Good for few, bad for most

By Adam Burger

At Santa Clara, the concept of community is strongly emphasized. Two years ago, the university ended its association with the Greek system, citing the exclusivity of the system as being not conducive to creating community. Since we desire social equality at Santa Clara, shouldn't it be reasonable that we have academic equality as well? Currently, academic equality is not a reality at Santa Clara. The University Honors Program (UHP) creates a separate class of students and grants these students special privileges - which come at the expense of non-honor students - that raise ethical questions about the nature and practice of the program.

Lets examine the privileges bestowed by the UHP:

- Honor students receive priority registration. This is advertised on the UHP Web site as "a privilege which brings guaranteed enrollment in virtually every course they select at Santa Clara."

- The UHP Web site states that honors classes are smaller than regular classes, ensuring a better teacher-to-student ratio. Ideally honors classes are capped around 17 students. Regular classes average 24 students, according to the Undergraduate Admissions Web site.

- The UHP Web site also notes that honors professors are chosen from "more experienced faculty," implying that an effort has been made to ensure honor students have access to the best teachers.

- An annual tuition break is extended to students within the UHP, according to History Professor Arthur Liebscher, S.J., who oversees operation of the program.

These privileges do not come without a cost. This cost, however is unduly borne by non-honor students. Non-honor students must register later, take larger classes, experience decreased access to the best teachers and finance the inefficiencies of the honor program with a portion of their tuition.

The university offers these privileges as an attempt to sway students who would likely attend more prestigious schools to choose Santa Clara instead. But since all of these privileges come at the disadvantage of other students, the message Santa Clara sends to potential UHP freshman and transfer students is: we will disadvantage other students for your benefit if you enroll with us. Since the university is responsible to all its students, one must ask: is the honors program ethical? Should Santa Clara have two classes of students? Is one Santa Clara student entitled to a better education than another simply because they are perceived to be smarter?

Let's look at why they university has an honors program. Liebsher said the probram has a positive effect upon the entire student body. "The presence of an honors program aids student recruiting, raises the academic profile and thus increases the value of the degree for all students," he said.

Additionally, Liebsher said that the presence of honors students in general classes raises the quality of education for the non-honors students in those classes.

"All students who perform well raise the quality of education in a classroom. Honor students usually perform pretty well, but human beings don't come with guarantees," he said.

But honor students make up just five percent of the student body. Are the potential skills that these students bring to campus significant enough to warrant the inequalities the UHP creates?

Why do honor students receive the afrementioned exclusive privileges? Liebsher explains that the "intent of [of priority registration] is the UHP students be able to arrange as effective an academic plan as possible. In fact, many use priority registration to assure themselves heavier course loads than I think prudent."

But should a student's desire to take a larger, optional course load warrant priority registration? Honor students are not unique in their need to enroll in classes and some of the classes they pre-register for are already roped off for them. The fact that honor students use priority registration to take more classes than is recommended only disadvantages non-honors students more.

Liebscher said that as of late, the priority registration has had difficulties. "In practice, we have experienced confusion implementing priority registration as changes have been made in the campus computer system," he said. While this may be the case, the functionality of the system does not negate the principle: give honor students preference.

By capping honors classes significantly lower than non-honors classes, a teacher's capacity to educate is limited. Where a teacher could educate 30-35 students, they must now devote their expertise to fewer than 20. This presents a significant opportunity cost - that is, a potentially higher quality of education of 10 to 15 students has been lost. In this case, the cost per students has risen more than 50 percent.

Additionally, since honors teachers are distinguished faculty, they have higher salaries than newer professors. This makes the cost per student rise even higher. Is devoting our best teachers to capped classes the most efficient way to use our resources in order to benefit the greatest number of students?

The tradeoffs of the UHP are numerous. To implement the program, the university diverts teaching potential from non-honors students which in turn raises the cost of education. It treates a sizeable majority of the student body as second class by devoting superior resources and opportunities to a small fraction of students. It does this in an attempt to make the university appear more prestigious. Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves, from the perspective of a non-honors students, is whether the prestige of our degree is more important thant he quality of education we receive.