Variability and similarity in honors curricula across institution size and type.
Cognard-Black, Andrew J. ; Savage, Hallie
As Samuel Schuman argues in his seminal introduction to honors
administration, "The single most important feature of any honors
program is its people: the students who learn there and the faculty who
teach them" (33). Next, argues Schuman, comes the curriculum; the
context of the learning that takes place when honors faculty and honors
students come together is framed by the curriculum. Honors curricula
provide opportunities for honors students to endeavor challenges beyond
what traditional undergraduate curricula provide. For faculty, honors is
a unique opportunity to blend research and teaching and to provide a
curricular laboratory for experimenting with varied topics and
pedagogical approaches.
The National Collegiate Honors Council provides guidelines for such
curricula in its "Definition of Honors Education," including
the following:
1. "Curricula are characterized largely by core-curriculum
honors courses, often with seminars that provide greater depth (not
necessarily disciplinary depth)";
2. "Programs confront students with alternative modes of
inquiry, exploration, discovery, tolerance of ambiguity, and enduring
questions. Coursework often requires integrative learning: both local
and global learning with connections across time, genre, and
disciplines, not always in classroom situations"; and
3. "The products often involve creative integrations of
evidence from several disciplines with an aggressive emphasis on
interdisciplinarity Assessment of the products emphasizes process rather
than product, focusing on metacognitive questions such as 'how do
you know?'"
Honors programs and colleges thus offer various forms of unique
curricular and extracurricular experiences. Typically, the honors
curriculum is designed to incorporate the following developmental
scaffolding:
1. A required course emphasizing basic skills in communication and
critical reasoning;
2. A sequence of general education and/or special topics courses;
3. A research seminar that prepares students for senior-level
research;
4. A thesis or capstone experience of individual research or
creative work.
The honors thesis or capstone experience is often recognized as the
most rewarding experience in an undergraduate program of study
(Anderson, Lyons, and Weiner).
When a well-developed honors curriculum is paired with
co-curricular opportunities, it serves to distinguish an
institution's honors education Together, these curricular and
co-curricular experiences are described as best practices in the
NCHC's "Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors
Program." The fourth characteristic specifies that honors curricula
feature "special courses, seminars, colloquia, experiential
learning opportunities, undergraduate research opportunities, and other
independent-study options," and the fifteenth characteristic
specifies that honors programs emphasize active, participatory learning
through provision of, among other features, "international
programs, community service, internships, undergraduate research, and
other types of experiential education." The NCHC's "Basic
Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors College" goes still
further in emphasizing undergraduate research: "The honors college
requires an honors thesis or honors capstone project"
(Characteristic 9).
In order to incorporate these best practices within an
undergraduate program, honors administrators need to consider the
interface of honors requirements with the general education curriculum
and the major field of study, the type of thesis or capstone experience,
and the relative emphasis on, for instance, communication skills,
inquiry, and critical analysis (Taylor). Curricular enhancement is also
accomplished by designing co-curricular opportunities such as
credit-bearing service learning, internships, and other experiential
education offerings. Required service learning, internship experiences,
study abroad, and other experiential education provide unique learning
contexts and often are resonant with the institution's mission.
Although literature is available to describe honors curricula
(Braid), and while the NCHC "Basic Characteristics" documents
provide some guidelines for best practices in honors education, data are
needed to support these guidelines and to determine what curricular
models effectively frame and incorporate best practices Furthermore,
research is needed to discover whether curricular structure is dependent
on institution type or size Rick Scott has presented some work in this
direction in his NCHC presidential report appearing in the special
edition of the NCHC newsletter in June 2013. Scott's presentation
focuses primarily on variation across honors organizational structures,
e.g., honors colleges vis-a-vis honors programs, and among honors
programs Scott further explores variation between two-year and four-year
degree institutions. Questions remain, however, about variation across
other structural characteristics that often interest educational
researchers, such as size and institutional control by private or public
interests.
Thus, important questions to address include whether enrollment
size and institutional type (e.g., public, private) influence the types
of curricular offerings; whether curricular and co-curricular
experiences (e.g., internships, service learning) tend to occur more
frequently in particular types of institution; and whether such
experiences differ across institutions of varying size.
METHODS
Sample
We used data from the 2012-2013 NCHC Membership Survey. This survey
of several hundred items was initiated on April 25, 2012, but with only
limited success. Forty-five of 890 institutions (5% response) responded
between April and August 2012. In the interests of improving response
rate, the survey was streamlined to 50 questions, and the leaner version
was launched August 28, 2012. Periodic reminder email messages were sent
on ten separate occasions by NCHC office staff at an average of about
every three to four weeks between September 2012 and February 2013. In a
final drive in the last half of February, four weekly reminders were
sent, and the survey was closed in March 2013.
