Why honors is a hard sell in the community college

At the college president's request and after attending the 2013 NCHC conference in New Orleans, the authors developed a comprehensive honors program framework and spent the spring semester of 2014 sharing it with units across the college for discussion and feedback. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Despite the many benefits of this proposed program, the administration hesitated to go forward. The administrative indecision around the proposed program is but one manifestation of how honors education threatens to subvert larger narratives about the purpose of community colleges. Two-year colleges have been framed as the locus of remedial classes and "workforce skills training," not as sites of the academic and professional opportunity sought out by those in the more privileged social strata. Given this assumption about the role of community colleges, they have also been deemed the place of choice for a student population for whom academic and career expectations are low, students without the cultural capital of a middle-class upbringing. However, the authors argue that not only is honors education particularly suited to disrupt this narrative but, at its best, destabilizes it by recognizing all students' potential and--through mentoring, academic engagement, and high expectations--enabling them to realize their potential.