No one will dispute that those in the honors program do have better access to classes and scholarships than non-honors students. But why is this?
Shockingly, it could be in the greater interest of all students here. What everyone gains from the Ohio State honors program is a higher value attached to their degree. Honors students contribute a good deal to the university through academic commitment, research and thesis writing. While non-honors students do the same, honors students do it at a proportionately higher rate.
When people come out of OSU well prepared for the workforce, more employers recruit at OSU. For example, the Freshmen Engineering Honors Program is highly regarded among employers, and many companies recruit at OSU specifically because of the caliber of people who leave it. All engineers benefit from a scenario such as this, and the same goes for the honors programs in other departments.
The cold hard truth is that OSU enrolls many exceptional students that it would not have gained without the financial and academic incentives offered by the honors program. It is a beautiful, fantastic idea that OSU can recruit on reputation alone, but our reputation is not yet weighty enough to recruit the caliber of students OSU would like to see on its campus. To compensate for some of our mid-ranked programs, the honors program offers high-performing students an overall better deal than a pricey, more prestigious university.
The credibility of OSU honors rests on enforcing minimum academic standards and, contrary to Benjamin Presson’s column last Wednesday (“Honors program reform”), it does… All honors related scholarships are contingent on high academic performance and are rescinded if that level of high performance is not maintained.
The system might have kinks, but OSU does do a good job of keeping students accountable for benefits received from honors standing. Maybe OSU should reduce the size of its program and revamp a few of the policies, but it definitely should not destroy all of its resources and, in effect, all of its great recruiting advantages.
In some way or another, everyone here benefits from what the honors program is doing for OSU.
Erika HoutzSophomoreChemical engineering and political science
