Abstract
The purpose of launching honors programs in Azerbaijan was not only to introduce advanced academic programs but also to change the culture in the universities: to make students more socially active, to encourage them to participate in international competitions, and continue their education. Keeping these goals in mind, we evaluate honors programs by comparing honors students and nonhonors students in respective universities by (a) academic performance, (b) future academic goals, and (c) participation in extracurricular activities. We showed that when we look at academic performance, future academic goals, and some of the extracurricular activities, honors students clearly outperform nonhonors students.
In 2014, the Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan Republic launched honors programs in several universities in Azerbaijan. These groups were called “Savadlı-Bacarıqlı-Hazırlıqlı” (SABAH) groups, which is an abbreviation for intellectual (“savadlı”), capable (“bacarıqlı”), and well equipped (“hazırlıqlı”). As it is in general, the primary goal of launching honors programs is to offer a more advanced program of study for high-performing students. However, introducing SABAH groups had another purpose of changing the culture in the universities: to make students more active in social projects, to encourage them to participate in international competitions, work both on and off campus, assist faculty and staff, and so on. As this was a new initiative, these groups were launched in specific degree programs in certain universities, which were selected based on their admission score ranking in those degree programs. For example, Pedagogy programs in Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University, Business and Economics programs in Azerbaijan State University of Economics, and the Law program Baku State University are among the programs that have SABAH groups. Selection to SABAH groups is made at the end of the first year based on the performances in the first year of studies, university admission test, honors selection test, and interview (Abizada & Mirzaliyeva, 2019).
Since the launch of the honors program in Azerbaijan, no assessment of the program has been made. One way to assess the success of this program would be through comparison of honors students with corresponding nonhonors students. This is in fact the main focus of this paper. Since bringing academic excellence and changing the culture in the universities were the main purposes of introducing honors programs, we compare honors and nonhonors students according to (a) their academic performance, (b) their future academic goals, and (c) their participation in extracurricular activities. It would be ideal to compare postgraduation performance of the two groups as well. Unfortunately, since there is no way to contact the graduates of both honors and nonhonors classes, it was not possible to run the comparisons related to postgraduation performance. Therefore, for our above-mentioned comparison, we consider senior students in both programs. The reason for considering only senior students is that they are the ones who have encountered certain amount of time in honors programs and are more enlightened to determine the course of their postgraduate pathway compared with the younger students.
We started by comparing the academic performances of the students. We used grade point average (GPA) as the measure of academic performance. One may argue that honors students are high performing, highly motivated students. Thus, it is natural that they would perform better academically and have higher GPAs compared with nonhonors students (Byrne, 1998). However, one should keep in mind that the level of coursework in honors classes is much more advanced than that of nonhonors programs (Van Ejil et al., 2005). Therefore, this comparison is still reasonable. Some earlier studies showed that despite the program being more advanced, honors students are still performing better than nonhonors students and have higher GPAs (Cosgrove, 2004; Kool et al., 2016). Moreover, it was shown that even when admission scores are controlled, honors students have higher GPAs than nonhonors students (Rinn, 2007). However, some papers found that there is no difference between the two groups of students in terms of GPA (Astin, 1993). Moreover, it was shown that even though there is a difference between GPAs of honors and nonhonors student during the first year, even when admission scores are controlled, by the time of graduation, this difference disappears (Shushok, 2006).
Next, we considered the future academic goals of the students. We compared the desire of the students in the two groups to pursue graduate degree. We wanted to understand whether studying in honors programs changed the future goals of students toward pursuing graduate degree. Rinn (2005) considered educational aspirations of honors students and compared them across academic classes. It was shown that, although there was no significant difference in educational aspirations of freshman and sophomore students, junior students have significantly higher educational aspirations than senior students do. One can think of other means of comparisons, such as employability after graduation and level of earning or percentage of graduates with graduate school placement. There is a wide range of literature that makes such a comparison (Hakanen, 2006; Kool et al., 2016; Rinn, 2007; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). It was found that when one compares ability, motivation, and creativity of students, there was no difference between honors and nonhonors students (Kool et al., 2016). However, while considering pursuit of a graduate degree, it was shown that honors students are more enthusiastic about it. Moreover, Rinn (2007) showed that there was no difference between career aspirations of honors and nonhonors students. In their recent study, Rinn and Plucker (2019) made a systematic review of the literature on high-ability students for the past 15 years. Results summarized in that review mainly discuss that factors affecting performances of high-ability students and how honors programs lead to positive outcomes for the students.
