Thursday, February 15, 2007

Those Tough Penn State Standards


Students in the [Schreyer Honors College]
are required to complete an honors thesis in their senior year and maintain a 3.33 GPA to stay in the program.


"Most honors programs in the nation have a 3.6 GPA requirement," [Christian] Brady[,dean of the college]said. "Ours gives students more room to explore and travel. It's not an honors program, which is focused entirely on classes and research, but a scholars program."


Given the fact that Penn State's average GPA is over 3.0, the students in the Schreyer Honors College really aren't being asked to do very much. And the reason they aren't asked to do very much is so that they can take a break from partying here in the Centre Region to go abroad to do some partying.

The basic idea behind this college is suspect. While the administration would like you to believe that it is all about attracting high academic performers to the University, my guess is that it is all about bringing in upper middle and upper class students who are more likely become wealthy alumni and make large donation to Penn State latter in life. After all, the college was founded with a large donation from Bill Schreyer a former Chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch. It would stand to reason that he would want his investment to pay huge dividend for his alma mater. This idea is reinforced by the fact that he was a prime mover behind the Village at Penn State. A primary purpose of that retirement community is to harvest the estates of the elderly residence for Penn State.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

HEh....I'm in the Sacramento State Univ. Honors program and we have a 3.0 GPA requirement...

This is the second semester that we've had the honors program. Thus far 2 were dropped because they failed the requirement, without question. MAny others JUST made the requirement by getting 2.9s...I got a 3.1 so i ain't worried.