Harvard Extension School

I found something that looks very cool!

The Harvard Extension School

I am interested in the Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) which encompasses over 20 fields of study across the liberal arts and professional disciplines. Subjects range from traditional humanities and social sciences (such as Anthropology, English, History, and Psychology) to specialized professional and STEM programs (including Biotechnology, Data Science, Cybersecurity, Management, and Sustainability). All ALM candidates must complete 12 courses—48 credit hours—to earn their degree. Most fields of study require students to complete either an in-depth thesis or a capstone project, which is typically crafted under the direction of an instructor or faculty member holding a teaching appointment in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Graduate Admissions:

Application to a graduate degree program requires an accredited four-year bachelor’s degree (or foreign equivalent), passing the Test of Critical Reading and Writing Skills, the completion of two or three designated pre-admission courses with grades of B or higher, and a minimum cumulative grade-point average of 3.0. One of the pre-admission courses must be the “proseminar” course for the intended area of study, which is akin to a traditional research methods course. Some disciplines have additional specified pre-admission coursework, while others have specific coursework that is required before submitting a master’s thesis proposal (biology and psychology students must take a specific graduate statistics course). In addition, several programs require supplemental application materials; for instance, Creative Writing and Literature ALM candidates must submit original manuscripts. Students who meet these criteria are then eligible to submit an application for admission into the graduate degree programs (ALM).

A student who fails to earn a grade of B after twice enrolling in the proseminar course—often considered a “gatekeeper” course—will be denied admission indefinitely.

VERY COOL INDEED

Grad Student

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I start MA in Ancient and Classical History at American Public University/American Military University on 6 Jul 2026.

HIST500 Historical Research Methods.

I will be entering the 17th Grade.

MA in History at APUS

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MA in History:

Ancient and Classical History

European History

American History

Global History

Public History

MA in Military History:

American Revolution

Civil War

World War II

War Since 1945

American Military History

This list is in order of preference….

Great Books as Best Education

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You can get a used set of the Great Books of the Western World for around $300.

You can get a used set of the Gateway to the Great Books of the Western World for around $50.

The Wikipedia articles for Great Books, Great Books of the Western World, and Gateway to the Great Books of the Western World are very complete.

Other Books:

How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J Adler and Charles Van Doren. 1972

Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf and other Indestructible Writers of the Western World by David Denby. 2005

The Western Cannon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom. 1994

Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds by Harold Bloom. 2002

The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A J Jacobs. 2004

Great Books

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Of course, the only serious solution is the one that is almost universally rejected: the good old Great Books approach, in which a liberal education means reading certain generally recognized classic texts, just reading them, letting them dictate what the questions are and the method of approaching them—not forcing them into categories we make up, not treating them as historical products, but trying to read them as their authors wished them to be read. I am perfectly well aware of, and actually agree with the objections to the Great Books cult. It is amateurish; it encourages an autodidact’s self-assurance without competence; one cannot read all of the Great Books carefully; if one only reads Great Books, one can never know what a great, as opposed to an ordinary, book is; there is no way of determining who is to decide what a Great Book or what the canon is; books are made the ends and not the means; the whole movement has a certain coarse evangelistic tone that is the opposite of good taste; it engenders a spurious intimacy with greatness; and so forth. But, one thing is certain: wherever the Great Books make up a central part of the curriculum, the students are excited and satisfied, feel they are doing something that is independent and fulfilling, getting something from the university they cannot get elsewhere. The very fact of this special experience, which leads nowhere beyond itself, provides them with a new alternative and a respect for study itself. The advantage they get is an awareness of the classic—particularly important for our innocents; an acquaintance with what big questions were when there were still big questions; models, at the very least, of how to go about answering them; and, perhaps most important of all, a fund of shared experiences and thoughts on which to ground their friendships with one another. Programs based upon judicious use of great texts provide the royal road to student’s hearts. Their gratitude at learning of Achilles or the categorical imperative is boundless. Alexander Koyre, the late historian of science, told me that his appreciation for America was great when—in the first course he taught at the University of Chicago, in 1940 at the beginning of his exile—a student spoke in his paper of Mr. Aristotle, unaware that he was not a contemporary. Koyre said that only an American could have the naïve profundity to take Aristotle as living thought, unthinkable for most scholars. A good program of liberal education feeds the student’s love of truth and passion to live a good life. It is the easiest thing in the world to devise courses of study, adapted to the particular conditions of each university, which thrill those who take them. The difficulty is in getting them accepted by the faculty.

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 344-345.