston and New York. You can read the entire comment here (warning: Long, and no paragraph breaks!)

See also:

Thoughts on the ALB program: "The best undergraduate education possible"

Chinese character stroke order

Learning Chinese characters is perhaps the most difficult aspect of studying Mandarin. It's not just a matter of memorizing what a character looks like, the constituent parts (known as radicals), or the etymology. There is also a fairly precise "stroke order" that governs writing. It can be very frustrating for Western students.

I was reminded of this as my young daughter attempts to learn some traditional Chinese characters, which are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and some overseas Chinese communities (China uses simplified characters, see my essay here for a quick history). Her inclination is to write the characters any way she pleases -- much like I did when I started studying Mandarin many years ago -- but my wife and I had to correct her. The general stroke order is top to bottom, left to right, but there are some exceptions. We weren't helped by a cheap Taiwanese children's character booklet which had the incorrect stroke order for several basic characters -- for instance, the instructions for xiao (小, small) had her starting with the left dian instead of the central stroke. I am hardly an expert on characters, but it still seemed strange to me. When my wife saw it, she was puzzled, too. "That's not the way we learned it," she frowned.

She was right. I found a great online resource, the YellowBridge Online Character Dictionary, which has a very useful lookup function and animated character tool which shows the proper stroke order. It backed up my wife in almost every case. Still, as she tried it out, she was reminded that there are some alternate writing methods for certain characters, such as guo (國, country), below, which places the top right dian second to last in the stroke order, instead of near the beginning, which is how many people in Taiwan write it in order to save time.

Harvard Extension School Commencement

(Note: Videos and pictures of the June 5 ceremonies are available below) Commencement 2008 is finally over. It wasn't just today's exhausting slate of ceremonies -- it was a whole week of activities and get-togethers that brought students back to campus over several days this week.

For the Liberal Arts ALM recipients, there was a pleasant Faculty Club reception on Monday in which prizes were announced. On Tuesday, there was also an alumni reception and dinner at Quincy House (see photo, below, from the Quincy House courtyard), the first I've ever attended, in which I got to meet some older ALM and ALB graduates, as well as some members of the class of 2008. Last night, some of us got together at Daedalus after making plans on ExtensionStudent.com. At all of these events, it was a good chance to reflect, trade war stories, and talk about the future. The stories I heard were fascinating -- some people had to go through incredible struggles to complete their degrees, and others managed to complete their degrees despite years-long interruptions, travel and family obligations, and high-powered careers. Examples that spring to mind include the ALM/Women's Studies student who stopped her coursework to get a degree from the Harvard Divinity School, the Harvard Medical School doctor who managed to get her ALM in Literature and Creative Writing and write a prize-winning thesis, and an ALB student and honor's society member (I believe Phi Beta chapter of the Alpha Sigma Lambda society) who completed her final four courses online in one semester while working a full-time job in Korea and Japan.


But Commencement was the main event. I've never participated in anything like it, and probably never will again. There are so many memories, and it involves many traditions, ranging from the archaic to the raucous. And it was all quite splendid. Highlights included a bagpipe-led parade from 51 Brattle Street to the rear of Sever Hall for the morning exercises; the Middlesex County Sheriff bellowing for the tens of thousands of people in Tercentenary Theater to come to order; the spontaneous chants of "Vincimus!" (we conquer!) during the Latin Oration; the sobering yet encouraging Graduate English Address by Anthony Christopher Woods, an Iraq war veteran who just completed his studies at the Kennedy School; the playful waving of inflated globes, pills, gavels, bills, and lanterns as the various school populations received their pronouncements from President Faust; and the final, joyous diploma ceremony at the Loeb Theater, with family and friends watching.

And let's not forget the crowds, the drizzle, the confusion. And the waiting. Lots of waiting -- for parades to start, for the black- and crimson-clad graduates to get into Tercentenary and Loeb theaters, and finally, the wait for the speeches to end so we could receive our diplomas.

Here are some photos from the day ...

Our marker in the Sever Quad, around 8 am. I'd say around 300-350 of us gathered here after marching from 51 Brattle Street behind a piper. This figure includes ALB and ALM students, but not the certificate recipients, who don't participate in the Tercentenary Theater exercises.


ALB and ALM graduates, seated in the center of the throng between Widener and Memorial Church, where the addresses were made. The ALB (undergraduates) wear all black, while the ALM (masters) have red academic hoods draped over their shoulders (the same regalia as our counterparts from the College and the other schools). About eight of us in various ALM programs received the Class Marshal Award for Academic Distinction, which meant we also got to add a red tassel to our hats and carry a small baton.



Looking toward the steps of Memorial Church, where Faust, the deans, and the honorary degree recipients were seated. It drizzled lightly at times, and the trees above us also dropped twigs and little buds in the wind, but it did not rain. Divinity was in front of us, and the College houses off to the left.


