By Bryan Penprase,Contributor

Copyright forbes

The Campus of Arizona State University’s Barrett Honors College, which offers a residential university experience with many features of the best liberal arts colleges, but in the heart of a research university campus.
Bryan Penprase

With the cost of attendance at some private universities skyrocketing to over $10o,000 per year, many families are scrambling to find solutions to help them afford the high-quality residential education experience they are seeking. While many public universities offer far more affordable options, they often lack the kinds of personal attention, access to courses, and intense and focused residential life that is found on the best liberal arts colleges. One solution to this problem is to combine the best of both experiences in the form of the Honors College. The University Honors College is a rapidly growing phenomenon in which large research universities provide dedicated space on their campus for a highly selective residential living learning community that emulates many of the best features of top liberal arts colleges. These honors colleges typically offer dedicated residential housing, separate honors courses, and a selective admissions process that creates a cohort of students eager for the intense intellectual engagement of these kinds of learning environments.

High-Touch Excellence within the Large University

With a university honors college, students join an academic living-learning community of 1,000-2,000 students set within the walls of a dynamic research university. Honors College students typically have intense Socratic-style seminars, small classes taught by top university professors in their first years, and access to additional opportunities for special study abroad programs, research internships, community learning opportunities, and additional connections with alumni. As such, the student has access to most of the features of a high-quality liberal arts college which can be at 20% or less of the price, for a public honors college student paying in-state tuition. For example, the in-state tuition for the top-rated Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University is only $15,400 per year.

The 2021 census from the National Council of Honors Colleges (NCHC) has identified 248 honors colleges across the country, up from just 24 in 1994. This growth suggests Honors Colleges are succeeding in providing “high-touch” excellence in academics within the confines of a large-scale university. With the increasing number of Honors Colleges comes a new community of faculty and administrators able to build a small, tight-knit intellectual community that leverages the best features of the large and dynamic research university.

The Fully Developed Honors College

The basic characteristics of a ”fully developed” honors college, according to a 2008 report developed with the NCHC, includes basing the honors college as standalone academic unit within the university, led by a dean reporting directly to the university’s chief academic officer, and serving alongside other deans at the university. The honors college should also have their own budgets and an external board to guide their unique curriculum and campus life, a separate admissions program, and a distinct set of academic policies and governance mechanisms for faculty and students to manage the Honors College. With these resources and structures in place, the NCHC expects that the Honors College should comprise at least 20% of the student’s credits, distributed through all four years of study, and should include an honors thesis or capstone project.

Based on a 2023 survey of Honors Colleges of the 21st Century, many of these recommendations have been put into action in our nation’s largest and best research universities. The vast majority of honors colleges, 84%, are based at public universities. Over two thirds are led by honors college deans reporting to provosts. Other statistics show that among the US honors colleges, 77% offer dedicated residential housing, 88% emphasize interdisciplinary approaches, 82% use seminar-type learning, 91 % have their own unique general education courses, 80% offer honors first-year seminars, and 81% offer senior thesis or capstone projects.

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Top-Ranked Honors Colleges

To help students and families select among the increasing number of Honors Colleges, several different ranking systems have been established, including one from College Transitions, which created a 2024 ranking of the 50 best honors colleges in the US. The ranks were based on assigning scores for admissions selectivity, availability of housing and other benefits for honors students, and on academic rigor. The top five honors colleges in the country, according to this survey, are University of Georgia’s Moorhead Honors College, Penn State University’s Schreyer Honors College, Texas A&M’s University Honors Program. University of Connecticut’s Honors Program, and Arizona State University’s Barrett Honors College. The survey identified dozens more honors colleges that give students a very appealing alternative to both the liberal arts college and the typical large university education experience.

Some specific examples include Arizona State’s Barrett College, which includes a Nobel laureate as a full time faculty member. The University of Georgia’s Moorhead Honors College provides the Foundation Fellowship including an annual stipend, and access to several fully funded travel programs including a summer abroad experience at University of Oxford. The Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College offers one-on-one tutorials with faculty, much like the Oxford-Cambridge model, the University of Virginia’s Echols Scholars Program exempts students from the usual general education requirements, allowing them to craft their own pathways through the curriculum, as well as to define interdisciplinary majors. The City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College provides a full four-year tuition scholarship for New York residents and a New York City cultural passport, giving free admission to cultural institutions. The Texas Tech University Honors College, cites itself as the only honors research program that pays students on day one, giving undergraduate externships, alumni mentoring, and a remarkable job placement rate with 97% of graduates knowing their next step during graduation.

A Campus Within a Campus

Some of these honors colleges also have remarkable residential campuses inside the larger research university. Arizona State’s Barrett College has nine buildings exclusively for honors students, including a special dedicated student center. Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College offers several focused living learning communities, including one called The GLOBE for globally minded students. Rutgers University Honors College includes live-in Faculty Fellows in a new residence hall that also includes classrooms, while University of South Carolina’s Honors College offers a “campus within a campus” that features an honors-only residence with its own on-site lecture halls.

These examples of the nation’s growing constellation of high-quality Honors Colleges shows that more universities are learning how to bring the best features of the liberal arts college experience within the heart of a research university. Bringing these “high impact practices” to students at the lower price of a public university offers the best of both worlds, providing the solution to higher education that many students and their families have long been seeking.

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