Don't misrepresent where you went to school.

[sanantone]

In my own experience, I went to a memorial party for a legendary law professor at the big D-1 university in my town. (I worked on a documentary about him.) I happened to be wearing a Harvard shirt I'd found used at a thrift store on the cheap. The party was filled with academia from all over who'd flown down for the memorial service. I ended up sitting across from someone from up north who commented on my shirt. "So you went to Harvard?" "Well I'm currently enrolled in HES, taking grad English courses and am looking into earning my way into a degree program." "In Boston?" "No, I'm taking courses online." "So you did not actually attend Harvard College." "Nope." He nodded with what I read as self-satisfaction.

At the same party, the late professor's daughter - who did attend Harvard for her grad degree commented, "Nice shirt!"

If you attend HES, there are probably always going to be people who will call you out on it - try to take you down a peg. But frankly everyone else I know who is aware I'm pursuing grad studies at HES are absolutely wowed and impressed by the Harvard brand, and really do not care in the least that it's "Extension School" or "Division of Continuing Education" or whatever box you want to put it in. They assume that the academics are rigorous - and given the 600 out of 13,000 graduate statistic ratio somebody else gave, there's reason to believe that's true.

For me personally, I just really like the quality of materials, content and students in my cohorts. I'm fascinated by the rich history of the university and resources and materials they are able to utilize. I'm looking forward to visiting during Summer School in a few months and spending time in their museums and campus. What I'm getting out of the experience is valuable to me, and I don't really care whether anyone approves of the certificates, degrees, programs, or even my comfy t-shirt - nor whether they say it's "Harvard-lite" or "The backdoor into Harvard" or "Not real Harvard".  As Teddy Roosevelt once said, "Comparison is the thief of joy."

Low graduation rates are very common at open admissions schools. Many for-profit colleges have graduation rates below 20%. Some Argosy campuses have a graduation rate near 7%. Rigorous schools usually have high graduation rates because they're selective. What I find impressive are open admissions schools with graduation rates near 50% or higher because they're rare. The school would have to have very high instructional quality to get so many people to pass. Low graduation rates usually mean that you accepted everyone, didn't provide them with the support they needed to pass, and took their money. Those are the practices of predatory colleges.

But, my guess is that many HES students never intended to finish a certificate or degree program in the first place. The on-campus requirements are also an obstacle to finishing.