Honors college faculty will no longer be employed by the JMHC. This news has been very hush hush. I had to hunt for this article and I’m on all the lists for honors news.
One of the best things about my D’s JMHC experience was the honors seminars and dedicated professors, deans, and advisors.
Everyone is just waiting for a formal announcement as to what is happening with the Honors college. Kudos to the student reporters at the Exponent!
So an Honors College Prof won’t have a job, unless the equivalent regular department has an opening?
It’s not just administrative but will result in less faculty?
That would obviously impact the Honors Program offerings then - at a time when schools are using these to attract top students afraid of big schools.
Maybe Purdue is hoping that their regular offerings are enough to attract - and they likely are.
But it’s unfortunate for those dedicated to students - which is what a university is about - it’s unfortunate they lose their livelihood.
I wish they’d do something like charge a premium - we offer Honors but it’s $5K.
They’d still have plenty of students who want what is offered.
It’s amazing how Purdue has kept its cost in line - but with OOS tuition and now this, that discipline looks like is finally catching up with them given societal inflation and other things.
I hope it ends well for the students and impacted faculty.
I don’t know if this is the reason but the state of Indiana is forcing their public schools to eliminate majors with low participation. I wonder if this is Purdue’s attempt to shore up some of the smaller departments so they can keep them, but there is very little communication and transparency happening.
There is a special fee for honors college but it’s only a few hundred dollars.
Purdue doesn’t really have a ton of honors offerings to begin with. We were told that you can enter an honors contract with professors. My kid was hoping that being in the honors college would offer smaller more rigorous classes like her high school. Beyond the honors dorm, it didn’t really appear to have too many advantages. When compared with other in-state honor college benefits, this did not help tip Purdue over the top for her.
I hope all of the Professors land in a great place at Purdue or somewhere else.
Certain majors have honors college courses for freshmen, like engineering. And then all honors students are required to take honors seminars. The honors profs have offices within honors college residents, they had dedicated advisors, and the profs were house parents for the dorm Plus guaranteed research, leadership opportunities, honors specific study abroad, etc…. My daughter got a ton of benefit from her honors experience at Purdue.
And her non honors courses were plenty rigorous!
YMMV if not engineering or STEM
Thanks for that insight. For my daughter’s major (applied math) there were no honor sections according to the math chair. In her situation there did not seem to be any real advantages. The first 2 years of the program had big lecture classes and the only offering was the honor contracts. We were informed other majors had some honor sections for majors with around 30 students, but not math.
I wonder if Purdue is moving away from what they were offering for the honors college since it has such a high reputation for STEM. They now have so many applicants that they can start to turn away highly qualified applicants. I also wonder how many high stat people don’t pick Purdue due to not getting into Honors. If it is very low, maybe the original purpose of having the honors college isn’t as necessary as before.
Interesting, my kid didn’t apply to Purdue Honors because of the curriculum. Good to know. Honestly, I didn’t look much into it - he thought it had too much humanities that didn’t interest him. So he made that call. But that was 6 years ago.
Purdue has plenty of peer schools that have similar models. I would hate to see them do away with the current model which they have worked so hard at establishing for the past decade. At its heart, honors is a living learning community that makes a very big school feel smaller. There is value in that alone.
I say good riddance. Honors colleges create a two-tier system that signals the “regular” college is second-rate, and at Purdue, STEM is anything but second-rate. The best publics like Cal, Michigan, UVA, and UCLA have such high standards that honors programs aren’t seen as necessary. And let’s be frank: the latest admissions data for Purdue engineering puts them in that territory as well.
I think Purdue’s resources are better allocated toward lifting up their in-state students and maintaining elite level rigor across the entire college, especially given how high demand is from out-of-state applicants.
As a hiring manager, I’ve never given any weight to “honors college” on a resume. As an OOS Purdue engineering parent, I think it’s a waste of resources as there’s no lack of ways to challenge yourself academically without it. And as a matter of public policy, I think honors colleges can be seen as elitist and contrary to the democratic mission of public higher education, essentially creating a private college experience within a public institution.
Honors colleges seem like marketing to make some parents feel their kid is special. They were originally designed to retain brightest in-state students, but seem much more used as a tool to attract OOS students. They come with goodies like better housing and early registration that feel unfair and, at worst, come at the expense of other students.
Not sure what you mean? The UCs do have honors programs (Regents’ Scholars) as well as departmental honors programs. I believe UMich has honors as well. (I don’t know about UVA.)
Actually, UVA and Michigan do have Honors colleges. Highly rated, in fact.
UCs have special programs even if they’re not necessarily called Honors colleges.
Not all, but some, high level students do want the specific form of learning Honors colleges offer.
I was more referring to the concept of separate dorms, early registration and a distinct, separate school within a school. I understand that there are lots of variations and maybe I wasn’t completely accurate. I do stand by my statement of not liking the two-tier approach at state colleges.
My daughter was the only OOS person in her quad freshman year. Nearly all her honors college friends were from Indiana. I don’t know if that’s still the case as she graduated in ‘23 but it was still being used as a tool to retain the best and brightest instate applicants when she was there.
Getting into an honors college is similar to the name of one’s school in that it reflects one’s high school achievements more than anything else.