After duplicate responses were removed, the survey had 446 unique
responses--an overall response rate of 50.1%. Comparison of response
rates within the categories of honors college members, honors program
members, and, further, honors programs at four-year and two-year degree
institutions indicates that, with the exception of two-year
institutions, the response was similar across these organizational
forms: responses included 52.1% of honors colleges, 49.7% of honors
programs, and, more specifically, 53.1% of honors programs at four-year
institutions, all within just 3 percentage points of the overall
response rate. Honors programs at two-year institutions were less likely
to participate in the survey, with only 39% responding.
Measures
We focus on eight measures from survey items that tap into nine
curricular characteristics of honors programs: (1) thesis requirement,
(2) capstone course, (3) a combined measure of the first two indicating
the presence of either a thesis requirement or a capstone course, (4)
service requirement, (5) service learning courses, (6) study abroad
courses, (7) experiential education courses, (8) research-intensive
courses, and (9) internships. Each of these variables is a binary, i.e.,
yes or no, nominal-level measure of the presence of a particular
curricular attribute derived from responses to survey questions. For
instance, the survey item tapping into the presence of a thesis
requirement asks, "Do you have a thesis requirement in
honors?"
Table 1 is an extract of Scott's 2013 summary table, which can
be found online at the NCHC web site. This table presents the question
wording for survey items used to construct eight of our nine measures,
and the first column in the body of the table also presents percentages
that indicate how common each characteristic is in honors as a whole.
For instance, only 25.3% of responding institutions reported having
internships for honors students while 72.6% reported having
research-intensive honors courses In addition to the eight items
presented in Table 1, we also constructed a ninth measure that combines
the thesis and capstone questions to identify which schools have either
a thesis requirement or a capstone course, i.e., coded "yes"
if either one is present, "no" otherwise.
Measures of institutional characteristics come from either the
2012-2013 Membership Survey or from membership data already a part of
the NCHC institutional member database. Our measure of honors
organizational structure is derived from a 2012-2013 survey question
asking respondents to identify "Honors Organization Type" from
a choice of either "Honors Program" or "Honors
College." Three additional measures of institutional
characteristics come directly from the NCHC membership database: (1) a
ratio-level measure of size of the undergraduate student body (full-time
equivalent students); (2) a nominal-level measure distinguishing
"private" from "public" institutional control; and
(3) a nominal-level measure distinguishing two-year associate's
degree-granting institutions from four-year institutions granting
degrees at the baccalaureate level or higher. While it would have been
useful to include a more elaborated measure of institutional mission,
i.e., Carnegie classification, that distinguished baccalaureate
colleges, master's universities, and doctoral/research universities
among the four-year schools, no such measure is currently available in
the NCHC membership database or the 2012-2013 Membership Survey data.
Analytic Strategy
In the analysis that we present here, we seek to examine the nine
curricular and co-curricular measures identified above, and we attempt
to explore the supposition that circulates in many NCHC conversations
that there is great variability among NCHC institutional members in
honors structure, curriculum, and other institutional characteristics.
Specifically, we wanted to explore variation across not only honors
organizational structure and broad degree classification
(associate's degree institutions vs. those that offer baccalaureate
and advanced degrees), but also across institutional control, i.e.,
private vs. public institutions, and institution size (total
undergraduate full-time equivalent [FTE] enrollment). (1)
We calculated proportions of those institutions saying
"yes" to each of the nine curricular measures within each of
the sub-samples defined by each of the four dimensions identified above:
broad degree classification grouping, honors organizational structure,
institutional control, and size We explored size, presented in Figure 1,
first by operationalizing as an ordinal measure and collapsing
institutions into categories with roughly evenly sized small, medium,
and large institution groupings, where small was 0-2,999, medium was
3,000-9,999, and large was 10,000+ in size. We discovered few
differences across size measured in three categories, so we then
measured size as an ordinal measure with two roughly evenly sized small
(n = 222) and large (n = 218) institution groups, where small was
defined as 0-3,999 and large was defined as those larger than 4,000
(note that 6 of the 446 survey respondents have missing size data).