As one of the main goals of launching honors classes was to change the culture in the universities and to encourage students to be more active in extracurricular activities, we would like to see how effective this turned out. We compared honors and nonhonors students on different aspects: membership in student organizations (both within the university and outside of the university), their participation in social responsibility projects, their experience as a teaching assistant, volunteer, intern, and at a paid job. Although some studies showed that high academic performance is a key indicator of students in the job market (Thoms et al., 1999) and their long-term earnings (Rumberger & Thomas, 1993; Thomas, 2000; Vermeulen & Schmidt, 2008), there are other factors besides course materials that also affect the performance of the students in the job market. Skills like critical thinking are shown to be a better indicator than academic performance (Chamorro-Premuzic, 2006). Moreover, experience as an intern or a part-time employee, together with participation in social responsibility projects is highly valued during job recruitment. While some researchers state that participation in extracurricular activities may consume academic time and affect performance of the students negatively (Coleman, 1961; Joekel, 1985; Marsh, 1992; Marsh & Kleitman, 2002; Porter, 1991), others found that participating in such activities positively influenced academic performance of students (Broh, 2002; Hansen et al., 2003). Moreover, participation in extracurricular activities shows good in resume and helps a lot during job search. In that sense, trying to change the culture in the universities and increasing student participation in extracurricular activities is another important goal of the honors programs in Azerbaijan.
Method
For our analysis, data were collected through student surveys in eight large universities in the country that had honors programs. Data collection took place during the months of October and November 2018. The surveys were anonymous and were distributed during class time in three languages depending on language of instruction: Azerbaijani, English, and Russian. Instructions were clearly specified in the survey and were additionally explained in person in each classroom. A sample survey conducted in one of the universities is available in the appendix.
Participants
We conducted surveys in eight universities that have honors programs: Azerbaijan State University of Economics, Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University, Azerbaijan University of Languages, Azerbaijan Technical University, Azerbaijan State Oil University, Azerbaijan University of Architecture, Baku Slavic University, Baku State University. There are three more universities that have honors program, namely Azerbaijan State Academy of Art, Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Art, and Azerbaijan Architecture and Construction University, mainly in fine arts programs. Differently from the other programs, there is a second stage of admission for these programs, which is ability test. Since, it would be incorrect and difficult to somehow unify the results of the two tests and given the small size of student body in these programs, we did not include them in our analysis. We surveyed senior students from honors and non-honors groups that studied in the same degree programs. The reason for considering only senior students was the time they spent in the honors programs. Ideally, it would be great to survey graduates of these programs. However, since there is no easy way to reach these graduates of both honors and nonhonors groups, it was not in the scope of this project. Survey used nonprobability sampling, namely, convenience sampling (Creswell, 2012). We have 545 respondents from honors group out of approximately 700 in total and 2,638 respondents from nonhonors group out of approximately 4,500. That is, in total, we have surveyed n = 3,183 students out of N = 5,200. The reason for not being able to survey all the students is their availability. Since the last year students have fewer classes, some groups that we should have surveyed did not have classes during the survey time. To avoid this problem, we even visited some of the large universities for several days in a row. However, there were still students we could not survey.
Measures
As we mentioned earlier, we compared honors and nonhonors students according to (a) their academic performance, (b) their future academic goals, and (c) their participation in extracurricular activities. Questions of the survey are grouped based on these three aspects.
