Harvard vs. the Internet
Dean Pfister is right to note that Harvard Summer School has been operating successfully for a long time, since 1871. This is important context that I should have provided to readers.
That said, nothing in his letter contradicts anything I wrote. Harvard Summer School is an open admissions program taught by a combination of Harvard professors and people who are not Harvard professors. It markets itself as an opportunity to pay thousands of dollars to live in Natalie Portman’s old dorm, which is kind of creepy. And Harvard College does not accept credits earned from Harvard Summer School’s online courses.
Dean Pfister explains this last fact as simply a function of general university policy. “No online credit from any institution can be used toward graduation,” he writes. Really! That’s remarkable. Harvard believes that this particular mode of communication–one that has become an integral part of the way people in modern society live and interact, to the point where roughly one quarter of all college students take courses online–is so illegitimate