The basic trends of honors education in universities worldwide

Abstract

Russian universities start to follow the tradition of creating special educating areas for talented students with high academic achievements, i.e. honors students. However few studies in Russia have examined the phenomenon of honors colleges, as well as the principles of honors education’s theory and the turning points of its history. The aims of the study are to analyze the reasons institutions of higher education worldwide invest significant financial and human resources into the talent development in various honors programs and to assess the perspectives of applying international standards to the development of the elite undergraduate education in Russian universities. The current study uses the methods of qualitative research including phenomenological method to examine the honors college phenomenon, the content analysis of fundamental texts produced in the context of honors education theory and the case study method to describe several outstanding honors programs in American, European and Russian universities. The author focuses her attention on cases of the honors programs in Illinois State University, Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, the University of Tyumen and Siberian Federal University. The case study of SibFU Honors College suggests the growth of popularity and trends for future development of honors education in the Russian Federation.