Thoughts on NY Times Letters about Honors Colleges

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Honorsadmin

Honors News: August 25, 2015

Below are excerpts from two letters to the editor published by the New York Times in response to Frank Bruni’s positive August 9 column about honors colleges and programs. Again, our thanks to Mr. Bruni for his kind remarks about A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs and for his support of honors colleges and programs as a strong option for talented students. Our comments follow both excerpts.

To the Editor:

“Frank Bruni argues correctly that honors colleges at many public universities give students the chance to get a superb education at a moderate price (“A Prudent College Path,” column, Aug. 9). But he might have expanded his argument further in addressing the value of honors colleges as they have evolved in recent years at private as well as public universities.

“Contrary to the general belief that an honors college is an elitist program for only the best students, many honors colleges now offer an array of intellectual and cultural resources to all students who choose to take advantage of them…

“Some of our programs are open only to the highest-achieving students, but others — involving research, fellowship mentoring and interdisciplinary coursework — are open to all. These programs allow students to receive a wide-ranging liberal arts education while still completing a focused major and preparing for the workplace or graduate school.”

PAULA MARANTZ COHEN
Dean, Pennoni Honors College
Drexel University
Philadelphia

To the Editor:

“Honors programs for a select few at public universities institutionalize blatant academic elitism and hypocrisy rather than diminish them. All college courses should be ‘honors courses,’ demanding and providing rigorous academic and intellectual experiences for everyone who attends college…

“Rather than casting 80 percent of the student body overboard into an intellectually mediocre classroom environment, reel back these students so that they, too, can experience what the university considers the best for the best.”

PHIL AVILLO
York, Pa.
The writer is emeritus professor of history at York College of Pennsylvania.

Responses:

Dean Cohen is correct in saying that many honors colleges and programs in private universities such as Drexel are essential for giving talented students an opportunity to participate in honors-specific courses and experiences, while also providing access to undergraduate research, fellowship mentoring, and even access to some honors classes.

The same is true of honors programs in public universities. An outstanding example is the University of Georgia Honors Program, which oversees the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO), a highly effective vehicle for promoting research excellence for all undergraduates, not just honors students. It is no coincidence that UGA, mainly through its honors program and research emphasis, is one of the national leaders in producing Goldwater Scholars. These outstanding undergraduates in the STEM disciplines are often selected later on for prestigious postgraduate scholarships.

Professor Avillo suggests that honors colleges and programs are guilty of “blatant elitism” and take resources away from the overall student population. This is a familiar attack on honors programs, and of course he is correct in saying that honors programs require extra university resources to provide smaller class sections for honors students, honors residence halls, and other special programs. And in some cases, honors students may be considered “elite” in a negative way. The question is: are these extra efforts justifiable?

(Here’s a great article on our site by Dean Christian Brady of Penn State’s renowned Schreyer Honors College. Dean Brady describes how honors programs can become more egalitarian and benefit the whole university.)

It is our view that the two main justifications for honors colleges and programs:

1. Most public and private honors programs at major universities require applicants to have very strong high school gpa’s along with standardized test scores in the top 8-9% nationwide. Our research suggests that in the current battle among colleges to enhance their selectivity profiles, many of these bright students are not finding places in the most elite private institutions.

In order for these students to find a learning environment that, in some ways, offers classes and other experiences that resemble those in elite colleges. Without the thousands of slots for these students in both public and private honors programs, the students would likely succeed anyway–but would they be challenged, or find a group with similar interests as freshmen, or go on to the best graduate and professional schools?

2. If you are one of the students described above and find that your dream private college has rejected you for whatever mystical reason, would you want to travel hundreds or thousands of miles and pay higher tuition to find a college that will offer you the challenges and opportunities you need, indeed deserve based on your qualifications? If given the right option, would you stay in your home state, or at least nearby?

Most students would say yes. And, sometimes, their state legislatures would like for them to stay in-state in order to avoid the “brain drain” that occurs when such students cannot find the type of education they desire in their home state. The fact is that no state right now, and probably in the foreseeable future, can magically create a UC Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, UVA, UNC Chapel Hill, or a William & Mary. Or a UW Madison, Washington, UT Austin, or Illinois. But a state can, with additional support from donors, build honors colleges and programs.

Honors News is a regular (not always daily) update, in brief, of recent news from honors colleges/programs and from the world of higher ed. Occasionally, a bit of opinion enters the discussion. These brief posts are by John Willingham, unless otherwise noted.

