Civic Tolerance among Honors Students

Authors

Gordon Shepherd, University of Central ArkansasFollow
Gary Shepherd, Oakland University

Date of this Version

2014

Document Type

Article

Citation

Published in Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, Spring/Summer 2014, Volume 15, Number 1.

Comments

Copyright © 2014 by the National Collegiate Honors Council.

Abstract

The large literature on the impact that college has on student attitudes and values, which includes work by researchers such as Astin, Newcomb, Pascarella and Terenzini, also includes studies that have focused specifically on the effects of a college education on student tolerance (Hall & Rodeghier; Henderson-King; Lawrence & Licari; Rich; Taylor; Whitt, Edison, Pascarella, Terenzini, & Nora). This literature, however, contains virtually nothing on the impact that honors has on the social attitudes of honors college students. Thus, neither of Pascarella’s and Terenzini’s massive 1991 and 2005 reviews of the research literature on the effects of college on student values cited any studies that focused on the attitudinal or social consequences of an honors education. This absence is surprising since, for the past half-century, a substantial number of our country’s brightest students have enrolled in honors programs (Long; Shushok; Willingham).