To explore variation, we conducted z-tests of difference between
proportions (analogous to 1-tests of differences between means) and also
examined patterns of consistency within similar dimensions (e.g.,
private institutions with honors colleges and private institutions with
honors programs). Since our study was exploratory, we used two-tailed
tests, and since some sample sizes for specific measures were small, we
used an alpha level of.10 to guide us in identifying potential
differences While we used somewhat liberal thresholds, most of the
differences that we present are significant at the p [less than or equal
to] .05 level, including a number that are significant at the p [less
than or equal to] .01 level. Because of the number of comparisons, we
have chosen not to distinguish between levels of significance in the
tabular presentation of data, but in the description of findings we do
note p values for some contrasts when those values are especially
compelling.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
FINDINGS
General Finding of Note: Size Doesn't Seem to Matter Much
One of the most general findings that we discovered is that there
is very little statistically distinguishable variation in the curricular
characteristics across size of institution (as measured by total
undergraduate FTE). We did not see many differences when using ANOVA to
detect difference across the three-category measure of size, nor did we
see many differences when using z-tests to examine differences between
large and small institutions in the two-category operationalization of
institution size. As a supplementary analysis, we also calculated
bivariate correlations for size (in its original ratio-level
measurement) and binary measures (coded 1 when present, 0 otherwise) of
each of the curricular characteristics of interest, and correlations
were typically quite small, ranging from r = .01 to .24. (2)
Because of this general finding, most of our presentation will
focus on an analysis that elides size as a dimension. In Table 2,
however, we show one example of the approach that we used in the early
exploration that included size, in this case for internships, one of the
curricular measures for which we observed the most differences across
size. The top row restricts sub-samples to small institutions, the
middle row restricts to large institutions, and the bottom row contrasts
degree type, honors structure, and institutional control regardless of
size.
In the case of internships, we found 16 significant contrasts that
are visible in this table. In an examination of the significant
contrasts across categories of size (indicated by footnote h), it
appears that internships are more likely found among honors colleges at
larger schools than among honors colleges at smaller schools as well as
more likely among honors programs at large privates than among those at
small privates. However, two of these three contrasts are significant
only at the p [less than or equal to] .10 level, and all three involve
small sample sizes (n = 3, 7, and 17). While there is a significant
difference at the p [less than or equal to] .01 level between large and
small four-year degree institutions regardless of honors structure or
institutional control (33.5% vs. 19.6%), and while it does make some
(post hoc) sense that larger institutions and programs would be more
likely to have honors internships by virtue of their greater resources
and economies of scale, even in this instance the bivariate correlation
between a ratio measure of size and the binary measure of internships
was quite small (r =.14; not shown).
Shrewd readers will note that the number of comparisons implied by
Table 2 are many, thus increasing the probability of committing a Type I
error in which we would incorrectly conclude that there is a significant
difference where no real difference exists. In other words, because of
the workings of chance and the disproportionate impact of chance
occurrences for small samples, there may be a few comparisons where we
would think we see a difference between two percentages when that
difference is really too small to say confidently that the two are
anything other than equal. Thus, we might find a significant difference
for a few comparisons just by chance. Given some of the small sub-sample
sizes and the probability of finding a significant difference by chance,
we have tried to be cautious when drawing conclusions. Since our
analysis is exploratory rather than a formal testing of hypotheses, we
use significance as a guide to draw attention to contrasts where there
may be differences, and among those possible differences we try to focus
on whether any differences in percentages are not only statistically
significant but also meaningful.
We did notice a few other significant contrasts by size using the
strategy illustrated above--for thesis requirement and for experiential
education, study abroad, and service learning courses--but for the sake
of simplicity, because size had few visible effects on the presence of
curricular characteristics, we have condensed our primary presentation
to focus on percentages comparable to those at the bottom of Table 2,
i.e., regardless of size. The results of these analyses for all nine
curricular measures of interest are presented in Table 3.
Other General Finding of Note
As a final point of interest before proceeding to the primary
analysis, one of the first results that we notice when including size as
a measure is that there are very few honors colleges at large private
institutions among the NCHC institutions that responded There are only
four honors colleges at private institutions of 4,000+, and among the 92
schools over 10,000 in size there are no (zero) private schools with an
honors college (not shown). Nor, for that matter, are there that many
honors colleges at private schools of any size (only 1.8% of the total
sample) or honors programs at larger private institutions (n = 17). This
data set includes only the half of member institutions that responded to
the survey, but it seems safe to conclude that membership of large
private schools in NCHC was rare in 2012.
Thesis Requirement
A significant and sizeable difference exists between two- and
four-year institutions whereby four-year institutions are much more
likely to have a thesis requirement (57.9% vs. 11.4%). Some greater
likelihood of a thesis requirement may occur at honors programs versus
honors colleges at smaller institutions (not shown), but the difference
is only marginally significant (p [less than or equal to] .10).
Essentially, little variation exists among four-year institutions around
the overall average of 57.9% with a thesis requirement.