Honors News: August 24, 2015

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Honorsadmin

Princeton Review’s “Great Schools for…Business, Engineering”

Each year, The Princeton Review analyzes the number of students by major in more than 2,000 colleges and consults with in-house admissions experts to come up with a series of “Great Schools for…”, well, 20 of the most popular majors.

Today, we will list the public universities on two of the 20 lists: Business/Finance and Engineering. All schools will be listed in alpha order. In the case of Engineering, it is noteworthy that Michigan Tech and the Missouri University of Science and Technology, neither as well known as flagship and land-grant schools, both made the list.

Business/Finance

Arizona State

Cal State–Stanislaus

Christopher Newport

City University of NY–Baruch and Brooklyn

Florida State

Indiana

Iowa State

Miami Ohio

Ohio University

Portland State

Arkansas

UC Berkeley

UCLA

Florida

Houston

Illinois

Michigan

UT Austin

UT Dallas

Virginia

Engineering

Georgia Tech

Michigan Tech

Missouri Univ of Science and Tech

Montana Tech of Univ of Montana

Penn State

Purdue

Texas A&M

UC Berkeley

UCLA

UT Austin

UW Madison

Virginia Tech

Honors News: August 23, 2015

Posted on August 23, 2015 by Honorsadmin

Average GMAT Scores from 25 Top MBA Programs

Although our main focus in the near future will be on undergraduate business honors programs at public universities, we like to post stats and news about leading MBA programs as well.

Below is a list of 25 prominent MBA programs, both public and private, with the average GMAT score (2014) for each:

University MBA Program	GMAT Avg
Stanford	732
Harvard	730
Penn	728
Chicago	724
NYU	720
Yale	720
Columbia	716
Dartmouth	716
Northwestern	715
MIT	714
UC Berkeley	714
Virginia	706
Michigan	704
North Carolina	697
Carnegie Mellon	693
Georgetown	691
Duke	690
Texas	690
Vanderbilt	688
Rochester	684
Emory	675
Iowa	669
Indiana	668
Michigan State	666
Illinois	659

Honors News: August 21, 2015–Business Honors Programs

Posted on August 21, 2015 by Honorsadmin

We are expanding our interest in public honors programs to include undergraduate honors professional programs, beginning with business honors. In the near future, we will begin a series of posts on the subject, centering for now on the 35 programs listed below. Business honors programs received some mention in A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs but only if they were an option for a university-wide honors students.

If we do another edition, we will likely include reviews, with ratings or otherwise, of some business honors programs.

In the meantime, you can use this list to begin your own searches. Please bear in mind that half of these are open only to sophomores or upper-division students who have already completed first-year and/or second-year courses with very high grades, typically a 3.5 gpa or better. Such programs are the business major versions of “departmental honors” upper-division tracks in other academic disciplines. There are good reasons for variations in the length of business honors programs. Some prefer that students have shown their commitment and ability in college before moving into the honors track. Others want to launch students as quickly as possible into honors. Business honors programs that have one or more four-year options are in bold below.

Honors News: August 20, 2015–Is Class Rank a Disappearing Metric?

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Honorsadmin

Of great importance to college applicants in some states (Texas, especially) high school class rank is of paramount importance. Texas high school grads ranked in the top 10% of their high school classes (top 7% at UT Austin for 2015) gain automatic acceptance to state schools, with UT Austin capping automatic admissions at 75% of the total freshman class.

According to the National Association of College Admissions C0unselors (NACAC), only 15% of colleges now consider class rank on its own to be of “considerable importance.”

“It’s disappearing as a metric,” says Lee Coffin, a NACAC member and dean of undergraduate admissions at Tufts.

NACAC reports that “a student’s grades in college-prep classes is considered the top factor in college admission decisions, followed by the strength of their curriculum, test scores and overall grade-point average, data show.

“The shift away from class rank is related, in part, to the widespread adoption of weighted grades for students who take honors or advanced classes.

“High school officials ‘want students to focus on their own accomplishments without worrying so much where they fall in the pecking order,’ writes reporter Moriah Balingit of the Washington Post. ‘And with the proliferation of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses — which can boost a student’s grade-point average above a 4.0 — emphasizing rank could push students to overload themselves during their high school years.'”