人山人海


Widener steps, after the morning exercises.


Around 1:30 pm, ALM Liberal Arts grads gather in the back alley of Christ Church, for the short march to Loeb/ART on Brattle Street. In back of us were the ALM/IT graduates. The ceremony for the ALM Management (103 graduates, and the program is only two years old!), ALM/Museum Studies and one or two other concentrations took place in Loeb while we were waiting here -- even if there were a large enough hall to hold all of us and our families, the ceremony for such an event would last three or four hours, including the speeches and prize announcements.

I also wanted to include a video of part of the final ceremony, in which prizes were announced and our diplomas given to us. Dean Shinagel gave a short speech in which he described some of our accomplishments and some stats about the ALM program. He also named the winner of the "tortoise award," an amusing title for something that truly is awe-inspiring:


(There are about a half-dozen additional videos from Commencement 2008 posted on my YouTube account)

One final thing I'd like to mention about Commencement 2008: The morning exercises is the only event in which all of the diploma-earning students from the University -- College, Extension, Divinity, Education, Government, Public Health, etc. -- are brought together in a shared Harvard experience, one of the oldest and most important ceremonies at Harvard. As we watched the other 2008 cohorts parading into Tercentenary Theater, wearing similar regalia and sporting similar smiles, I was very conscious of the fact that we really were actually quite similar. Our respective schools may teach different things and have different requirements, but for years we all shared a dedication to study and a drive to succeed at one of the most special learning environments on the planet. This was the day when we finally all came together, after which we all will go our separate ways, forever.

A return to books, and thoughts on translations

I've been reading a lot lately, following the completion of my last class and a change of jobs. After being hired as managing editor of The Industry Standard at the beginning of the year, I decided I needed to brush up on the history of Silicon Valley and the first Web bubble, so I tackled The New New Thing, The Nudist On The Late Shift, and a history of The Industry Standard itself, Starving To Death on $200 Million. I also read The Search, by Industry Standard and Wired founder John Battelle, and the first half of a dry tome on UIs and GUIs entitled The Human Interface.

I read fiction, as well. Since I was a teenager I have been a fan of fantasy and science fiction, and re-read The Hobbit as well as a newer book by an old favorite -- The Knight, by Gene Wolfe. Historical fiction is another genre that I love to explore, and one that I sorely missed when I was deep into my thesis and had no time to read for pleasure. The Piano Tuner has been sitting on my shelf for at least two years, and I was pleased to finally pull it down and finish it in a few days. Last month when we were on vacation, I finished Thomas Harris' Imperium, which is a depiction of several episodes in the life of Cicero. It was interesting, yet disappointing. I had greatly enjoyed Harris' earlier book about ancient Rome, Pompeii, and loved watching the first season of Rome on DVD with my wife, but Imperium came across as too disjointed, and too focused on Cicero's Machiavellian conspiracies in the Late Republic. This was perhaps a result of Harris' desire to remain true to the historical record as it relates to Cicero's life. Unfortunately, many of the extant primary sources consist of Cicero's political and legal treatises -- hardly ideal fodder for a gripping piece of historical fiction.

There are two other books that I have also been reading at a far slower pace. Both relate to Chinese history. They are Anthology of Chinese Literature: From Early Times to the Fourteenth Century, edited by Cyril Birch, and Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man, by Jonathan Spence.

These books aren't meant to be rushed, especially the anthology. The appeal of the two books ties into my studies here -- much of my coursework centered on ancient and modern Chinese history. Both of them contain beautiful English translations of ancient texts written in classical Chinese, and I have to appreciate the skill involved in bringing them to life. Classical Chinese carries a special set of challenges in terms of translation, that goes beyond simply knowing Chinese characters or reading modern prose. The following is an excerpt from one of my last school papers, written for Matthew Battles' history of publishing course, entitled "Written Chinese: An Elitist Script, or a Language of the Masses?" In it, I explain the nature of classical Chinese, and some of the difficulties related to understanding it:

The Zhou dynasty (1122 – 256 B.C.E.) saw the rise of several important Chinese religious and philosophical movements, including Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism. These sophisticated concepts were recorded in a series of important texts using a spare writing style called wenyan wen (lit. “literary language,” or “patterned words”). In English, it is known as “classical Chinese,” in reference to the five Confucian classics. Owing to a lack of audio recordings or historical descriptions of common speech, it is uncertain how closely the vernacular and written matched during the Zhou dynasty, but by the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E. – 220 A.D.) spoken Chinese (baihua wen, or “unadorned speech”) had evolved to a considerably different state from written Chinese.

For this reason, classical Chinese was (and still is) difficult to read. While spoken Chinese contains numerous words made up of two or more syllables, most classical Chinese consisted of monosyllables, or single characters. Sparse passages tended to suggest meaning, as opposed to clearly (or precisely) describing it.