Academic performance
Since we surveyed only senior students, we collected their third-year cumulative GPA as a measure of academic performance. However, to see the change in their performance over 2.5 years (second year, third year, and the first semester of the fourth year), we additionally collected their first year GPA, which is the GPA prior to beginning honors programs, and their results on the university admission test. That is, we had the following measures of academic performance for each student: centralized state admission test (CSAT) results, first-year GPAs (GPA1), and third-year cumulative GPAs (CGPA3). CSAT is taken by every student graduating from high school, who wants to get admitted to university. The maximum score on the CSAT is 700, while the minimum eligibility score for admission is 200. Given these numbers, we separated all possible attainable scores into the intervals of 100 points: 200–300, 301–400, 401–500, 501–600, and 601–700. GPA of university students in Azerbaijan ranges between 0 and 100, where the passing score for each course is 50. Taking this into account, participants were asked to indicate their GPA1 and CGPA3 in the range of 10 points: 51–60, 61–70, 71–80, 81–90, and 91–100.
Future academic goals
To understand future goals of the students, we asked whether they plan to continue their education. We did not require the major in which they would be willing to continue their education to be the same as their major in undergraduate studies. This information was clearly explained before conducting the survey. Since students have not graduated yet, it was difficult to ask any further questions.
Extracurricular activities
Since participation in extracurricular activities is one of the main purposes of launching honors programs in Azerbaijan, we tried to investigate this aspect as widely as possible. We asked whether a student has been a member of any on-campus or off-campus student/youth organization, whether a student has been involved in social responsibility projects, whether a student has been working as a teaching assistant or a volunteer for university, whether a student has been employed as an intern or in a part-time paid job. All these questions required yes or no answer.
Statistical Tools
We first compared the academic performances of the two groups. Since our sample sizes for honors (n = 545) and nonhonors (n = 2,638) classes differ significantly, we need to reduce the number of nonhonors respondents so that we can run appropriate tests for comparison. We used random sampling to reduce the number of respondents from nonhonors class to be of equal to the size of respondents from honors class. Next, we used Levene’s F-test to compare the variances of the two groups. Based on the results of this test, we used appropriate Welch’s t-test for the cases with unequal variances and t-test with pooled standard deviation for the cases with equal variances.
For future academic goals and participation in extracurricular activities, we conducted Chi-square tests to understand whether being in honors class affected the desire of the students to pursue graduate studies and whether being in honors class stimulated students to participate in different extracurricular activities.
Results
We started by comparing all honors and nonhonors students according to (a) their academic performance, (b) their future academic goals, and (c) their participation in extracurricular activities. However, it is possible that there were differences between the two groups in one degree program and not in the other programs. To address this point, we considered degree programs separately and make comparisons between honors and nonhonors students within these degree programs. In order not to work with small samples, we considered three degree programs, namely Business and Economics, Engineering, and Education, which had the majority of the students.
Academic Performance
As we mentioned earlier, since our sample sizes for honors and nonhonors classes differ significantly, we reduce the number of respondents from nonhonors class using simple random sampling and make them the same size as respondents from honors class. Table 1 presents the basic descriptive statistics for honors and reduced nonhonors students for CSAT, GPA1, and CGPA3, together with results of Levene’s F-test and appropriate t-test used. Although the main item of comparison is CGPA3, as it reflects the overall performance of the students, we want to understand how the difference between the two groups changed over the years. Therefore, GPA1 and centralized admission exam scores were included.
Summary of Basic Descriptive Statistics for All Student Body and Results of F-Tests and t-Tests.
Note. CSAT = centralized state admission test; GPA = grade point average; CGPA = cumulative grade point average.
p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.
