Harvard’s Fake Harvard Credit Business
I’ve gotten a few emails today complaining about the use of the word “fake” in my latest Chronicle of Higher Education column:
Harvard has the opposite of a brand deficit. It has a brand surplus. The name is so strong that Harvard can run a side business selling fake Harvard credits and nobody bats an eye.
Here I’m referring to Harvard Summer School, an open admissions operation that Harvard runs over the summer where people can pay thousands of dollars to live in dorms once occupied by actual Harvard students. (The website says, for real, “JFK slept here … And so did Henry David Thoreau, Natalie Portman, and Al Gore.” This seems like kind of a dated and uncreative list.) I assume it’s a reasonably lucrative program since the university advertises in venues like the New York Times Education Life section. Students can also take some Harvard Summer School courses online. If you’re wondering these courses really measures up to the famous Harvard brand, I would simply note that Harvard College itself doesn’t accept online credits from Harvard Summer School.
Now, in a very narrow sense I suppose one could argue that these aren’t “fake” Harvard credits in the same