Characteristics of the Contemporary Honors College* A Descriptive Analysis of a Survey of NCHC Member Colleges
Characteristics of the Contemporary Honors College* A Descriptive Analysis of a Survey of NCHC Member Colleges
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当代荣誉学院的特征* NCHC成员学院调查的描述性分析
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发表时间：
2005
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通讯作者：
P. Sederberg
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作者：
P. Sederberg
每年全国各地的荣誉学院的数量都在增加。这些新学院中的大多数都是从已有的荣誉课程中产生的，这一起源表明，这种变化反映了一种兴趣，即提高某个特定机构的荣誉教育的公众形象。有时这种转变只需要一个化妆品名称的变化;其他时候，机构借此机会审查他们在荣誉教育提供什么，以及他们如何可以提高它。全国大学生荣誉理事会执行委员会认识到，NCHC应该采取这种现象的强烈兴趣。如果一个机构只是在名字上贴金，那么“荣誉学院”就成了一个贬值的误称，被设计成一种营销策略，旨在误导潜在的申请者，让他们相信存在着一些新的东西，而实际上，实质内容保持不变。被动接受这一趋势也不利于那些拒绝玩改名游戏的特殊荣誉计划，因为他们认为他们的计划，因为它的立场，为他们的机构很好。尽管如此，四年制大学课程面临着越来越大的竞争压力，以进入大学比赛。不幸的是，直到最近，这场比赛还没有裁判。在缺乏一些共同商定的标准，荣誉管理员往往发现自己在谈判中处于弱势地位时，要求或要求，使名称更改。如果有什么变化，那么正常的制度惯性意味着除了名字之外什么都不会改变。类似的担忧促使NCHC在十多年前制定了“全面发展的荣誉计划的基本特征”。这些年来，关于这些指导方针的冲突的谣言一直在回荡，使得人们不愿意参与类似的关于“荣誉学院”的辩论。然而，与“荣誉计划”不同，荣誉学院是更大物种的一个特定子集，既不与所有机构设置相关，也不可取。尽管如此，那些已经或正在考虑转型的机构应该做出更多的改变，而不仅仅是口头上的改变。因此，在2003年11月，当时的NCHC主席诺姆·韦纳重组了NCHC荣誉学院特设工作组，并负责制定一套草案的“一个充分发展的荣誉学院的基本特征”的任务，供2004年在新奥尔良举行的全国会议讨论。(1)执行委员会于2004年11月接受了该草案，并在2005年6月的会议上正式核准了经修改的草案（见附录）。工作组还报告了他们对NCHC下属现有荣誉学院的调查，并评估了公认的荣誉学院之间广泛共享某些特征的程度。以下是对调查结果的初步描述性分析。调查的方法和局限性我们的调查在许多方面都有局限性，这必然会使我们的结论带有一定程度的试探性。最基本的问题涉及确定我们的调查人口。我们考虑尝试确定所有自称为“荣誉学院”的实体，无论它们是否隶属于NCHC。鉴于我们的时间和资源有限，这项任务十分艰巨，最终无法执行。此外，我们得出的结论是，即使我们能够确定一些东西，将通过为全体人口的荣誉学院，我们不应该给非附属机构的声音在我们的审议的这个阶段。然后，我们决定调查那些在国家数据库中被列为拥有荣誉学院的NCHC成员。虽然这项决定为我们提供了一个可管理的65所学校的样本，但随后在进行调查时出现了问题。首先，名单不准确。最终，我们发现，我们知道存在的一些大学并不包括在内。
INTRODUCTION Every year the number of honors colleges across the country increases. Most of these new colleges emerge out of pre-existing honors programs, an origin that suggests that the change reflects an interest in raising the public profile of honors education at a particular institution. Sometimes this transformation entails only a cosmetic name change; other times, institutions take the opportunity to review what they are providing in honors education and how they might enhance it. The Executive Committee of the National Collegiate Honors Council recognized that the NCHC ought to take a strong interest in this phenomenon. If an institution is simply gilding the name, then "honors college" becomes a devalued misnomer designed as a marketing strategy and intended to mislead potential applicants into believing that something new exists where, in fact, substance remains unchanged. Passive acceptance of this trend also does a disservice to those exceptional honors programs that resist playing the name change game because they deem that their program as it stands serves their institution well. Nonetheless, four-year programs at universities face increasing competitive pressure to enter the collegiate game. Unfortunately, until recently the game lacked a referee. In the absence of some commonly agreed-upon criteria, honors administrators often found themselves in a weak negotiating position when asked, or required, to make the name change. If anything goes, then normal institutional inertia means nothing will change except the name. Similar concerns motivated NCHC to develop "Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program" over a decade ago. Rumors of the conflict over these guidelines echo down the years and made people reluctant to engage in a similar debate over "honors college." Unlike "honors program," however, an honors college is a particular subset of the larger species and is neither relevant to nor desirable for all institutional settings. Nonetheless, those institutions that have made or are contemplating the transformation ought to be expected to make more than a rhetorical change. Consequently, in November 2003, then NCHC President Norm Weiner reconstituted the NCHC Ad Hoc Task Force on Honors Colleges and charged it with the task of developing a draft set of "The Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors College" for discussion at the 2004 National Conference in New Orleans. (1) This draft was accepted by the Executive Committee in November 2004 and formally endorsed as modified at their June 2005 meeting (see Appendix). The task force also reported on their survey of existing honors colleges affiliated with the NCHC and assessed the extent to which certain characteristics are widely shared among putative honors colleges. What follows is a preliminary descriptive analysis of the findings of this survey. METHODOLOGYAND LIMITATIONS OF THE SURVEY Our survey is limited in a number of ways that necessarily infuse our conclusions with a degree of tentativeness. The most basic issue involved determining our survey population. We considered trying to identify all the entities that are self-declared "honors colleges," regardless of whether they were affiliated with the NCHC. Given our limited time and resources, this task proved daunting and ultimately impossible to implement. In addition, we concluded that even if we could identify something that would pass for the whole population of honors colleges, we should not give non-affiliated institutions a voice at this stage of our deliberations. We decided, then, to survey those NCHC members who were listed in the national database as possessing honors colleges. While this decision gave us a manageable sample of 65 schools, subsequent problems arose in conducting the survey. First, the list was not accurate. Ultimately, we found that some colleges we knew to exist were not included on it. …