Since variances of honors and nonhonors differed significantly for CSAT, F(544, 544) = 0.65, p < .001, GPA1, F(544, 544) = 0.8, p < .001, and CGPA3, F(544, 544) = 0.35, p < .001, we compared the means of two groups using two-tailed Welch’s t-tests, which assumes unequal population variances. We obtained that, in all three measures, the difference between honors and nonhonors students was significant and effect sizes measured through Hedge’s g were large. We found t(1,040) = 17.7 with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 1.07 in CSAT, t = 14.1(1,074) with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 0.86 in GPA1, and t(907) = 21.7 with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 1.31 in CGPA3.
As we mentioned earlier, this difference between the two groups may not hold for specific degree programs. Therefore, to address this concern, we ran the same comparison within the three largest degree programs. Table 2 presents the basic descriptive statistics for honors and nonhonors students for their CSAT, GPA1, and CGPA3, together with results of Levene’s F-test and appropriate t-test used.
Summary of Basic Descriptive Statistics by Degree Programs and Results of F-Tests and t-Tests.
Note. CGPA = cumulative grade point average; CSAT = centralized state admission test; GPA = grade point average.
p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.
For Business and Economics students, since variances of honors and nonhonors differ significantly for CSAT, F(178, 185) = 0.58, p < .001, GPA1, F(178, 185) = 0.6, p < .001, and CGPA3, F(178, 185) = 0.33, p < .001, we compared means of the two groups using Welch’s t-tests, which assumes unequal population variances. We obtained that in all three measures, the difference between honors and nonhonors students was significant and effect sizes were very large. We found t(345) = 15.3 with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 1.59 in CSAT, t(347) = 11.7 with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 1.22 in GPA1 and t(298) = 13.7 with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 1.42 in CGPA3.
Similarly, for Engineering students, since variances of honors and nonhonors differed significantly for CSAT, F(129, 132) = 0.49, p < .001, and CGPA3, F(129, 132) = 0.33, p < .001, we compared means of the two groups using Welch’s t-tests, which assumes unequal population variances. However, since variances of honors and nonhonors students did not differ for GPA1, F(129, 132) = 0.76, p = .058, we compared means of the two groups using t-tests assuming equal population variances. When we conduct appropriate t-tests, we obtained t(237) = 10.6 with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 1.3 in CSAT, t(261) = 8.2 with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 1.02 in GPA1 and t(213) = 10.4 with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 1.27 in CGPA3, which shows that for all three measures the difference between two groups was highly significant.
Finally, for Education students, since variances of honors and nonhonors differed significantly for CSAT, F(163, 169) = 0.75, p = .033, and CGPA3, F(163, 169) = 0.5, p < .001, we compared means of the two groups using Welch’s t-tests, which assumes unequal population variances. However, since variances of honors and nonhonors students did not differ for GPA1, F(163, 169) = 0.88, p = .21, we compared means of the two groups using two-tailed t-tests assuming equal population variances. When we conduct appropriate t-tests, we obtained t(328) = 5.62 with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 0.61 in CSAT, t(332) = 4.48 with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 0.49 in GPA1 and t(305) = 13.5 with p < .001 and Hedge’s g = 1.47 in CGPA3. While effect size for CGPA3 is very large, it is medium for CSAT score and GPA1, which shows that for all three measures the difference between two groups was highly significant.
Future Academic Goals
Next, we considered the desire of students to continue their education and pursue a graduate degree. We conducted Chi-square tests to understand whether being in honors class affected their desire to pursue graduate studies. Table 3 presents the results of the survey and the Chi-square test. The results indicated Chi-square value of χ2(1, N = 3,183) = 123.2, p < .001, which implies that desire to pursue graduate studies differs based on the class (honors or nonhonors) students are in.
Responses of All the Students on Desire to Pursue Graduate Studies and Outcome of Chi-Square Test.
p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.
Moreover, we conducted the same analysis for different degree programs. Table 4 presents the results of the survey and the Chi-square tests. The results indicated that desire to pursue graduate studies differs based on the class (honors or nonhonors) students are in for all three programs: for Business and Economics, χ2(1, N = 1,090) = 70.2, p < .001, for Engineering, χ2(1, N = 693) = 35.3, p < .001, and for Education, χ2(1, N = 1,197) = 13.1, p < .001.
