ERIC Number: EJ1132010
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 9
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1559-0151
EISSN: N/A
AP, Dual Enrollment, and the Survival of Honors Education
Guzy, Annmarie
Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, v17 n2 p3-11 Fall-Win 2016
A new admissions crisis has begun to emerge in the honors community. In an increasing number of states, legislatures are mandating uniform minimum AP and dual enrollment credits that public colleges and universities must accept, and consequently the honors students that have been admitted based in part on their willingness to take on challenging coursework such as AP classes are now struggling to find enough liberal-arts based honors electives to complete an honors program. Neither parents nor state legislatures want to continue paying the ever escalating costs of higher education, so fast-tracking students through a bachelor's degree program in three years has become particularly attractive. Reports of freshmen coming into public institutions with 30-60 credit hours are becoming more frequent. While parents and state governments are happily saving those tuition dollars, the traditional liberal arts foundation of honors education is being gutted. Author Annemarie Guzy reasons that in the present climate, honors educators no longer have the luxury of continuing a "more vs. different" debate regarding whether honors courses should be differentiated from regular courses through more assignments (frequently the default setting in honors contracts) or through qualitatively different work. She maintains that if students have already covered the material in high school, and the state mandates that they must be awarded college credit for it, then calling course work "honors" by offering more of the same-more papers, more tests, more books, more labs -is indeed a waste of time and tuition. Guzy calls for educators to challenge themselves to teach something substantively different because innovation is the hallmark of honors education.
Descriptors: Dual Enrollment, Advanced Placement Programs, Honors Curriculum, Educational Quality, Educational Legislation, Admission Criteria, Paying for College, Time to Degree, State Policy, Relevance (Education), Institutional Survival, College Programs
National Collegiate Honors Council. 1100 Neihardt Residence Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 540 North 16th Street, Lincoln, NE 68588. Tel: 402-472-9150; Fax: 402-472-9152; e-mail: nchc@unl.edu; Web site: http://nchchonors.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education; High Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A