About the Book
Public universities are continuing the trend of establish honors colleges and programs in order to attract highly-talented students and provide them with an education that combines the best qualities of elite private colleges with those of public research universities.
This hybrid structure of honors programs can be difficult to analyze and evaluate. Understanding what makes a program substantial must begin with an analysis of the "ground game," the graduation requirements, the specific mix of classes by discipline, the total number of honors sections, actual class sizes, honors grad rates--and, yes, the availability of special housing and perks, including priority registration for all courses.
Are honors programs really a combination of a "liberal arts college in the midst of a prominent research university, with all the advantages of both"? This typical description of public honors programs is sometimes true, sometimes misleading, and fairly often offset by equivalent values that are not mentioned in the hype.
College choice almost always involves money. Is that private college that your National Merit Scholar has always dreamed of attending really worth an extra $30,000 a year, since all merit aid at the private college is need-based, and your income, even with a family of four, leaves such a big balance? What, then, might make a public honors option truly competitive?
It might be those eight honors math sections, or those interdisciplinary seminars at every class level, or that study-abroad stipend to attend Oxford in the summer, or that (mostly) quiet honors dorm with on-site dining, mentors, and study lounges on every floor, or the combination of writing, rhetoric, and honors business classes that will make your student a well-rounded success in life. Or the new internships and leadership courses, along with career advising. And, often, it will be that merit award worth $10,000 a year, to go with a waiver of out-of-state tuition.
Yes, honors programs are complicated, but so are your college choice decisions. To understand exactly what these programs offer, parents and prospective students need to look inside honors.
Rated Programs: Arizona, Arizona State, Arkansas, Auburn, Clemson, Colorado State, CUNY Macaulay, Delaware, FAU, Georgia, Georgia State, Houston, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, LSU, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada Reno, New Jersey Inst Tech, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Oregon, Oregon State, Penn State, Purdue, Rutgers, South Carolina, Texas Tech, UAB, Univ of Central Florida, University of South Florida, UT Austin, Vermont, Virginia Commonwealth, Washington State, and West Virginia.
Also included are these honors reviews: Alabama, Florida International, Kentucky, Mississippi State, North Carolina, Portland State, Rowan, Texas A&M, UC Irvine.
Recognized by the New York Times for his work, editor John Willingham has spent seven years researching and writing about public university honors programs. This is his fourth book on the subject.
About the Author :
John Willingham's background includes 30 years of in journalism and public administration, mostly in Texas. For three years, he was a regular contributor to the History News Network (HNN.us), writing several articles that covered the controversy in Texas over the adoption of social studies and science textbooks and curricula. His education includes a BA, cum laude, from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MA in history from UT Austin, including graduate minors in education and journalism. In 2013, he completed training in honors program evaluation offered by the National Collegiate Honors Council at the University of Nebraska. He also made a presentation on program evaluation at the NCHC Annual Meeting in Seattle in 2016. He is the author of an historical novel about the 1836 Texas Revolution, and his fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the Southwest Review literary quarterly, published by Southern Methodist University Press.
Review :
Columnist and author Frank Bruni A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs was ..".first published in 2012 and updated last year. It's linked to publicuniversityhonors.com, which began in 2011 and, like the [new] book, provides thorough appraisals of individual honors colleges and programs and intelligent thoughts on how they fit into the higher-education landscape."--New York Times, August 9, 2015.
Columnist and consultant Lee Bierer: "John Willingham has literally written the book on Honors Colleges. INSIDE HONORS: Ratings and Reviews of Sixty Public University Honors Programs...where he shares his methodical research results. His research has demonstrated that increasingly one can find equally excellent value in the growing number of honors colleges in non-flagship institutions. But to find that value, you have to look deeply into what Willingham calls the 'ground game' of honors colleges and programs."-Charlotte Observer, February 20, 2017.