In the case of UC Berkeley, students who are in the top 9% of statewide high school grads, or in the top 9% of their own high school class, meet only a basic threshold for admission. They must still met the “holistic” requirements of UC Berkeley, which include the following:

Your weighted and unweighted grade point average (calculated using 10th and 11th grade UC-approved courses only)
Your planned 12th grade courses
Your pattern of grades over time
The number of college preparatory, Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), honors and transferable college courses you have completed
Your level of achievement in those courses relative to other UC applicants at your school
Your scores on AP or IB exams
Your scores on the ACT plus writing or the SAT reasoning test.

These additional requirements go a long way toward ensuring that UC Berkeley students in the top 9% also have other credentials that point toward high academic achievement, especially success with rigorous courses (AP, etc).

Using an automatic percentage as the basis for admission absent additional requirements that evaluate the real academic quality of high school courses is problematic.

One reason is that it encourages some students to transfer to a high school with easier classes and less competition in order to improve class standing.

Another reason is that the test scores of students admitted via automatic admission are somewhat lower; in the case of UT Austin, automatic admits averaged 28 on the ACT, while holistic admits had an average ACT of 30.

The result is a sense of unfairness among students who have completed rigorous coursework at more competitive high schools, made excellent grades, earned high test scores, but not quite made it to the top 10%, or 7% in the case of UT Austin. (UT Austin will admit the top 8% in 2016.)

Honors News: August 19, 2015–Illinois at Chicago Honors College

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Honorsadmin

University of Illinois at Chicago Honors College Receives Big Donations, Provides Great Support for Honors Students

The Illinois at Chicago Honors College has to be doing a lot of things right. The most recent annual report, perhaps the most detailed and informative that we have encountered, has lots of good news to present. Outgoing Dean Bette Bottoms has certainly left her mark on the College during her seven years of leadership.

Today, we will highlight the latest financial news from the College, and add some interesting news about honors graduation rates.

In Spring 2015, the College announced the largest gift in its history. “The CME Group Foundation gave the Honors College one million dollars over the next four years: $900,000 will support scholarships for students pursuing careers related to finance, especially low-income and first-generation college students from Chicago Public Schools. Another $100,000 will be used to provide emergency funds for Honors students of any major.”

Former Chicago Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood and his wife, Sarah, established a scholarship fund to support first-year students with high academic ability and significant financial need. The Chicago neighborhoods that the Wood Family Foundation serves are Austin, Englewood, Humboldt Park, or Lawndale. “All tuition, fees, assessments, books, and room and board are provided and the ACCC provides a laptop,” according to the report. “The 2015-16 recipient is Marla Stamps, an entering freshman majoring in Urban Education.”

The Honors College itself initiated two new scholarships to support students: “Over $200,000 in Fresh Start Scholarships were offered to new incoming first-year students with unmet financial need in Fall 2014. Ten City College Honors Transfer Awards of $1,000 each will be given to incoming transfer students from City Colleges of Chicago for Fall 2015.”

Dr. Siva Sivananthan funds the SAGE scholarship for incoming students in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, who are also from some of Chicago’s most challenged neighborhoods. The recipients, freshmen Andriy Suden and Peter Durosinmi, each received $10,500 scholarships to be used for Honors-designated on-campus housing, renewable annually for four years.

“Finally, Kevin Desouza and his wife Sally have also funded a second endowed scholarship, called the Desouza Family Endowment Fund for Civic Leadership, to support students who go beyond the classroom and make a positive impact on the UIC community through service and leadership in student organizations.”

“The Honors College continued to provide the Dean’s Emergency Fund for students who have unique times of financial stress that can be relieved with relatively little money (usually $2,000 or less). The College gave approximately $60,000 in emergency funding last year to 49 students. Honors students have come to the Dean to ask for grants of as little as $62 to pay off their outstanding student account balance and to register for the next semester. Most requests are for larger amounts, but this kind of funding is crucial for Honors students who risk withdrawing from college due to unforeseen circumstances—from family home foreclosure to root canals—resulting in unpaid educational expenses.”

As for graduation rates, the report has a graph that illustrates the value-added impact that honors education can have.

The graph shows the six-year graduation rates of both honors and non-honors students, by ACT cohorts. Example: for students with ACT scores of 29-30, honors students had a graduation rate just over 80 percent, while the rate for non-honors students was less than 60 percent. The rates for students with ACT scores of 33 were 90+percent for honors students and, again, less than 60 percent for non-honors students.

Yes, it’s almost certain that some of this has to do with higher high school gpa’s for honors students versus the non-honors students, but the annual report makes it clear that there are also many other factors that contribute to honors success.

Why Don’t Some Well-Known Honors Colleges and Programs Appear in Our Book?

