It's the Ivy League school of all the Ivy League schools. With a sterling academic reputation, as well as a penchant for traditional educational values, Harvard University was a bit slow to embrace the idea of online degrees. But with Harvard's new Extension School, students have the option of taking courses from Harvard professors completely online, with the possibility of two entirely online degrees looming.

This thought-provoking article takes a look at what this development means in the face of current societal and educational trends.

The Extension School seems a hotbed of convenience, but something not totally unique to Harvard. At schools like SUNY-Empire State, students can earn online degrees in several fields, mostly through intensive independent study. These institutions allow motivated, driven students to earn valid degrees in slightly unorthodox ways. Through online courses, students of all ages can take classes at a top university when no other options are available.

This battleground between bona-fide universities and diploma mills could exist only in today's world. The proliferation of technology and information over the past fifty years has allowed whole libraries' worth of information to reach the most remote corners of the earth. As a global society, we are all more closely linked than ever, but the differences between rich and poor, men and women, and the world's many national cultures have never been more apparent.

It is in the intellectual arena that these debates are being carried out most dynamically. Long ago, the world's top universities hosted the best and the brightest, the movers and shakers of the times. These arenas were restricted not only spatially, but also by the extreme scarcity of qualified people ... and the relatively tiny number of people able to take part in the academic experience in the first place.

A university is not just a location; for those fortunate enough to attend, it is an experience. Until very recently, the elite schools were bastions of privilege populated mostly by white males groomed to be the players on these fields of expression.

What do you think? Is this a sign of progress, or is it somehow (as some argue) a step back for Harvard's reputation?