My source for this information was Richard J. Smith's China’s Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983). On page 105 was a very interesting comparison of a famous passage from the philosopher Mencius, written in both vernacular and classical Chinese. The vernacular version was 38 characters, compared to just 24 in the original classical text. My wife -- a native Chinese speaker who grew up with traditional characters and has been exposed to classical Chinese through her own education in Taiwan -- understood all of the characters in the original, but was unable to translate the passage itself when I showed it to her. When I showed her the passage written out in vernacular Chinese, "Ah!" -- she got it right away.

So, when I read the beautiful translations of essayist Zhang Dai's (张岱) autobiographical accounts in Spence's book, and especially the poetic renderings by Arthur Waley and Ezra Pound in the anthology, I not only had to appreciate their skills as translators, but also their talents as writers.

They may have even taken poetic license a little too far in some cases. Consider this poem by the Tang's Han Yu (韓愈), translated by A.C. Graham, and appearing on page 262 of the anthology:

The Withered Tree

Leaf and twig are gone from the old tree,
Winds and frosts can harm it no more.
Its hollow belly has room for a man,
Circling ants quest under its peeling bark.
Its single lodger, the toadstool which lives for a morning;
The birds no longer visit in the evening.
But its wood can still spark tinder.
It does not care yet to be only the void at its heart.

(There is a footnote at the end of the last line says "The phrase equates the hollow hear of the tree and the Void Mind of Buddhism, emptied of desire and illusion")

This is a stunning poem in English, but I have to wonder about the challenges of making an appealing translation while remaining true to the original Chinese literary devices and references. In my years of working as a journalist in Taiwan (often with translators, editors, and other native Mandarin and Taiwanese speakers) I found that it was very difficult to take a Chinese phrase that includes complex emotions, concepts, or artistic expressions, and turn it into natural-sounding English that conveyed an accurate sense of the original. Incorporating literary flair involved an extra dimension of complexity.

The footnotes and other explanations by Spence, Birch, and the others are very helpful in terms of putting these works in context. It would have been helpful to include some of the original Chinese, but I understand the technical and economic reasons for not doing so. While I can't read classical Chinese, I do know a few hundred characters, and it's fun to look up others in the dictionary or ask my wife about them.

(Below: Classical Chinese in cursive script by Wang Duo (王铎), who grew up in the late Ming era and painted this sample in the early Qing. From the University of Maine website, which was sourced from the Shanghai Museum)

401 posts!

I just discovered that I've written 401 posts on this blog since May of 2005, including this one. In my final post, which I'll put together sometime in the next few weeks, I'll do a rundown of some of the highlights.

Caps, gowns, and batons

I went to the Coop this evening to pick up my cap and gown for Commencement. The gown rental is $75, but we get to keep the cap and tassle. I am getting up very early on Thursday morning -- we have to be on site at seven in the morning, meaning I will probably leave my home at around 6:30 in the morning. I'm taking a cab -- parking in and around Harvard Square will be very difficult as tens of thousands of grads and guests descend upon Harvard Yard.

After getting my regalia, I attended a reception at the Harvard Faculty Club for ALM Liberal Arts concentrators. Maybe 40 or 50 of us were there, and it was nice to see some old friends and talk with other 2008 grads whom I had never met. More than a few people had traveled from out of town to be here for Commencement on Thursday, and it was interesting to hear their stories.

ALM program heads also revealed the names of the ALM prize winners. There are a few prizes that ALM Liberal Arts concentrators are eligible for, on the basis of high GPAs or outstanding theses, including The Thomas Small Prize and the Crite Prize (see descriptions and the list of 2006 winners here). It was fascinating listening to the titles and descriptions of some of the thesis work, especially among the ALM biology and biotech concentrators. Their thesis directors -- most of whom are Harvard Medical School Professors -- had very high praise for their work. A few will apparently see their work published in a journal or other format, which says a lot about the quality of the biology and biotechnology programs.

There was also one ALM/humanities concentrator who wrote a thesis on Shakespeare's plays that questioned the conclusions of a book written by a top Shakespeare scholar and Harvard faculty member. Her thesis director? The very same faculty member! He was hard, but the result was a top-notch thesis that won the Dean's Prize for Outstanding ALM Thesis in the Humanities.

I didn't win a prize, but my 3.96 GPA resulted in another honor: I was recognized as one of two Class Marshals for the ALM/Liberal Arts class of 2008. We have some special responsibilities, and will even be wielding batons during the morning and afternoon ceremonies. So you there -- back in line!

Tomorrow is another reception, my first for the Harvard Extension Alumni Association (HEAA). I know one of the HEAA officers and recent grads, but it will be great to meet others who have graduated from the ALB and ALM programs.