Capstone Course
A significant and sizeable difference exists between two- and
four-year institutions whereby four-year institutions are more likely to
have a capstone course (47.3% vs. 29.6%). Honors colleges at private
institutions are significantly (p =.052) more likely to have a capstone
course than those at public institutions (85.7% vs. 46.8%) or than
honors programs at private institutions (85.7% vs. 44.0%; p [less than
or equal to] .05). With the exception of private honors colleges, which
we have already noted is a rare institutional form with a small
sub-sample of n = 7 (while there are eight private honors colleges in
the sample, one has missing data on capstone courses), there is little
variation among four-year institutions around the overall average of
47.3% with a capstone course.
Thesis or Capstone
When looking at a newly computed variable measuring the presence of
either a thesis requirement or a capstone course at member institutions,
few will be surprised to see a significant and sizeable difference
between two- and four-year institutions whereby four-year institutions
are more likely to have either a thesis requirement or a capstone course
(p [less than or equal to] .001); three-fourths of four-year
institutions have at least one of these curricular components whereas
only one-third of two-year institutions do, and most of the latter have
capstone courses, given the findings for the previous two measures.
Among small four-year institutions, private schools do appear to be more
likely than public ones to have either a thesis requirement or capstone
course (not shown; p [less than or equal to] .05). Other than that
possible exception, four-year institutions display little variation
around the 75.6% that have either a thesis requirement or a capstone
course.
Service Requirement
For both two- and four-year institutions, not much variation occurs
around the overall average of 39.3% with a service requirement (not
shown, though one can readily see in Table 3 that the percentages for
two- and four-year institutions both hover right around 40%). However,
one possible size effect for this curricular element is that larger
four-year private institutions appear to be a possible deviation from
the overall pattern, with only 18.2%, whether programs or colleges,
having a service requirement. A significant difference exists between
larger four-year public (n = 161) and private institutions (n = 21) in
the likelihood of having a service requirement (not shown; p [less than
or equal to] .05) whereby large private institutions are less likely to
have a service requirement than large public institutions (18.2% vs.
44.7%, not shown).
Service Learning Courses
Significant differences exist in the provision of service learning
courses between four-year institutions' honors programs and both
four-year honors colleges and two-year institutions' honors
programs, particularly true, perhaps, at institutions of larger size
(not shown; p [less than or equal to] .05). Four-year honors colleges
and two-year programs are about 30% more likely to have service learning
courses than four-year honors programs: only about 42.4% of four-year
honors programs have service learning courses whereas about 57.1% of
four-year honors colleges and 53.5% of community college honors programs
have such service courses (weighted average of 55.3/42.4 = 1.30, or 30%
more likely).
Study Abroad Courses
A significant and sizeable difference exists between two- and
four-year institutions whereby four-year institutions are much more
likely to have study abroad courses (48.2% vs. 21.1%; p [less than or
equal to] .01); this is especially true for honors colleges (64.7%; p
[less than or equal to] .01), and among four-year institutions honors
colleges are 46% more likely (64.7/44.4 = 1.46) than honors programs to
have study abroad courses (p [less than or equal to] .01). Among
four-year institutions, public institutions seem on the face to be more
likely than private institutions to have study abroad courses, but this
difference is only marginally significant (p [less than or equal to]
.10) The presence of study abroad courses was the curricular element for
which we noticed the most compelling size effects: large four-year
institutions are 50% more likely to have honors-specific study abroad
courses (58.0% vs. 38.6%, not shown; p [less than or equal to] .01),
though this size effect seems to be most pronounced among honors
programs, and large two-year institutions are seven times more likely
than small ones to have study abroad courses (38.2% vs. 5.4%, not shown;
p [less than or equal to] .01).
Experiential Education Courses
As with most of the other measures that do not involve a
senior-level experience, there is no statistically detectable difference
between two-year and four-year institutions in the provision of
experiential education courses. Thus, little variation appears among
honors programs (at either two-year or four-year institutions) around
the overall 39.0% (142 of 364 reporting) that have an experiential
education course. There may be some greater likelihood of experiential
education courses at honors colleges (50.7%) versus honors programs
(38.8%), but the difference is only marginally significant (p [less than
or equal to] .10), and any such difference seems to apply only among
larger public four-year institutions (not shown). Unlike most of the
measures of honors curricular characteristics, a significant difference
exists between larger and smaller four-year institutions (not shown)
whereby larger institutions are about 30% more likely (46.9% vs. 35.3%)
to offer experiential education courses (p [less than or equal to] .05).
Research-Intensive Courses
For both two-year and four-year institutions, not much variation
occurs around the overall rate of 72.6% with research-intensive courses;
the difference between the 73.2% and 68.6% for four-year and two-year
institutions is not significant, and the weighted average of the two is
72.6%. Honors colleges may be slightly more likely than honors programs
to have research-intensive courses (81.4% vs. 71.2%), but this
difference is only marginally significant (p [less than or equal to]
.10). The high numbers across all levels of institutional
character--e.g., two/four-year, honors program/college, and
public/private control--indicate high levels of consensus about the
importance of providing research-intensive courses for honors students.
