The University of Idaho Honors Program offers top tier students a chance to excel with rigorous courses, networking opportunities and scholarships, but the opportunity is limited.
The UI honors program does not limit students in its admissions requirements — which is what it is supposed to do — but through the amount of honors courses offered.
The honors program offered 13 honors courses this semester, sounds like enough courses for students at UI, however take into account that two are ISEM courses, which are only open to first-year students. Not to mention that four courses are specific upper division courses that many students will not take because it does not relate to their major. That leaves only six classes for the large body of honors student to take, presenting a limited course selection.
The honors program loses because it does not involve these eligible students in its program and students lose by not being placed in these challenging courses.
The honors program should be expanded to include more course options to accommodate these students.
The honors program also offers multiple opportunities for scholarships that range from scholarship awards for non-residential honor students to large-scale scholarships like the Western Undergraduate Exchange or WUE. The WUE, which was gutted a few years ago, now only applies to 15-18 honor students each year.
Another significant part of the honors program experience is the social aspect that provides multiple extracurricular activities for honors students to take part in. These activities include off-campus excursions, leadership retreats and numerous social events, just to name a few.
Honors students are also offered a variety of UI perks for being in the program such as getting to register with seniors for courses, free tickets to the Auditorium Chamber Series and free tickets to certain plays and films.
It is positive that UI provides these numerous opportunities to students that would most benefit from them. But why should we exclude other qualified students from scholarship money, extracurricular activities and UI perks simply because they cannot fit honors courses into their schedule?
We shouldn’t.
For the honors program to become a more fair system they can move in two directions. Either tighten up the standards for acceptance into the program to make it more exclusive, or expand the program and offer more course options so qualified students can take part.
However, as it stands right now the honors program is only a prize for the lucky few that can squeeze an honors course into their schedule.
Ryan Tarinelli can be reached at [email protected]