Qualities Honours Students Look for in Faculty and Courses

The main research questions that we answer in this article are: What are characteristics of honours students and how do they value teachers and courses? Does our theory-based learning context, which is supportive of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, actually correspond to the preferences of our honours students? Talent, selectiveness, and differentiation are quickly becoming buzzwords in higher education policy and practice in the Netherlands. Honours programmes are recognized as one of the primary means to evoke excellence in talented students. Nearly all thirteen Dutch research universities have or are developing honours programmes; the first honours programme in the Netherlands started as recently as 1993. We expect that, while European countries are implementing the bachelor-master system, honours programmes will rapidly spread across Europe during the coming years. We define honours programmes as programmes that are specifically developed to offer educational opportunities that are more challenging and demanding than the regular programmes. They are meant for the more motivated and gifted students who want more and have the capacity to do more than the regular curriculum requires from them. Our knowledge of and insight into effective honours programmes has, unfortunately, not quite developed at the same pace as have the number of honours programmes. For example, we need specified and a priori defined outcomes in order to evaluate the success of honours programmes. We also need to make explicit our assumptions about the needs of students, faculty, and society that honours programmes are said to meet. Our ways of evoking excellence in students through honours programmes is in need of a theoretical underpinning. Fundamental to our understanding of effective honours programmes, we need to gain a clearer insight into the features of students participating in honours programmes. Who are those talented and motivated students who are able to do more than the regular programme can offer them? What kind of programme will challenge those students? Honours programmes are now widely offered to talented students in the Netherlands, with the assumption those talented students will be broadly alike.