SNHU Honors Program Cuts Scholarships

Sofia Barassi Sports Editor

SNHU’s honors program has changed over the last year due to COVID-19 impacting the way that students have been able to complete honors requirements, attend events and earn scholarships.

Returning home meant that the $2,000 scholarship awarded to honors students would not be offered due to SNHU’s reduced tuition rate during remote learning. This caused concern from students because they are still required to complete all of the honors’ requirements to the same extent without that money. This cut in scholarship money will remain indefinitely, according to SNHU honors advisor Dr. Lowell Matthews, since SNHU has lowered tuition for on-campus learning to the rate of $15,000.

“I was disappointed in the decision to remove the honors scholarship. It was a big incentive to join the program, and I feel we are now being asked to do a lot of extra work for little reward,” said Autumn Hendricks (‘22), a member of the SNHU honors program.

Students have had online events and meetings as online learning has progressed which is much different than in-person standard practices.

At other colleges and universities, instead of scholarships, other incentives are brought to the surface such as parking, housing, class selection and reduced class size.

“There are apartments with full kitchen starting at sophomores for honors students at Bentley,” said Elizabeth Bonnette, Bentley University honors student. Additionally, Bentley has smaller class sizes for honors students as well as an advanced class selection period according to Bonnette.

Isaiah Donovan, an honors student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said that there are honors suites and apartments to live in which are much nicer dorms than the standard ones. This is not present at SNHU.

From an administrative standpoint, the incentive to join the SNHU honors program is not meant to be entirely based on the scholarship that used to be offered.

“I started...interviewing every single student before they joined the honors program to really make [sure] that [they] were motivated for the right reason and not motivated for the scholarship. We wanted students to be a part of the program because they saw the potential for themselves, not because there was a $2,000 scholarship attached to it,” said Matthews. “We were already in discussion of removing the scholarships before COVID even came about because when we did a survey with our honors students, a majority of them said it was not a motivating factor.”

“The main mission of the honors program is to inspire students to change the world,” said Matthews. He continued by saying that the graduating students are to create an honors thesis that they can tangibly use to change the world when they are done at school.

From previous years, Matthews noticed that students were not intending to finish the honors program when they graduated, but rather to benefit from the scholarships during their four years until the end. “We accept 60 students on average to the honors program...only about 20... [graduate] from the honors program,” said Matthews. “It takes away from the students who want to be in the honors program for the right reason.”

Becca Drager (‘23), an SNHU honors fellow, was interviewed by Matthews when joining the program and stated, “I did my in-person interview with doctor Matthews and [he was] excited about everything which made me really want to join.”

“We did not want the financial piece to be the main motivator for people to be in the honors program because, at the end of the day, if I’m telling you to change the world, you have to be frustrated because all you will get for changing the world is $2,000,” said Matthews.

With some students frustrated about the cut of the $2,000 scholarship for doing the same amount of work, the goal of the program has not changed. The indefinite removal of the scholarship remains officially unannounced to the honors program members of SNHU.

SNHU Honors Program.

(image courtesy: SNHU Honors)