Responses of All the Students on Desire to Pursue Graduate Studies by Degree Programs and Outcomes of Chi-Square Tests.
p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.
Extracurricular Activities
Finally, we considered how active students were in extracurricular activities. Since this was one of the purposes of launching honors programs in Azerbaijan, we tried to address this issue in detail. To measure the participation in extracurricular activities, we considered several activities such as: membership in student organizations (both in the university and outside of the university), participation in social responsibility projects, work as teaching assistant at university, work as volunteer on-campus or outside of university, internship, and paid job experiences. We asked students whether they participate in any of the extracurricular activities we mentioned above. As before, we conducted Chi-square tests to understand whether being in honors class affected participation of the students in extracurricular activities. We conducted our analysis for each extracurricular activity, separately. Survey responses of the students and results of each of the Chi-square tests are presented in Table 5.
Responses of All the Students on Participation in Extracurricular Activities and Outcome of Chi-Square Analysis.
p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.
The results indicated that participation in social responsibility projects differed for honors and nonhonors students, χ2(1, N = 3,183) = 21.2, p < .001. Similar results were observed for internships, χ2(1, N = 3,183) = 107.4, p < .001. Similar but not so significant results were observed for teaching assistantship, χ2(1, N = 3,183) = 3.155, p = .07. However, for memberships in student organizations we obtain χ2(1, N = 3,183) = 1.676, p = .195 for on campus organizations and χ2(1, N = 3,183) = 2.328, p = .127 for off campus organizations, which implied that memberships in student organizations did not differ based on the class (honors or nonhonors) students are in. Similar insignificant results are obtained for volunteering, χ2(1, N = 3,183) = 0.67, p = .41, and students taking paid jobs, χ2(1, N = 3,183) = 1.04, p = .31. Thus, while being in honors class made a significant difference in participation in social responsibility projects, taking an internship, and working as a teaching assistant, for memberships in student organizations, volunteering, and taking a paid job, being in honors class did not create any significant difference.
As before, we conducted similar analysis for the three degree programs. Survey responses of students in each degree program and outcomes of each Chi-square test are presented in Table 6.
Responses of Students on Participation in Extracurricular Activities by Degree Programs and Outcome of Chi-Square Analysis.
p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.
While being in honors class did not create any difference when considering memberships in student organizations, overall, there were difference among degree programs. For Business and Economics programs, being in honors class made significant difference in memberships to on campus student organization job, χ2(1, N = 1,090) = 3.377, p = .066, while the same is true in Education programs for memberships to off campus student organization, χ2(1, N = 1,197) = 4.65, p = .031. However, for participation in social responsibility projects, being in honors class made significant difference for Education programs, χ2(1, N = 1,197) = 9.05, p = .0026, while this difference is slightly less significant for Business and Economics programs, χ2(1, N = 1,090) = 2.91, p = .087, and Engineering programs, χ2(1, N = 693) = 3.61, p = .057.
However, the results for each degree program were consistent with the results for all students when considering participation rates in internships and paid jobs. For internships being in honors class made significant difference for all three degree programs, for Business and Economics programs, χ2(1, N = 1,090) = 48.9, p < .001, for Engineering programs, χ2(1, N = 693) = 26.5, p < .001, and for Education programs, χ2(1, N = 1,197) = 13.1, p < .001, while for paid jobs, being in honors class did not make any difference for the three degree programs.
While results for degree programs were consistent with the results for all students for internships and paid jobs, the same may not be true when considering volunteering and teaching assistantships. When considering volunteering, although class (honors or nonhonors) students are in did not make any difference when we consider all students, it makes significant difference for Business and Economics programs, χ2(1, N = 1,090) = 4.35, p = .037, and for Engineering programs, χ2(1, N = 1,197) = 18.2, p < .001. Similarly, when considering working as a teaching assistant, although the class students are in makes somehow significant difference when we consider all students, similar result is obtained only for Business and Economics programs, χ2(1, N = 1,090) = 3.39, p = .065. For Engineering and Education programs, the class students are in did not make any difference.
