IT'S THAT time of year again. The COD has been posted and happy little Hoos are flocking to their computers and picking out their choices for next semester. Then they go back and cross out all the really cool classes, because those courses will have already been gobbled up by those damn, dirty Echols scholars about a week in advance. The program and the advantages it confers are unfair and elitist, and the students in it probably eat babies, too. Or so the story is told.
The fact of the matter is that inconveniences posed by the Echols program are completely blown out of proportion. On balance, the benefits the program brings to the University community far outweigh its pitfalls.
Echols scholars seem to get blamed for any and all problems come scheduling week. And naturally, they are going to get some choice spots. But the key word here is "some." According to the University Web site, Echols scholars make only make up about 8.5 percent of the undergraduate population, or 852 students out of a total of nearly 13,000. That's simply not enough bodies to be the root of as many scheduling problems as popular rumor would have you believe.
No one disputes that there are major problems with class availability at this school, but it is misguided to place the culpability on a small honors program when the University is facing a $40 million budget hole and is struggling to hold onto its professors. The Echols program may be a minor contributor to schedule dilemmas, but the root of the problem clearly lies much deeper.
Nearly every large university in the country possesses some sort of honors program to attract competitive students to the school. Most honors programs use the "college within a college" approach, in which courses and professors are set aside for the exclusive use of those students in the program. So rather than giving up a few seats in most courses, as in the Echols program, most students have little or no access to some of the best educational experiences their institution provides. As long as there is any sort of honors program, there will be some inherent inequality, but the unique structure of the Echols program minimizes that unfairness to a nominal degree.
Balanced against this perhaps unpleasant unfairness are the obvious benefits the program provides for the University, the most important of all being its value as a recruiting tool. Now, being the second ranked public university in the nation by U.S. News & World Report is nothing to shake a stick at. However, Virginia doesn't have the bloated endowment of Harvard or Princeton. In addition, with the University in the midst of one of the worst budget crises in its history, it needs every edge it can get if it's going to continue to recruit the students, especially those from out-of-state, that help keep its standards so high and compete with the country's other top institutions.
That edge is the Echols Scholars Program. A 2004 study of the program by Prof. Jessamy L. Hoffman of the Curry School of Education found that nearly 40 percent of the students surveyed said that they would not have attended the University had it not been for the program. That's a significant chunk of the University's best and brightest who would have taken their talents (and their tuition) elsewhere. In an age where colleges live and die by their admissions statistics, the Echols program provides a major advantage to the University while it solves its other problems.
Additionally, it's not as though these students are parasites sucking on the lifeblood of the University. In the words of Prof. Richard Handler, Dean of the Echols Scholars Program, "Echols Scholars tend to be among those with the most serious intellectual interests, which is a population we need. The College profits from students who are active in various activities, but most professors ... appreciate the chance to work with students who are as focused, intellectually, as they are." Both in the classroom and in numerous organizations across Grounds, Echols scholars share their talents and acquired knowledge with the community. To lose these and other associated assets could only be the detriment of the University.
I think it is only right that I make clear that I am an Echols scholar, and thus I have a stake in this argument. However, even those who despise the program must see what it does for the University as a whole. You don't have to like it. But if you choose to dislike it, do so because it has to be there, not because it is.
A.J. Kornblith is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.
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