Internships
Among four-year institutions, honors colleges are twice as likely
as honors programs to have internships (44.3% vs. 22.3%; p [less than or
equal to] .01), and honors colleges at four-year institutions are almost
three times more likely to have internships than honors at two-year
institutions (44.3% vs. 15.5%; p [less than or equal to] .01). Large
four year institutions are 71% more likely (33.5/19.6 = 1.71) to have
internships than smaller four-year institutions, regardless of
institutional control or honors structure; this contrast can be seen in
the "Total Four-Year" column of Table 2 (p [less than or equal
to] .01). Also, among four-year schools, public institutions, regardless
of honors organization as college or program, are significantly more
likely than private ones to have an internship in honors by a factor of
almost two (34.0% vs. 17.5%, not shown in tables; p [less than or equal
to] .01).
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
One general finding that we have not highlighted above is worth
emphasizing: despite the common belief that honors is widely variable,
we witnessed few statistically significant differences between private
and public institutions in these data. We noted only a few exceptions to
this general conclusion. First, service requirements are slightly more
common among public (44.0%) than private (33.3%) institutions (not
shown), though probably only among larger schools. Second, internships
also are more common among public (34.0%) than private (17.5%)
institutions. The relative likelihood regarding provision of internships
can be seen in the main results presented in Table 3 by comparing
private and public columns for colleges and programs.
We also found few statistically distinguishable, meaningful
differences across size of institution, again with some exceptions to
this generalization: specific incarnations of honors courses--including
service, study abroad, experiential, and research courses--are more
likely at honors colleges than honors programs at four-year schools,
presumably because of their greater resources, greater control over
resources and curriculum, and/or economies of scale that come with
larger honors student populations Otherwise, the variability that we
witness across size of institution tends to exist within fairly narrow
parameters.
The consistency in offerings is clearest when examining
undergraduate research opportunities in honors. One of the features that
distinguishes honors education is the opportunity for undergraduate
students to take on greater independence in pursuing their own research
and intellectual projects. As Schuman argues in his Beginning in Honors:
A Handbook, "A final project or thesis is probably the most
pervasive characteristics of honors curricula" (34); the results
from this survey bear this out. Three-fourths (75.6%) of four-year
member institutions have either a thesis requirement or a capstone
course as a prominent part of their honors curriculum. While not as
common, a significant minority (34.3%) of two-year member institutions
also have at least one of these options (usually a capstone course)
requiring increasing intellectual independence as students approach
completion of their program and degree requirements. In particular,
honors colleges at private institutions seem universally to have
established this experience for honors students (though the small sample
size of n = 8 limits our ability to generalize). The numbers for a
thesis requirement are somewhat less for colleges than the 94.3% with a
thesis/creative project reported by Sederberg (131) from the 2004 NCHC
survey of honors colleges, but Sederberg's number was based on a
question that asked whether the thesis was available as an opportunity
rather than a program requirement. Despite the apparent consensus
favoring a thesis or capstone experience, still about 25% of four-year
honors units did not have a senior-level thesis or capstone experience
by 2012.
Honors units also appear to be making significant efforts to
prepare their students for increasing intellectual independence in their
upper-class courses. Even more than the opportunity to prepare a thesis
or capstone project, the opportunity to take research-intensive courses
is a pervasive characteristic of U.S. honors curricula.
Research-intensive courses are common at two-year institutions, where
approximately 70% of honors programs have research-intensive courses,
and at four-year honors colleges the percentage is only about 10
percentage points higher than that (81.4%).
Service is one of the hallmarks of liberal education, and the
larger category of service and experiential learning is one of the
primary emphases of honors as articulated in the NCHC "Basic
Characteristics" documents and the more recent "Definition of
Honors Education" The findings presented here indicate a fair
degree of consistency across institutions of varying character in
providing service and experiential education courses as well as in
requiring some service as part of the honors program, but these
opportunities are far less common than are undergraduate research
training and guided research opportunities. Roughly 40-60% of honors
units have these curricular options, depending on the specific
institutional location, and large privates, especially, are even less
likely than larger publics (by a factor of more than two) to have a
service requirement in honors. Given the wording of the question, it is
possible that students at the 40-60% of institutions that do not have
these curricular elements specifically in honors do nonetheless have
them available as part of their larger collegiate experience, but these
numbers would seem to leave considerable room for growth and improvement
across honors in the United States.