Discussion
In this section, we will interpret our findings in the previous section based on academic performance, future academic goals and participation in extracurricular activities.
Academic Performance
The main criteria for measuring the difference in academic performance of honors and nonhonors students were third-year cumulative GPA. However, we included CSAT results and first-year GPA to understand the difference between the two groups prior to the honors programs. As shown in Tables 1 and 2, honors students had higher first-year GPA and third-year cumulative GPA than nonhonors students. Moreover, the discrepancy in GPA gets larger as they progress in the program. This is quite surprising as the coursework of honors classes tend to be more advanced than that of nonhonors. Even when we look at degree programs separately, we observed that honors students performed even better as they progress in the program, especially in Education program. This may be due to the high self-determination and high self-motivation of honors students.
One of the possible reasons for this difference in GPA of honors and nonhonors students may be the class size, as there are approximately 6 times fewer honors students than nonhonors students. Another reason for the difference between two groups, which is increasing over years, may be the result of good self-determination and high self-motivation of honors students (Marsh et al., 2005; Rinn, 2007). Learning environment is also an important factor, as honors students are surrounded by highly enthusiastic motivated students, which creates competitive environment and affects the overall GPA of the students (Astin, 1993; Vermeulen & Schmidt, 2008).
Future Academic Goals
As we surveyed current students, the only measure we could assess was the number of honors students planning to continue their academic study compared with the number of nonhonors students. The results showed that being in honors class has an effect on the desire of the students to continue their education. Moreover, we observed the same result when we looked at the degree programs separately. The fact that honors programs motivate students to continue their education is another success of these programs.
Extracurricular Activities
Finally, we considered participation in extracurricular activities. Since this was one of the purposes of launching honors programs in Azerbaijan, we tried to address this issue in detail. We considered several activities including membership in student organizations (both in the university and outside of the university), participation in social responsibility projects, work as a teaching assistant at the university, work as a volunteer on-campus or outside of university, internships, and paid job experiences.
Membership in student organizations started to get popular in universities in Azerbaijan starting from 2004 to 2005. Even employers started valuing membership in such organizations while recruiting graduates. The same is true about social responsibility projects and employers valuing such activities during the recruitment process. In that sense, increasing the participation rate in student organizations and continuous participation in social responsibility projects is an important issue for universities as it affects future success of students. When considering all students, although the difference in membership rates between honors and nonhonors students did not differ much for both on-campus and off-campus student organizations, it did for specific degree programs. For Business and Economics students, the difference is significant for membership rates in on campus student organizations, while for Education programs it is for off campus student organizations. However, when considering participation rates in social responsibility projects, the difference between the two groups is not only significant when we consider all students, but also when we make the comparison for all three degree programs. However, when looking at student organizations, honors programs did not bring much of a difference overall, there are small differences in some programs. One reason for that might be that all students (honors and nonhonors) understand the value of such student organizations and try to become members in some of them.
When we look at paid jobs, our result was not so surprising, as working in a part-time job was very common in universities in Azerbaijan since the late 1990s. Students were working off campus starting from their second year of studies. Some were even switching to distance learning to be able to work. Therefore, it is natural that there is not much difference between honors and nonhonors students in this aspect. However, volunteer work was not a popular choice for students. In that sense, although the launch of honors programs did not appear to motivate students to do volunteer work. However, for some degree programs such as Engineering and Education, this goal was achieved. The results for internships were surprising though. It is well known that employers value graduates with some experience. In that sense having experience even as an intern is really important to any student. Moreover, some degree programs have internships as a mandatory part of their curriculum. Despite these two points, the participation rate of honors students is significantly higher than that of nonhonors students. One explanation for that may be the fact that successful students are the ones that end up in honors programs and are usually the ones selected for internships by the employers.
