It seems inevitable that undergraduates, especially at a university like Yeshiva where students focus on postgraduate education and aim for high-level job offers, will package themselves for various graduate programs and employment review panels. GPAs often outweigh knowledge incurred in class, and intellectually challenging courses become more a risk factor than an opportunity. The reams of paper wasted in criticizing the creation of an Honors Program at YU have attacked elitism and resource mismanagement and have fallen into the general pattern that student criticism of anything newly developed or yet untried at this institution follows. Perhaps we've been missing the point. If it in fact attends to its self-proclaimed goals, Yeshiva University, with its Honors Program, is attempting to create a liberal arts environment with quality classes and students who devote themselves to intellectual growth, and where the educational experience lies at its pinnacle.
Goals & Purpose
In the second year since the inception of the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program, questions about the program's long-term goals, current effects, and ultimate costs remain among the most openly discussed and hotly debated topics within the Yeshiva community. The fifth draft of a YC Honors Committee document outlining the mission statement for the Honors Programs states that the program's purpose is "to enhance education throughout Yeshiva College by providing an exceptionally broad, deep, rigorous education for our most talented students." Significantly, the committee delineated a plan to target the entire YU student population, not just a few elite students. Dr. Moshe Bernstein, a member of the YC Honors Committee, declared, "I'm unalterably opposed to an Honors Program that will create another track in Yeshiva College." Indeed, supporters of the Honors Program, whether administration, faculty, or students, claim that all students have felt the positive educational effects generated by the Honors Program.
Yeshiva College Dean Norman Adler described what he has termed the "trickle-down effect of education" as the most useful model for understanding the beneficial effects of the Honors Program on Yeshiva's general student population. The Honors Program demands a re-categorization of the population to explain the theoretical workings of the system.
Adler believes that with regard to the Honors Program, the YU student body breaks down into five groups: (1) Honors Program students, (2) non-Honors Program students in Honors Program courses, many of whom are of Honors quality in one or more fields of study, (3) non-Honors Program students for whom the Honors Program courses are a difficult stretch, (4) non-Honors Program students in non-Honors Program courses that Honors Program students take, and (5) students in courses without any Honors Program students in them. While the faculty and administration create high-level courses geared towards Honors Program students, any undergraduate student has the opportunity to take courses that the University would not have offered before the program's onset. Due to the permeability of Honors courses - aside from the H1 and H2 Honors Freshmen Seminars and the Honors Senior thesis - all students, regardless of who they are, have the ability to take more focused and developed courses within and outside their major.
Dr. Frank Felsenstein, Director of the Honors Program, in fact, has produced figures establishing the high level of participation in Honors Program courses of non-Honors Program students. The unofficial number of non-Honors Program students in Honors Program courses hovers at around 45%. Thus, all such students gain from the expanded educational dimensions offered by Honors Program courses.
In an exclusive Commentator poll conducted during the last week of March, 45% of the students polled felt that one of the goals of the Honors Program is to enhance the academic atmosphere at YU. By attracting high-level students to both of Yeshiva's undergraduate campuses, the Honors Program has helped to promote a more intellectually stimulating environment, both inside and outside the classroom. Bernstein confirmed that "the Honors Program has created the chance for students here to get the kind of courses that they used to say: 'Oh, I have to go to Ivy League school x or y or z to get them.'"
Admissions requirements for the Honors Program, although a constant source of controversy, differ only slightly from similar programs at other major liberal arts institutions throughout the country. For instance, both the new CUNY Honors Program and the Honors courses at Princeton and Brown Universities require the same 3.84 (96%) GPA and SAT qualifications demanded by YU's Honors Program. Distinguished Scholars / Honors Program applicants must prepare two extra essays specifically designed to test their writing abilities and gauge their level of commitment to a comprehensive Torah U'Madda education, as well as undergo an arduous interview with up to five YU deans and upper-level administrators. Tough standards elevate the quality of students in the Honors Program, which is essential for supporting challenging courses and infusing intellectual curiosity even in non-Honors courses.
Dr. Will Lee, co-Chair of the YC Honors Committee, extends the realm of benefit even to the fifth group of students. "The Honors Program," he asserts, "has contributed to faculty development and has energized the faculty in their creation of new course material." Through the creation of challenging Honors courses, faculty members have cultivated new material and improved their teaching methods in all areas of their discipline. Due to the emphasis the Honors Program places on interdisciplinary courses, professors now team-teach and teach courses that reach beyond their disciplines. Dr. Joan Haahr, Chairperson of the English Department, notes, "it's much harder to teach an interdisciplinary course, you really have to do twice as much work." Faculty improvement ultimately results in enhanced education for all students on campus.
