Effects of Honors Program Participation on Experiences of Good Practices and Learning Outcomes, The

Journal of College Student Development, Jan/Feb 2007 by Seifert, Tricia A, Pascarella, Ernest T, Colangelo, Nicholas, Assouline, Susan

Using multi-institution data and a longitudinal, pretest-posttest design, this study investigated the impact of honors programs on student experiences of good practices in undergraduate education as well as cognitive development in the first year of college. We found students in honors programs advantaged in terms of the good practice measures related to the in-class college experience. Additionally, we found significant positive effects of honors programs on critical thinking, mathematics, and composite cognitive development. We also found conditional effects in which honors programs participation seemed to have a greater impact for men and students of color on some learning outcomes.

In an era of competition among colleges and universities, many institutions have sought to increase the quality of their student body by recruiting more academically gifted students to campus. For those institutions that are not able to increase their overall selectivity (e.g., public institutions that are mission-bound to accept local high school graduates meeting certain criteria), colleges and universities have increasingly created honors programs, and more recently honors colleges, as a means to market themselves to high-achieving students (e.g., Bulakowski &Townsend, 1995; Byrne, 1998; Harrison-Cook, 1999; Long, 2002; Reihman, Varhus, & Whipple, 1990; Shushok, 2003).

It is understandable why colleges and universities would be interested in recruiting these students. As Bridget Long (2002) of the Harvard Graduate School of Education recently noted, high-achieving students offer positive peer effects to the campus milieu. Additionally, a host of external stakeholders often point to the successes of high-achieving students in the labor market as a measure of overall institutional effectiveness. Finally, public institutions have heralded honors programs as combating the statewide brain drain while fulfilling their missions of providing postsecondary educational options for all residents, regardless of ability. From a student perspective, with college tuition outpacing increases in the median family income, students view honors programs as providing the opportunities of an Ivy League education at a state university price, thus decreasing the degree of overall stratification between colleges (Galinova, 2005; Long; Samuels, 2001).

Although honors programs take many forms, they exist largely to enhance the impact of undergraduate education for particularly talented and motivated students (Austin, 1985; Harrison-Cook, 1999; Long, 2002; Pflaum, Pascarella, & Duby, 1985; Reed, 1988; Sederberg, 2005; Shushok, 2003). Long reported that honors programs exist at all but the most and least competitive institutions. Honors programs are most heavily concentrated at public four-year institutions; only six percent of public two-year colleges have honors programs. The rate at which institutions have sought to create honors programs differs by institutional type with public institutions establishing 25% of the honors programs since 1989. There has been far greater growth in honors programs at public two-year colleges with a 40% increase since 1989 (Long).

In addition to varying by institutional setting, honors programs also vary by organizational structure and programmatic offerings. Long (2002) noted public four-year institutions have increasingly modified their honors "programs" to become honors "colleges." Long (2002) and Sederberg (2005) identified honors colleges as more likely to have special residential opportunities and scholarships for honors students. Even among honors colleges, they relate to the broader university in different ways. Some honors colleges have a centralized "overlay" structure of the university's undergraduate program, whereas others are freestanding colleges with their own faculty and curriculum (Sederberg). From a programmatic perspective, most honors programs offer "general" honors courses within the core education curriculum with fewer programs offering "departmental" honors (Long; Sederberg). Over half of the programs offer some combination of special seminars or colloquia as well as an honors senior thesis (Long, Sederberg).

The heterogeneity among honors programs and honors colleges motivated the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) to develop "Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program" over a decade ago and more recently die "Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors College" which was formally endorsed in 2005 (Sederberg, 2005). For more information regarding these characteristics, visit the NCHC website at http://www.nchchonors.org/basic.htm

Honors programs, however, are not without their critics. Murray Sperber, professor of English and American Studies at Indiana University, argued in a 2000 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that honors programs remove the best students and professors from the general classroom where their contributions would enrich the educational experiences of all students. Additionally, critics assert that honors programs redirect scarce resources from programs that serve the neediest of students and place them in programs serving the most able students (VanPoolen-Larsen, 1991). This criticism points to the paradox of cultural beliefs that undergird American higher education. On one hand, Americans hold the egalitarian notion that higher education should be the right of every American irrespective of wealth or social standing, whereas on the other hand they equally believe in the meritocractic system in which the best educational opportunities are distributed to the most motivated and talented students (Galinova, 2005).