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(詳細はAbbott Lawrence Lowell. From the beginning, the Harvard Extension School was designed to serve the educational interests and needs of the greater Boston community, but has since extended its "academic resources to the public, locally, nationally, and internationally."〔 After 100 years, an estimated 500,000 students have taken courses at the Extension School. While there has never been an entrance exam and fees were kept as low as possible to allow as many as possible to enroll, only .18% have ever earned a degree. Including certificate earners, 2.5% have graduated. Today more degrees are awarded each year than were awarded in the first 50 years combined. ==Lowell Institute== John Lowell, Jr., a wealthy Boston businessman, became gravely ill during a camel trip across the Egyptian desert and wrote his will on the banks of the Nile River in Cairo. He died on March 4, 1836, shortly after arriving in Bombay, India, and his will was executed back in Boston. In it, he set aside half his fortune to be used for "the maintenance and support of Public Lectures to be delivered in said Boston upon philosophy, natural history, and the arts and sciences ... for the promotion of the moral and intellectual and physical instruction or education of the citizens of the said city of Boston. Lowell also directed that lectures be given "on the natural religion showing its conformity to that of our Savior," "on the historical and internal evidences in favor of Christianity," and "avoiding all disputed points of faith and ceremony" by directing the lecturers "to the moral doctrines of the Gospel." The lectures were supposed to be free for those of limited means, and for those who could afford to attend more "abstruse" or "erudite" lectures, the maximum charge was to be no more than the value of two bushells of wheat. In an equally egalitarian measure, the lectures were specifically open to women as well as to men. Some of the "most notable intellectual figures of America and Europe" lectured as part of the program.〔 When the Lowell Institute, the foundation formed to sponsor the lectures, opened in 1839 the initial value of the fund was $250,000, or $5,309,180 in 2012 dollars.〔http://www.westegg.com〕 Annual interest on corpus of $18,000, or $382,260.96 in 2012 dollars. By 1897 the fund had more than $1,000,000 in it, with an annual income of more than $50,000. The Institute was to be headed by a single trustee, and one preferably a male descendant of Lowell's grandfather. The first trustee, John Amory Lowell, administered the trust for more than forty years. According to the terms of the will, each year 10% of the earnings must be turned into non-expendable capital.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of Harvard Extension School」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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