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.