“Congratulations! You have been invited to join the Shackouls Honors College at Mississippi State University” is an email that many students here at MSU may have seen pop up in their inbox, and it serves as an invitation for incoming students who are interested in opportunities beyond the typical classroom at a university.
The term “honors college” refers to a program that is meant to supplement a traditional bachelor’s educational experience. The program is designed to allow students to take more rigorous and often academically rewarding classes while providing additional accommodations such as early class registration and exclusive housing.
The honors program appears to be a program for gifted students or students wanting to be more involved. Its academic benefits and apparent exclusivity serve as a division between students and staff, more specifically, honors and non-honors.
However, what many students — and sometimes staff — forget is the original purpose of the honors program.
Daniel Rossman and others of Ithaka S+R, an organization focused on providing access to higher education and advancing academic university research, found that the idea of the honors college was originally modeled after the private liberal arts college, including aspects such as “seminar-style classes, tailored faculty advising, residential living communities, and other co-curricular elements.”
The principle is that the students opting to attend a public university over a liberal arts college could still very much attain these unique experiences within the university’s honors program. However, the real question is, is an honors college truly an adequate replacement for the liberal arts college experience?
On one side, some argue that the honors college serves more of an elitist and exclusionary program for only those who can join.
“Many of these colleges are inadvertently and unintentionally elitist and exclusionary, too often segregating honors students (and frequently their core faculty) from the general undergraduate population and closing their doors to transfer students and to the nontraditional students who commute to campus and must juggle academic, work and responsibilities,” Steven Mintz of Inside Higher Ed wrote.
Scott Carnicom is familiar with both the honors college and liberal arts college experiences. Carnicom was previously the former associate dean of the honors college at Middle Tennessee State University and later participated in a fellowship at Kenyon College, a small liberal arts college. Carnicom wrote that, despite the great support for honors college programs, they fail to provide the interconnected community that liberal arts colleges can.
“We still exist in a larger ecosystem that is overwhelmingly focused on non-honors students and that does not promulgate this sense of community,” Carnicom wrote.
It is unfair to group the quality of all honors colleges of the United States into a few statements. For instance, our very own Shackouls Honors College consists of many opportunities for students, such as research or creative activities, offering a diverse plethora of activities for students with different interests.
Furthermore, our honors program offers many opportunities to join communities, giving students the chance to experience college life in smaller and more academically based social groups. Whether it could be informal settings where students play table tennis on the third floor of Griffis Hall or a more formal organization such as the Griffis Learning Community, Shackouls Honors College students can find their home at MSU.
When it comes to the question of whether the honors program can truly replace an experience at a small liberal arts college, it depends on the university. Some can be truly exclusive, serving as a cash cow for the larger administration, while some, such as our own, offer unique experiences to all students of all backgrounds.
Broxton Woody, a 1923 alumnus of the University of Virginia, once said, “Honor is not the appendage of any social class. It is a way of life which may be freely chosen by any man or woman, regardless of race, color, or creed.”
The quote can teach us that, in the end, whether or not the honors program can be rewarding just depends on the student and the actions that the student may take.
