ABSTRACT
Honors education is flourishing in American colleges and universities. Honors designations are anything but new, having existed in various forms since the nineteenth century. In the 1920s Oxbridge honors were given an American interpretation by Frank Aydelotte, who established independent honors studies for upperclassmen at Swarthmore College. In the 1950s, honors studies were reinvented at public universities to provide more challenging courses to selected groups of entering "superior students". Honors programs for freshmen and sophomores, with appropriate work for juniors and seniors, became the American system of honors education. The authority on honors education in the first several decades of the century was Frank Aydelotte, president of Swarthmore College. In the arena of undergraduate education, honors programs were just one of many contemporary innovations. The steering committee reiterated the need for a central clearinghouse of information on honors education, citing "snowballing requests" for summaries of the June conference and for general literature on honors programs.