As a specific incarnation of experiential education, honors
internships are the rarest of the curricular elements we examined, with
only about 25.3% of honors units providing internships specifically in
honors, and internships are an even greater rarity at two-year
institutions although, understandably, not quite as rare as thesis
requirements. Similar to experiential, service, and research-intensive
honors courses, honors colleges are much more likely than honors
programs to have honors internships, by a factor of almost two, and
public institutions are more likely to have them than private ones. As
with service and experiential learning options, students are likely to
have internships available to them as part of the general collegiate
experience when they are not available specifically in honors. However,
as the NCHC community continues to reflect on the ways in which honors
distinguishes itself--particularly in an era when higher education is
increasingly called to account for how it prepares students for the
world of work they will face after graduation--we should be considering
whether honors has a unique contribution to make in the area of
internships or whether we should leave such experiences to be defined in
the general curricula for all students in an era of massification
(Altbach 1998, 2013; Slaughter 2001; Wilkins and Burke 2015; Clark
1996).
All our findings point to two central conclusions. First, honors
units at member institutions seem to value undergraduate research and
senior-level experiences involving increased intellectual independence,
as reflected in the widespread presence of thesis requirements, capstone
courses, and research-intensive courses Second, the service and
experiential learning components (including honors internships and study
abroad courses) that are highlighted in NCHC best practices documents
have much less consensus and implementation across U.S. honors. Only
about two-fifths of member institutions have experiential and service
learning courses and service requirements, and even fewer offer honors
internships. Considering the prominence that experiential education
enjoys in the NCHC best practices documents, these numbers seem low, and
they take on even greater weight given the moral significance of
service. In a time and place when much of the culture encourages
individual success, values accumulation of personal wealth and prestige,
and surrounds us with the technological means to satisfy our own
particular whims and fancies on demand, we would argue for the
increasing importance of encouraging students to think about service to
something greater than themselves Moreover, we would argue for building
these opportunities and requirements into the context of honors
curricula in which honors educators have more control and can actively
encourage students to reflect more deliberately not only on the rights,
privileges, and prestige of honors but also on its duties and
responsibilities.
ANDREW J. COGNARD-BLACK
St. Mary's College, the Maryland Public Honors College
HALLIE SAVAGE
National Collegiate Honors Council
END NOTES
(1.) One could also look at honors program size as an indicator of
institutional size. Either makes sense. While we did not formally
explore the degree to which conclusions would vary using program size as
a measure, we find it unlikely The correlation between institution size
and honors program size is fairly strong (r =. 66), and the eight
correlations between the measure of honors program size and each of the
binary measures of curriculum were in the same order of magnitude as
those observed using overall institution size.
(2.) Correlations between undergraduate FTE and each of the
curricular measures are: (1) thesis, r = .01; (2) service requirement, r
= -.06; (3) capstone, r = .05; (4) service learning courses, r = .15;
(5) study abroad courses, r = .24; (6) experiential education courses, r
= .14; (7) research-intensive courses, r = .10; and (8) internships, r =
.14.
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Altbach, Philip G. 2013. The International Imperative in Higher
Education. Rotterdam, the Netherlands: SensePublishers.
Anderson, Mark, Karen Lyons, and Norman Weiner. 2014. The Honors
Thesis: A Handbook for Honors Directors, Deans, and Faculty Advisors.
Lincoln, NE: National Collegiate Honors Council. NCHC Monograph Series.
Braid, Bernice. 2008. "Engagement in Learning, Liberal
Education, and Honors" Pp. 31-36 in Inspiring Exemplary Teaching
and Learning: Perspective on Teaching Academically Talented College
Students, edited by L. Clark and J. Zubizarreta. Birmingham, AL:
National Collegiate Honors Council.
Clark, Burton R. 1996. "Substantive Growth and Innovative
Organization: New Categories for Higher Education Research" Higher
Education 32(4):417-30.
National Collegiate Honors Council. [2005] 2014. "Basic
Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors College" Retrieved
February 29, 2016 <http:
//nchchonors.org/faculty-directors/basic-characteristics-of-a-fullydeveloped-honors-college>
--. [1994] 2014. "Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed
Honors Program " Retrieved February 29, 2016
<http://nchchonors.org/facultydirectors/basic-characteristics-of-a-fully-developed-honors-program>
--. 2013. "Definition of Honors Education" Retrieved
February 29, 2016 <http://nchchonors.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Definition-of-Honors-Education.pdf>
Schuman, Samuel. 2006. Beginning in Honors: A Handbook. 4th ed.
Lincoln, NE: National Collegiate Honors Council. NCHC Monograph Series.
Scott, Rick. 2013. "President's Column" Retrieved
February 29, 2016 <http:
//nchchonors.org/newsletters/nchc-newsletter-special-edition>
Sederberg, Peter C. 2005. "Characteristics of the Contemporary
Honors College: A Descriptive Analysis of a Survey of NCHC Member
Colleges " Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council
6(2):121-36.