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Honorsadmin

Update March 25, 2016 to account for changes scheduled for our 2016 book.

Some visitors to our site and readers of A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs might wonder why the honors colleges or programs at several prominent public universities are not reviewed. Those schools include Colorado, Florida, Michigan State, Ohio State, and Pitt.

The fact that these and other programs were not included in the Review does not mean that they are not strong options for an honors education. Every one of the colleges and programs above can rightfully point to outstanding accomplishments and alumni. On occasion we post information and links to these and other programs that were not reviewed in the book.

The reasons for exclusion vary, but they include the following:

(1) Some programs do not have designated honors membership or hard and fast requirements, preferring to give students maximum freedom in course selection. This is an issue for us because our key metric assesses the hours and credits required for honors completion and the specific course offerings available to meet those requirements.

(2) Some programs were in transition at the time we sent out the questionnaire. Neither they nor I thought it was fair to rate them under those circumstances.

(3) A few honors colleges and programs expressed strong opposition to our project and to the idea of ranking or rating honors programs, and therefore declined to participate at all.

The Review makes it clear that we no longer consider numerical rankings to be valid, as they tend to create distinctions (based on tiny statistical disparities in scoring) where no meaningful distinctions exist. But we do rate the programs, and that allows us to group several that are essentially equivalent. For example, we list 7 programs as having 5 “mortarboards” on a scale of 5. We do not rank those or other programs in strict numerical order, however.

Texas A&M Is All-in When It Comes to Engineering

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Honorsadmin

Can it be that Texas A&M plans to out-tech…Georgia Tech? Engineering majors at the renowned Georgia institution make up almost 60% of undergrads. It now appears that Texas A&M may be headed toward a similar profile–and may well have the funding and the will to make it happen.

Only a few years ago, the Texas A&M and University of Texas systems were fighting to maintain academic excellence in the midst of severe legislative budget cuts and attacks from then-Governor Rick Perry, an A&M alumnus.

Today, Perry is out of office, and the A&M System just approved a $400 million funding increase, thanks in large measure to legislative action that added $3.3 billion in higher ed funding. Almost $200 million of this amount will be for research. The bulk of the money will go for expansions to keep pace with enrollment increases in the A&M and UT Systems. The University of Houston System also received additional funding.

And this: the Legislature also added $91 million in financial aid funding. A&M will also use $10 million, from multiple sources, for professorships and for the Texas A&M Institute for Advanced Study, “which aims to attract top-tier academic and research talent from around the country to participate in fellowships.” Such a plan contrasts sharply with the aims of Perry and his allies, who were willing to sacrifice academic research and excellence in the name of cheaper, more “productive” strategies.

The 2016 budget narrative states that the A&M System is providing $22.5 million in one-time available university funding to Texas A&M University (main campus). Some of this largesse is the result of the state’s booming economy, and some has come about with the change of leadership in the state.

For a while now, A&M has had a plan for using this and other money, much of it in donations to support the Dwight Look College of Engineering. In 2013, the Texas A&M main campus in College Station announced the “25 by 25” project, aimed at increasing the enrollment of engineering students on campus to 25,000 by the year 2025.

Chancellor John Sharp, a powerful leader in state higher ed and political circles, said that in 2012, the main campus had 10,000 applications for only 1,600 slots in engineering. You can bet that a lot of the money this biennium will go to salaries and research in engineering.

To put the goal of 25,000 engineering students in perspective, we have estimated the percentage of engineering majors that Texas A&M could have if the “25 by 25” goals are met. If the undergrad student body grows to 40,000, and 25,000 of those are engineering students (60%), then Texas A&M will bear a strong resemblance to the engineering behemoth that is Georgia Tech.

What happens when an Aggie meets a Ramblin’ Wreck? This is one Aggie joke that is likely to be no joke on the Aggies at all.

Honors News: August 16, 2015

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Honorsadmin

Do Honors Colleges and Programs Really Have Smaller Classes?

The short answer is yes. Although some first-year classes, especially in the sciences, can be large, most lower-division classes will in fact be smaller. If the program offers upper-division honors sections, these will also be smaller than most regular sections.

The following comes from a detailed analysis of honors class size, using actual university class schedules as the basis.

The average class size for honors seminars is in the 14-19 student range. Please bear in mind that seminars often count for Gen Ed requirements, and their small size is a big advantage, aside from the advantages of their interdisciplinary approach.

