Do honors students have more potential for excellence in their professional lives?

Higher Education, Jul 2012

Universities in many countries increasingly value talent, and do so by developing special honors programs for their top students. The selection process for these programs often relies on the students’ prior achievements in school. Research has shown, however, that school grades do not sufficiently predict academic success. According to Renzulli’s (1986) three-ring model, student characteristics relating to intelligence, motivation and creativity are the most important predictors of excellent achievements in professional life. In this paper, we will investigate whether honors students differ from non-honors students in terms of these characteristics. By means of a questionnaire, more than 1,100 honors and non-honors students at Utrecht University were asked to assess themselves on six characteristics: intelligence, creative thinking, openness to experience, the desire to learn, persistence, and the drive to excel. The results showed that the honors students differed significantly from the non-honors students in terms of the combined variables as well as for the separate variables, with the exception of ‘persistence’. The strongest distinguishing factors between honors and non-honors students appeared to be the desire to learn, the drive to excel and creativity, whilst there was little difference in terms of intelligence and persistence. However, the profiles of these differences varied according to the study program. While Law and Humanities honors students differed from their non-honors peers in terms of their drive to excel, Physics honors students were primarily more eager to learn than their non-honors peers, while the LA&S honors students scored higher on creative thinking than non-honors students.

A PDF file should load here. If you do not see its contents the file may be temporarily unavailable at the journal website or you do not have a PDF plug-in installed and enabled in your browser.

Alternatively, you can download the file locally and open with any standalone PDF reader:

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10734-011-9478-z.pdf

Do honors students have more potential for excellence in their professional lives?

Karin Scager 0 1 Sanne F. Akkerman 0 1 Fried Keesen 0 1 M. Tim Mainhard 0 1 Albert Pilot 0 1 Theo Wubbels 0 1 0 M. Tim Mainhard T. Wubbels Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Utrecht University , P.O. Box 80140, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands 1 F. Keesen University College Utrecht, Utrecht University , P.O. Box 80145, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands Universities in many countries increasingly value talent, and do so by developing special honors programs for their top students. The selection process for these programs often relies on the students' prior achievements in school. Research has shown, however, that school grades do not sufficiently predict academic success. According to Renzulli's (1986) three-ring model, student characteristics relating to intelligence, motivation and creativity are the most important predictors of excellent achievements in professional life. In this paper, we will investigate whether honors students differ from non-honors students in terms of these characteristics. By means of a questionnaire, more than 1,100 honors and non-honors students at Utrecht University were asked to assess themselves on six characteristics: intelligence, creative thinking, openness to experience, the desire to learn, persistence, and the drive to excel. The results showed that the honors students differed significantly from the non-honors students in terms of the combined variables as well as for the separate variables, with the exception of 'persistence'. The strongest distinguishing factors between honors and non-honors students appeared to be the desire to learn, the drive to excel and creativity, whilst there was little difference in terms of intelligence and persistence. However, the profiles of these differences varied according to the study program. While Law and Humanities honors students differed from their nonhonors peers in terms of their drive to excel, Physics honors students were primarily more eager to learn than their non-honors peers, while the LA&S honors students scored higher on creative thinking than non-honors students. - Universities in many countries increasingly value talent, and do so by developing special honors programs for their top students. The objective of these programs is to provide opportunities for students to develop their talents to the full, enabling them to make significant contributions to science and society. Honors students are assumed to have the potential to excel in their future professional lives. It is, however, unclear whether and to what extent these honors students do indeed have this potential in comparison to nonhonors students. In contrast with the huge body of research on giftedness in primary and secondary education, empirical research on talent in higher education is surprisingly scarce (Achterberg 2005; Clark 2000; Long and Lange 2002; Rinn and Plucker 2004). This is remarkable given the growth of programs specifically designed for groups of students who are assumed to be academically talented. Universities often select honors students based on their grades in secondary education and their level of motivation. In his review of the relationship between grades attained at school or at university and adult accomplishment, Hoyt (1966) concluded that grades have hardly any relationship with any measure of future achievement. Twenty years later, Cohen (1984) found similar results in his meta-analysis, indicating that the predictive value of grades for professional success is small. Taylor et al. (1985) came to the same conclusion, demonstrating that grades and standardized tests can predict future grades, but that they do not predict professional excellence. High school grade point averages (GPAs) are used as predictors, as well as scores on scholastic aptitude tests (SATs) and letters of recommendation (Rinn and Plucker 2004). The area of the selection process, which is based on motivation, can be either active, by means of letters and interviews, or passive, relying on the self-selection of the students. However, it is questionable whether it is safe to trust these selection methods. We do not know whether these selection methods supply honors programs with students who are significantly more motivated than non-honors students are. Furthermore, not all of the students who are qualified apply for the honors program or college, and a number of them end up in regular programs. Thus, even if application forms, letters, and interviews are used as evidence of motivation, we cannot know whether honors students are more motivated than their non-honors peers. This study investigates whether honors students differ from non-honors students with respect to qualities that have been found to be essential for exceptional accomplishments in professional life. Further, we examine which of these qualities primarily differentiate between honors and non-honors students. Empirical evidence regarding the specific qualities of honors students is needed i (...truncated)


This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10734-011-9478-z.pdf

Karin Scager, Sanne F. Akkerman, Fried Keesen, M. Tim Mainhard. Do honors students have more potential for excellence in their professional lives?, Higher Education, 2012, pp. 19-39, Volume 64, Issue 1, DOI: 10.1007/s10734-011-9478-z