Slaughter, Sheila. 2001. "Problems in Comparative Higher
Education: Political Economy, Political Sociology, and
Postmodernism" Higher Education 41:389-412.
Taylor, Bob Pepperman. 2008. "How to Create an Honors
College" Pp. 97-110 in The Honors College Phenomenon, edited by P.
Sederberg. Lincoln, NE: National Collegiate Honors Council. NCHC
Monograph Series
Wilkins, Andrew, and Penny Jane Burke. 2015. "Widening
Participation in Higher Education: The Role of Professional and Social
Class Identities and Commitments " British Journal of Sociology
36(3):434-52.
The authors may be contacted at ajcoqnardblack@smcm.edu.
ANDREW J. COGNARD-BLACK is on the faculty at St. Mary's
College, where he also coordinates teaching and learning and first-year
programs He earned his PhD in sociology at Ohio State University He
serves on the NCHC Research Committee and has worked closely with the
national office to develop a series of surveys that explore
institutional characteristics of honors programs and colleges in the
United States His research interests include the sociologies of
education, labor, and inequality.
HALLIE SAVAGE is Executive Director of the National Collegiate
Honors Council. She is an emeritus professor at Clarion University of
Pennsylvania where she served as honors director from 1997 to 2013. She
holds a PhD in speech pathology and a post-doctoral fellowship in
developmental psychology from Kent State University.
TABLE 1. NCHC INSTITUTIONAL DATABASE AND 2012
MEMBER INSTITUTION SURVEY SUMMARY TABLE: PERCENT
RESPONDING YES TO SELECTED CURRICULAR ITEMS
Question Total Honors Honors Program
Member College Members
Institutions Members (a)
Total
Program
Members
Total Member Institutions 890 140 750
Total Responding 446 73 373
Institutions
Response Rate 50.1 52.1 49.7
31. Do you have a 50.2 50.7 50.1
thesis requirement
in honors?
32. Do you have a 39.3 46.6 37.9
service requirement
in honors?
33. Do you have a 44.0 51.4 42.6
capstone course in
honors?
34. Do you have 46.4 58.9 43.9
service learning
courses in honors?
35. Do you have 43.7 66.2 39.4
study abroad courses
in honors?
36. Do you have 41.1 51.4 39.1
experiential
education courses in
honors?
37. Do you have 72.6 80.8 70.9
honors courses that
are
research-intensive?
38. Do you have 25.3 43.8 21.6
internships for
honors students?
Question Honors Program
Members
Four-Year Two-Year
Institution Institution
Members Members
Total Member Institutions 573 177
Total Responding 304 69
Institutions
Response Rate 53.1 39.0
31. Do you have a 59.1 10.3
thesis requirement
in honors?
32. Do you have a 37.3 40.6
service requirement
in honors?
33. Do you have a 46.0 27.5
capstone course in
honors?
34. Do you have 42.0 52.2
service learning
courses in honors?
35. Do you have 44.4 17.4
study abroad courses
in honors?
36. Do you have 39.1 38.8
experiential
education courses in
honors?
37. Do you have 71.3 69.1
honors courses that
are
research-intensive?
38. Do you have 23.3 14.5
internships for
honors students?
Source: This is an extract reproduced from a table
included in Scott's (2013) NCHC Newsletter special
edition report summarizing the 2012-2013 NCHC
Membership Survey (used with permission from the
author).
(a) All but three of the Honors College members
that responded are four-year institutions.
TABLE 2. PERCENT WITH INTERNSHIPS BY SIZE, DEGREE
CLASSIFICATION, HONORS ORGANIZATION, AND CONTROL
Institution Size Four-Year Degree Institutions
Honors College
Control Total
Private Public
Small (0-3,999)
Percent 0.0% 0.0% (b) 0.0% (b)
SE .000 .000 .000
n 4 3 7
Large (4,000+)
Percent 0.0% (b) 52.5% (b,c,b) 49.2% (d,f,b)
SE .000 .066 .063
n 4 59 63
Total
Percent 0.0% (b) 50.0% (b,c) 44.3% (d,f)
SE .000 .064 .060
n 8 62 70
Institution Size Four-Year Degree Institutions
Honors Program
Control Total
Private Public
Small (0-3,999)
Percent 16.3% (b,h) 36.1% (b) 20.3%
SE .031 .081 .030
n 141 36 177
Large (4,000+)
Percent 35.3% (b) 23.5% (c) 25.2% (d)
SE .119 .042 .040
n 17 102 119
Total
Percent 18.4% (b) 26.8% (b,c) 22.3% (d)
SE .031 .038 .024
n 158 138 296
Institution Size Four-Year Degree Two-Year Degree
Institutions Institutions
(a)
Total
Four-Year
Small (0-3,999)
Percent 19.6% (b) 16.2%
SE .029 .061
n 184 37
Large (4,000+)
Percent 33.5% (e,b) 14.7% (e,f)
SE .035 .062
n 182 34
Total
Percent 26.5% (e) 15.5% (e,f)
SE .023 .043
n 366 71
Source: NCHC 2012 Membership Survey.