But what about honors class size averages for sections in the major academic disciplines? We took the honors sections from 16 public universities and then calculated the actual enrollment averages in each section. The academic disciplines we included were biology and biochemistry; chemistry; computer science and engineering; economics; English; history; math; physics; political science; and psychology. The honors colleges and programs included three of the largest in the nation, along with several smaller programs.

Given the perilous state of the humanities, it is no surprise that the smallest classes are in English and history, while the largest are in computer science, chemistry, biology, and political science.

Here are the results, by discipline:

Biology–63 sections, average of 38.6 students. (Bear in mind that many intro biology classes are not all-honors and are generally much larger, 100 or more, with separate weekly honors discussion sections, each with 10-20 students. Same for into chemistry.)

Chemistry–33 sections, average of 40.3 students.

Computer Science/Computer Engineering–18 sections, average 54.3 students.

Economics–49 sections, average of 31.2 students. (This is in most cases a significant improvement over enrollment in non-honors class sections.)

English–110 sections, average of 19.4 students. This does not include many even smaller honors seminars that have a humanities focus.

History–58 sections, average of 16.2 students. This likewise does not include many even smaller honors seminars with a humanities/history emphasis.

Math–44 sections, average of 24.7 students. Most of the math sections are in calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, topology, vector analysis.

Physics–30 sections, average of 25.5 students. Again, many honors programs do not offer honors classes in intro physics, so a student could still have large non-honors classes in that course.

Political Science–19 sections, average 34.4 students. The striking point here is the small number of polysci sections offered–just over 1 per program, per semester on average. The major has become extremely popular, so many sections outside of honors could be quite large.

Psychology–60 sections, average 28.9 students. Another popular major, but more class availability in general.

UT Austin Business Honors Program: A Great Launching Pad

Posted on August 15, 2015 by Honorsadmin

The McCombs Business School at the University of Texas at Austin consistently ranks among the leaders in the nation for both undergraduate and MBA programs, but the Business Honors Program (BHP) for highly qualified applicants can lead to jobs and salaries that rival those of the leading private university business schools.

And when we say “highly qualified” we mean enrolled students with an average ACT of 33, and SAT of 1477 (higher than the 1466 average for the Wharton School at Penn), and an average high school class standing in the top 2.27%.

The acceptance rate for the incoming class of 2015 was 17.6%, with total applications of 1,354.

The overall program size is approximately 500 students, with 120-130 enrolled students in each class year.

The McCombs School as a whole has ten business specialty programs ranked in the top 10, according to U.S News: Accounting (1), Marketing (3), Management Information Systems (4), Finance (5), Management (6), Real Estate (7), Entrepreneurship (8), Insurance (9), Production and Operations Management (9), and Quantitative Analysis (9). This means that students can change their minds about a business specialty and still receive equivalent classroom opportunities.

Another key factor is that BHP students can also jointly enroll in the nationally renowned Plan II honors program. Indeed, the Plan II-BHP combination is chosen by about one-third of BHP students.

If the qualifications of students and quality of specialty programs in the BHP are as high as most other business schools, so are the salaries earned upon graduation, with a mean salary of $65,879 for 2014 grads. And the placement rate for grads seeking full-time employment: 100% for the last four years.

Additional features include classes that are significantly smaller than regular undergrad business classes. BHP classes are capped at 40 students per section; many have 20-25 students enrolled. The case study approach used by many MBA programs is also used in a lot of the BHP classes.

According to the BHP, its 2015 graduates “went to work for the top banks, consulting firms, accounting firms, tech firms and others. They are now working for Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, McKinsey, Bain, Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, E&Y, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, Facebook, Amazon, Visa, Shell, Chevron, Southwest Airlines, Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola, 3M, General Electric, and the like.

“They are starting their own businesses and working for nonprofits in India. They are going to med school, law school, and graduate business schools. The BHP degree is a versatile degree and a great launching pad for many different industries and pursuits.”

Public University Honors

The site for public university honors colleges and programs

Category Archives: Honors News

Thoughts on NY Times Letters about Honors Colleges

Honors News: August 24, 2015

Honors News: August 23, 2015

Honors News: August 21, 2015–Business Honors Programs

Honors News: August 20, 2015–Is Class Rank a Disappearing Metric?

Honors News: August 19, 2015–Illinois at Chicago Honors College

Why Don’t Some Well-Known Honors Colleges and Programs Appear in Our Book?

Texas A&M Is All-in When It Comes to Engineering

Honors News: August 16, 2015

UT Austin Business Honors Program: A Great Launching Pad

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