Press Coverage for the Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Theta Kappa,
National Honor Society Alliance

Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Theta Kappa, and the National Honor Society for high schools announced the Alliance for Educational Excellence, the first collaborative program in the history of honor societies on Wednesday in Washington, DC. Find out more about The Alliance for Excellence in Education. For more information, please contact Rod Risley, 601.984.3520.

Press coverage is below:

Honor Societies align over common goals
(From USA Today, Thursday, April 26, Life Section, page 7d)

Responding to an educational marketplace under increasing pressure to provide technical job training, honor societies at three levels are linking up to promote general, liberal arts education. Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Theta Kappa, representing four- and two-year colleges, along with the high-school-based National Honor Society, announced The Alliance for Excellence in Education Wednesday. Initiatives include expanding Phi Theta Kappa's interdisciplinary honors study topic to the National Honor Society, and weeklong Summer Teacher Institutes for high school and community college teachers led by Phi Beta Kappa faculty.

Three Honor Societies Team Up to Promote a Liberal-Arts Education to Students
(From Chronicle for Higher Education, Thursday, April 26)
By Jennifer Yachnin

Washington

The Phi Beta Kappa Society announced on Wednesday a new effort to encourage community-college and high-school students to pursue a liberal-arts education. The program, a collaboration with two other honor societies, is designed to combat what Phi Beta Kappa officials view as a careerist approach to higher education.

Phi Theta Kappa, the honor society for community colleges, and the National Honor Society, for high-school students, will be partners with Phi Beta Kappa in the Alliance for Educational Excellence.

Officials of the three groups said the alliance had been created to counter the increasing numbers of students who elect to enter career-training programs, often in technological fields, rather than pursue undergraduate degrees in the liberal arts.

"We are concerned that education, because of the technology needs of this nation, is channeling more and more of our brightest students into the narrow field of technology," said Douglas Foard, Phi Beta Kappa's executive secretary.

Alliance activities will include a series of seminars broadcast via satellite to community colleges and universities, and also available to high-school students and guidance counselors. The seminars will relate to the Honors Study Program sponsored by Phi Theta Kappa. Other alliance programs will include a summer institute for high-school and community-college faculty members, and involvement in the National Honor Society's annual conference.

"We're here to raise the flag and say workforce training is very important, [but] at the same time, we don't want liberal-arts education to be seen as less valuable," said Rod Risley, Phi Theta Kappa's executive director.

The program will be the first in which Phi Beta Kappa will focus on secondary-school and community-college students.

For more information, please contact Rod Risley, 601.984.3520.

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