In light of the recent changes to priority scheduling here at Bloomsburg, many Honors College students, including myself, do not understand the reasoning behind these new policies.
CU Senate legislators are withholding student benefits from those who are willing to accept greater challenges for the sake of their college education.
Bloomsburg’s Honors College requires students to take three seminar courses by their senior year, attend two honors/university events each semester, complete two high-impact experience capstone projects by graduation, participate in sixteen hours of volunteer work each year, and maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher.
Joining the Honors College means taking on extra work and committing oneself to higher standards of academic success, so why are students losing one of our biggest privileges?
Honors students should be allotted priority scheduling in order to be able to accommodate our many requirements on top of our major and minor classes. As an Honors College mentor at Bloomsburg, I am frustrated by the decision to alter priority scheduling.
The current scheduling process disguises itself as priority scheduling, yet it contains none of the original benefits promised to us as students. Lowerclassmen are pushed further down the scheduling food chain, despite being part of the same honors program as the upperclassmen.
Many fellow students are feeling deceived and question whether or not staying in the Honors College is worth it. I only foresee suffering in student populations for learning communities affected by this policy change.
Priority scheduling was a highly attractive aspect of the Honors College that drew in prospective students each year, especially for incoming freshmen.
According to a presentation shown by the Honors College, 168 out of 206 students returned to the Honors College from the 2024-2025 school year for 2025-2026.
Now, without their greatest attractor, will the Honors College face an even bigger decrease in numbers? Only time will tell.
