Undergraduate Student Government President Eddie Pauline has taken a new, controversial issue under his wing: the Ohio State honors program.
Pauline has said the honors program needs revision, citing students who are in the program only to get priority scheduling and who do not graduate with honors. He claims fewer than half the students who enter OSU in the honors program see it through to graduation.
While The Lantern has been known to take anti-USG positions, when Pauline makes a valid point we’re willing to admit it. The point he makes about honors students and priority scheduling is worth some consideration.
Under the scheduling system, honors students schedule classes before all other students except varsity athletes and disabled students. The idea behind this fringe benefit of a high grade-point average is to give OSU honors students the opportunity to take higher-level classes without having to worry about the classes being closed.
It’s a nice idea, but it has the unfortunate side-effect of closing other students out of upper-level classes — students who might be in greater need of the classes than those who can get in: namely, non-honors seniors who may require the courses to graduate.
A system in which a senior can be closed out of a class because his or her spot was taken by an honors freshman is unfair and should be revised. A better idea might be to divide scheduling by rank, with the honors students scheduling before the regular students in each rank. Under such a system, the honors seniors would have priority over all other ranks, but the honors freshmen would have priority over only non-honors freshmen.
Under this revamped system, seniors could get the classes they need, and because the benefit of priority scheduling would be drastically reduced, fewer students would join the program who have no intention of graduating with honors. It would shift the focus of the honors program to its other benefits, making it more probable that the only students in the program are those who truly want to be there.
Honors programs are important in education, promoting stand-out academics to exceed their already-high expectations — but OSU needs to realize the difference between rewarding overachievers and pampering them.