Note: Tests of difference between means reveal
significant differences between colleges and
programs (f = 3.57, p [less than or equal to]
.01), between smaller and larger institutions (f =
-2.81, p [less than or equal to] .01), and between
four- and two-year institutions (f = -2.46, p
[less than or equal to] .05). We have converted
the proportions to percentages, but readers should
note that standard errors are those for the
proportions on which those percentages are based.
(a) All of the two-year degree institutions are
public, and all but three are classified as honors
programs.
(b) Significant difference between private and
public institutions within honors organization
type.
(c) Significant difference between colleges and
programs within institutional control grouping.
(d) Significant difference between colleges and
programs.
(e) Significant difference between two-year degree
institutions and four-year institutions.
(f) Significant difference between two-year degree
institutions and four-year honors colleges.
(g) Significant difference between two-year degree
institutions and four-year honors programs.
(h) Significant difference between small and large
institutions within degree-honors-control
grouping.
TABLE 3. PERCENT OF MEMBERS WITH SELECTED CURRICULAR
CHARACTERISTICS BY DEGREE CLASSIFICATION, HONORS
ORGANIZATION, AND CONTROL
Curricular Item Four-Year Degree Institutions
Honors College
Control Total
Private Public
Thesis Requirement 62.5% 50.0% 51.4% (f)
Capstone Course 85.7% (b,c) 46.8% (b) 50.7% (f)
Thesis or Capstone 100.0% 72.6% 75.4% (f)
Service Requirement 25.0% 48.4% 45.7%
Service Learning Courses 50.0% 58.1% (c) 57.1% (d)
Study Abroad Courses 50.0% 66.7% (c) 64.7% (d,f)
Experiential Ed. Courses 37.5% 52.5% (c) 50.7% (d)
Research-intensive Courses 87.5% 80.6% 81.4% (d)
Internships 0.0% (b) 50.0% (b,c) 44.3% (d,f)
n 8 62 70
Percent of Total Sample 1.8% 14.1% 15.9%
Curricular Item Four-Year Degree Institutions
Honors Program
Control Total
Private Public
Thesis Requirement 60.4% 58.4% 59.5% (g)
Capstone Course 44.0% (c) 49.3% 46.5% (g)
Thesis or Capstone 78.0% 73.0% 75.7% (g)
Service Requirement 33.8% 42.0% 37.6%
Service Learning Courses 40.8% 44.2% (c) 42.4% (d,g)
Study Abroad Courses 39.6% (b) 50.0% (b,c) 44.4% (d,g)
Experiential Ed. Courses 38.0% 39.7% (c) 38.8% (d)
Research-intensive Courses 70.9% 71.5% 71.2% (d)
Internships 18.4% (b) 26.8% (b,c) 22.3% (d)
n 160 138 298
Percent of Total Sample 36.4% 31.4% 67.9%
Curricular Item Four-Year Degree Two-Year
Institutions Degree
Institutions
(a)
Total
Four-Year
Thesis Requirement 57.9% (e) 11.4% (e,f,g)
Capstone Course 47.3% (e) 29.6% (e,f,g)
Thesis or Capstone 75.6% (e) 34.3% (e,f,g)
Service Requirement 39.1% 40.8%
Service Learning Courses 45.2% 53.5% (g)
Study Abroad Courses 48.2% (e) 21.1% (e,f,g)
Experiential Ed. Courses 41.0% 40.0%
Research-intensive Courses 73.2% 68.6%
Internships 26.5% (e) 15.5% (e,f)
n 368 71
Percent of Total Sample 83.8% 16.2%
Source: NCHC 2012 Membership Survey (n = 439).
Note: Significance was tested at the p [less than
or equal to] .10 level, but most of the
differences reported are significant at p [less
than or equal to] .05.
(a) All of the two-year degree institutions are
public, and all but three are classified as honors
programs.
(b) Significant difference between private and
public institutions within honors organization
type.
(c) Significant difference between colleges and
programs within institutional control grouping.
(d) Significant difference between colleges and
programs.
(e) Significant difference between two-year degree
institutions and four-year institutions.
(f) Significant difference between two-year degree
institutions and four-year honors colleges.
(g) Significant difference between two-year degree
institutions and four-year honors programs.
