Edinboro University launches honors college

Edinboro University of Pennsylvania will bump up its quest for the best and brightest next fall with the official launch of an honors college.

The university, one of the 14 schools in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, previously offered an honors program for high-achieving students.

A university spokesman said the honors college will build on that program and offer a common 24-credit honors curriculum including three team-taught, multi-disciplinary seminars on the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

Universities across the country have turned to honors colleges, which typically offer high-achieving students an opportunity to access small higher-level classes and live in an honors dorm. Public universities across the nation have launched similar programs in an effort to compete with selective private schools for top students.

“As scholars within the honors college, our students will be guaranteed a shared academic experience – taking newly created courses that are challenging, engaging and each having a unique focus,” Roger Solberg, Edinboro’s Honors College director, said in a statement.

University officials hope to build on the success of Edinboro’s honors program, which enrolled 125 incoming students last fall. The average high school GPA among that group was 3.92, while the average SAT score was 1210.

Officials said new and transfer students at Edinboro will receive automatic admission consideration to the Honors College this fall if they have earned a combination of 1200 SAT (or 25 ACT) and 3.5 GPA or 1100 SAT (or 22 ACT) and 3.75 GPA.

Edinboro’s honors college is opening as the State System, which has suffered a 20 percent overall decline in enrollment over the last decade, undergoes a major redesign.

Edinboro, located about 20 miles south of Erie, was among the schools hit hardest by enrollment declines. Department of Education records tracked Edinboro’e enrollment dropping 46 percent between 2010 and 2019 as the pool of high school graduates in Pennsylvania declined.