ABSTRACT
The introduction covers the history of honors colleges in the United States, paying special attention to large public research universities and their early attempts to create something akin to honors in the late nineteenth century. The analysis gauges tensions between merit and inequality as well as political currents advocating for practical education over more philosophical inquiry, a conversation propelling the establishment of the land-grant university in the late nineteenth century. The historical narrative concludes with the various models for honors education existing now in the twenty-first century. The editors then detail how audiences will engage with the issues discussed here, depending on their position as a reader: administrator, donor, trustee, prospective student, legislator, faculty member, or campus partner. The analysis turns to the value proposition of honors in terms of both how arguments about value have been successful in the past and where more could be said in the future. The examination weighs what sorts of data should be conveyed to constituents of honors colleges and the methods of relating each through carefully constructed narratives. The introduction finishes by outlining the eight chapters, underscoring how the contents of this edited volume depart from the corpus of published work on honors.
