Abbott Lawrence Lowell - Lowell Institute and Harvard Extension School

Lowell Institute and Harvard Extension School

In 1900, Lowell succeeded his father as Trustee of the Lowell Institute, which Lowell's great-grandfather founded to subsidize public lectures and popular education programs. Throughout the 40 years he headed the Institute, Lowell's selection of topics and lecturers for the public series reflected his conservative tastes. Topics tended to history and government, with some science and music upon occasion. He ignored contemporary literature and current social trends. Typical were "The War of 1812," "The Development of Choral Music," "The Migration of Birds," and "American Orators and Oratory." A balanced series on "Soviet Russia after Thirteen Years" was an exception.

To the education programs Lowell brought his instinct for organization. He transformed the earlier variety of scientific courses into the School for Industrial Foremen at MIT, later called the Lowell Institute School, and focused its program on mechanical and electrical engineering. Stating that "any popular education at the present day should be systematic," he hired Harvard professors to repeat their courses for an audience of adults in Boston in the late afternoon or evening, promising the same quality and examinations. When he became Harvard's President, Lowell exploited his two positions to press further. In 1910 he led in the formation of a consortium of area schools, soon called the Commission on Extension Courses, that included Boston University, Boston College, MIT, Simmons, Tufts, Wellesley, and the Museum of Fine Arts. All agreed to provide similar courses and agreed to award the degree of Associate in Arts to students who completed the equivalent of a college program. He had earlier been approached by a committee of Boston schoolteachers, and he believed his extension program would "put a college degree within the reach of schoolteachers." When the Harvard Overseers agreed in 1910 to appoint a dean for the Department of University Extension, the program's 600 student were two-thirds female. Roughly a third of the students were teachers, a third office workers, and the remainder working at home. After 7 years, enrollment reached 1500.

When the schoolteachers asked why they were not entitled to the same bachelors degree as the Harvard College students, Lowell defended the distinction. Though courses were comparable, the programs and requirements were different, since the many specialized courses required of the College students could not be offered in the Extension Program. He meant the Associate in Arts degree to be distinctive. When Lowell learned in 1933 that other American schools had begun to award the Associate in Arts degree to students after the equivalent of just two years of work, he felt betrayed. He wrote: "the name of Associate in Arts has been degraded, probably beyond recovery, by wicked, thievish, and otherwise disreputable institutions." Harvard responded with a new Adjunct in Arts.