Honors Program Courses
To fulfill the general aims of the Honors Program, the YC Honors Committee has developed a plan for creating a wide range of Honors Program courses. Included in the mission statement is a quasi-description of the criteria for the Honors Program: "research, intensive writing, and sophisticated thinking: critical, analytic, quantitative, scientific, and creative." Students in these courses are expected to produce more written work and put in the hours needed for more reading and research. The Honors Senior Thesis, restricted to Honors Program students like the H1 and H2 courses, combines intensive writing with graduate level research. This project, the keystone of the program for Honors Program students, avails the students involved to substantial benefits from in-depth study in their fields. Dr. Lee explains the thought process behind writing intensive courses and a greater workload: "We're looking for a greater degree of intellectual challenge. Writing in Honors courses develop and reflect more intellectual sophistication, an increased ability to solve problems in a complicated environment in which problems are tough to solve; its not about more pages or more busy work - it's about higher quality thinking."
The Honors Program does not delineate the formation of an Honors guided major as one of its goals. Instead, the Honors Program is meant to supplement and expand the liberal arts education of the students in the Honors Program. Thus, counted among the Honors Program courses offered are deeply developed and specific courses, thereby benefiting non-Honors Program students who take high-level courses in their major. But on the flipside, due to the complexity of the courses offered, many students find themselves unable to engage in Honors courses outside their concentration.
The Honors curriculum has noticeably lacked introductory courses and courses in the sciences. Indeed, 40% of students polled wanted to see courses offered in the natural sciences, mathematics, and computer science, and 61.5% felt that those departments lacked a sufficient amount of Honors courses. Dr. Lee concurred: "We need more courses that fulfill requirements, and more courses in the sciences." While the Honors Committee has been building Honors courses in introductory Literature, Bible, and Political Science, and have announced the development of a QS1 course - quantitative analysis and scientific method and reasoning in one extremely high level course - and an Honors introductory Hebrew course combining 1205 and 1206 in one semester, the natural science, Mathematics, and Computer Science departments remain simply spread too thin to provide any substantial contribution to the Honors Program without detracting from their ability to provide basic courses.
The GPA Tension
Many students, although dedicated to academic excellence, legitimately find themselves pressured by the need to maintain a highly competitive GPA. In truth, the Honors Program is designed for students who are able to embrace the spirit of a liberal arts education even when faced with such tension. "Students can take some risks," argues Lee. "The ones who don't take the risks will pay a price for that. To simply play the system and do things the safe way without taking risks… patterns like that will repeat themselves later in life." According to Bernstein, "Yeshiva students are capable of excellent work, and I don't think anyone who's grading the Honors courses is grading them with an eye towards limiting the number of high quality grades that are coming out. I look forward to the day when students put the goal of obtaining a quality liberal education ahead of their GPA's." As it happens almost no Honors Program courses have been graded on a curve. But most importantly, any student who agrees with the unique learning ideology professed by this institution - that of Torah U'Madda - cannot excuse himself from not utilizing his time at Yeshiva to maximize his educational potential. If you're not merely pre-professional, and you're dedicated to expanding your mind, whether for purely academic reasons or in the pursuit of religious goals, then not risking your GPA for greater knowledge seems hypocritical.
Student Unawareness
Despite the benefits professed by supporters of the Honors Program on all sides, and the problems ranging from faculty to course choice to funds, students seem acutely unaware of the effects that the Honors Program can have on their careers at YU. Nearly 72% of students polled felt that they neither had benefited nor would they benefit from the Honors Program in any way, and 69% said they had not taken nor would they take any Honors courses. Over 73% felt that the purpose of the Honors Program at YU is to "make YU look better," while only 12% thought the program would benefit all students at YU. While those students in the majority are correct in some respects - the addition of a newly developed prestigious program ought to raise YU's ranking among the graduate schools (and indeed, graduates from the Honors Program have already been helped into choice programs and have received illustrious awards - such as the Rhodes Scholarship) - they seem to overlook the program's main features. And the responsibility for this lies in the hands of those promoting the Honors Program. They've introduced speakers and lecturers to the jabbering glitz of the Honors Program, yet they haven't sent the program's message - that of academic superiority and intellectual opportunity - to their students. No letters sent informing students about the possible benefits offered to them by the Honors Program, or emails encouraging students to take courses (that weren't in threat of under-attendance). The Honors Program could form the cornerstone of YU's maturation into a full-fledged liberal arts institution. It represents the future of YU. But without proper funding, without expansion of the faculty, and without cultivation of its significance within the student body, the Honors Program will not grow, and with its death YU might miss its chance to fulfill its unique potential - a synthesis of outstanding Torah education and true academic excellence.