The overall results suggested that honors students are more involved in some of the extracurricular activities compared with non-honors students, while for other activities similar dominance of honors students is observed for some, but not all, degree programs. In that sense, one can say that some short-term positive results for honors programs are achieved.
Limitations
To our knowledge, this is the first study that provides insights into the success of honors programs in Azerbaijan through comparison of honors and nonhonors students on different criteria. However, our study is not without limitations. First, is the access to the graduates of honors and nonhonors programs as it would be ideal to compare academic performance of the students at graduation and their postgraduation achievements. Unfortunately, even universities do not have much access to the graduates of the programs.
Another limitation is that our sample only included students who successfully made it to their fourth year of studies. Students who dropped out of the program both in honors and nonhonors groups were not captured in our study. Also, some students who used to be in honors class and switched back to nonhonors were also not captured in our studies. Any future studies may take this into account while sampling the students.
One other limitation of this study is that when we compared academic success of honors and nonhonors students, we did not consider in detail initial difference between the two groups. Ideally, one should compare students from the two groups that are similar initially (prior to honors programs). Moreover, in our analysis on different degree programs, we realized that by considering only these three degree programs, we excluded some of the respondents from this analysis. However, including those degree programs would have made the analysis very tedious.
A more important limitation is that we used self-reported data. A possible problem with this method is that students may misreport some of the information, especially on academic performance or on questions such as future plans or extracurricular activities by responding in a socially desirable way (Holden, 2007). Although, before every survey we encouraged students to provide truthful information and guaranteed anonymity of the surveys, it is still possible that students may misreport some of the information.
Conclusion
Honors programs are a new initiative in Azerbaijan, which was launched in several universities in certain degree programs. The purpose of launching honors programs in Azerbaijan was not only to introduce an advanced academic program but also to change the culture in the universities and make students more socially active and, most importantly, responsible citizens. Since the launch of the program, no assessment of it has been made. In the current study, we try to address this issue. In this paper, we assess honors programs through comparison between honors and nonhonors students in respective universities by their (a) academic performance, (b) future academic goals, and (c) participation in extracurricular activities. We showed that when we consider academic performance, despite a heavy course load, honors students clearly outperform nonhonors students. We also found that more honors than nonhonors students had a desire to continue their education and apply for graduate programs. Finally, when we compared the participation rates in extracurricular activities, we found that being in honors class positively affects participation in social responsibility projects, working as an intern, or as teaching assistant. However, although being in honors class did not create significant difference in participation rates of the two groups for membership in student organizations, volunteering, and working in paid jobs, for certain degree programs this difference becomes significant. To sum up, based on our comparison, honors students perform better than nonhonors students not only academically but also with active participation in extracurricular activities, which in turn shows that this program is going in the right direction.
Footnotes
Appendix (Survey)
Survey Questions (To simplify the survey for respondents, we customized it for each university: for different universities, we have list of corresponding degree programs). The current survey is the one conducted in Baku State University.
This survey is designed to get a better understanding of the SABAH (Honors) Student Experience in eight universities. This is an anonymous survey; no answer to any of the questions in this survey discloses your identity. Thank you very much for taking your time to complete this survey. Your time and dedication are highly appreciated.
□Biology Teacher □Chemistry Teacher
□Computer Science □Geography Teacher
□History Teacher □Law
□Physics teacher □Psychology
□51–60 □61–70 □71–80 □81–90 □91–100
□51–60 □61–70 □71–80 □81–90 □91–100
□101–200 □201–300 □301–400 □401–500 □501–600 □601–700
□No. □Yes
An active member of any student/youth organization inside university? □Yes □No
An active member of any student/youth organization outside university? □Yes □No
Involved in any social responsibility events? □Yes □No
Working as a teaching assistant? □Yes □No
Volunteering to help the staff in university? □Yes □No
Employed as an intern? □Yes □No
Employed in a paid job? □Yes □No
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Institute of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan. In addition, the authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Financial support was provided by the Institute of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
