Harvard GraduateSchool of Education

About Harvard GraduateSchool of Education

Mission

To prepare leaders in education and to generate knowledge to improve student opportunity, achievement, and success.

Overview

Education touches every aspect of human activity. At the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), we believe studying and improving the enterprise of education are central to the health and future of society.

Since its founding in 1920, the Ed School has been training leaders to transform education in the United States and around the globe. Today, our faculty, students, and alumni are studying and solving the most critical challenges facing education: student assessment, the achievement gap, urban education, and teacher shortages, to name just a few. Our work is shaping how people teach, learn, and lead in schools and colleges as well as in after-school programs, high-tech companies, and international organizations. The HGSE community is pushing the frontiers of education, and the effects of our entrepreneurship are improving the world.

Academic Programs

Today, more than 100 faculty members guide about 900 students in doctoral and master's programs each year. HGSE offers 13 master's programs and 6 doctoral concentrations, leading to careers in teaching and research, school leadership, counseling, language and literacy, education policy, and many other fields. In addition, each year more than 3,000 educational leaders from around the world participate in our professional education programs.

Faculty

HGSE faculty members are deeply involved in the most critical issues in education, from examining how changes in the economy are redefining a good basic education to exploring the fundamental questions about early childhood learning and development. Their work as teachers, mentors, and researchers has a profound impact on the world of education.

Students

HGSE students bring a wealth of varied experience to the School. Many students enrolling in one of the 13 master's programs do so after serving as teachers, school and district administrators, policymakers, counselors, researchers, program directors, and college and university administrators. They contribute knowledge from settings as diverse as public and private schools, nonprofit organizations, international organizations, and corporations. Doctoral students bring a combination of proven leadership experience research experience. Doctoral students admitted for fall 2008 averaged six years of professional experience prior to enrolling, while admitted master's students averaged four and a half years.

Alumni

Since its inception, Harvard Graduate School of Education has graduated nearly 27,000 students. Today, the Ed School's alumni occupy educational leadership roles both nationally and internationally. Every day, HGSE graduates make an impact in the world of education as researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.

Gutman Library

The Monroe C. Gutman Library is one of more than 90 libraries in the Harvard Library system. The collection's primary focuses are educational administration and policy, elementary and secondary education, teachers and teaching, educational innovations, educational psychology, human development, language acquisition, and the history of education. Currently the library holds more than 200,000 volumes and carries more than 1,300 periodical subscriptions.

Harvard University

Harvard Graduate School of Education students have the benefit of being at one of the world's great academic institutions, Harvard University. The university environment provides Ed School students with opportunities to enroll in classes at other schools, to study with world-class scholars, to explore the largest university library system in the world, and to meet and learn from an extraordinarily diverse student population. (more...)

Faculty & Research

The Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty represents many disciplines, many methods, and many perspectives. By bringing together a diverse group that is able to consider issues through different perspectives, HGSE is able to create new and innovative solutions to today's pressing educational problems.

Ed School faculty members are conducting groundbreaking research in vital teaching and policy areas. This research is not done in a vacuum. New strategies and methods are tested and refined in school districts throughout the nation. Ed School faculty members also reach out to their colleagues across the University to seek multi-disciplinary solutions to today's educational problems.

Impact in the World

Education is the single most important ingredient for a successful society. Why? Education affords children and adults the opportunity to reach their potential as learners and thereby become productive, proud citizens.

Harvard University has long understood the central role of education for producing caring communities and vibrant economies. Since 1920, the Harvard Graduate School of Education has been Harvard's headquarters for education enterprise. At HGSE, our mission is to prepare future leaders who will have a profound impact on education practice, policy, and research.

Each day--in classrooms and boardrooms, in small community organizations and in the halls of Congress, from small one-room schoolhouses to the largest educational institutions in the world--the Harvard Graduate School of Education makes a difference. Our faculty, graduates, and students have accepted the challenge of changing the world.

In addition to the work of individual members of the HGSE community, the Ed School leverages its strengths through its research centers, collaborations within the larger Harvard community, and relationships with school districts around the world.