College is about getting a good education, not just meeting minimum standards. Taking Honors courses is to educate YOU, not just prepare you for a job. Enrichment, mental challenges and all sorts of reasons for “unneeded” courses. Yes, our son could have finished his math degree in three years but then he would not have been prepared for grad school (could have gotten into many, just not the top 20 in that brutally competitive field) nor would he have taken the grad level courses for the honors degree. In addition, he took the honors sequence and other physics courses along with the honors math sequence before making his decisions. Plus extras in some non science departments beyond breadth requirements. Oh, yeah, add in those AP credits. He continues to read a lot- wide range- and teach himself CS languages et al.
This the best time of your life to indulge in learning so much with experts in their fields. An extra semester/year spent now may mean a much richer lifer for decades. It may mean getting a better engineering job or an easier transition to the job with a solid foundation. It may not make a difference also.
I do not know of anyone decades later who wished they had skipped the extra college time to enter the workforce earlier. There will of course be those who realize they could have spent far less and had far less debt based on college choice. Is going to high priced U versus a more affordable U worth a lot of debt? No. Getting a Harvard education means giving up getting another U’s education. No school is perfect. It is up to the student to utilize what is offered- a top tier student at a less elite school gains more than an average student at any of the tippy top schools I am sure. Remember- those professors and textbook authors most often had much more humble credentials than the schools they teach at or where their material is used.
My honors program has overall been a positive for me. I have enjoyed my time with a research group and the perks that came with the honors designation. Some of my honors classes were stimulating, but others were very boring. Not everyone’s experience is the same.
And I’ve only got merit scholarships for four years. If I somehow didn’t graduate this semester and had to take extra time, that would be over $15,000 per year that would suddenly be on my family’s shoulders. I would not consider that worth it, even if that extra year let me take classes I was interested in while I finished up my major requirements.
All of us have so much knowledge that is useless for our careers. Every physician from the US majored in something, the vast majority something other than medical sciences (a degree some colleges will give when a student finishes with first year medical school instead of four years doing a complete major). Did many of my honors chemistry major courses help in medical school? No. But I learned so much more in depth than those who just took the premed requirements. People can have more than one passion and those can be diverse.
@Publisher she was able to get some credits from a summer study abroad program and her university also has a “winter term” (an extended Christmas break) in which she was able to do either a 3 or 4 credit online class from home each winter break.
My daughter is graduating in 4 years/8 semesters in engineering. No summers, no AP credits from high school, no online courses or January terms. 131 credits in 8 semesters. That’s 16-17 credits per semester. This final semester I know she has a Spanish class and a tennis class, 2 classes in her major, plus her senior project. It’s also the first semester she’s worked during the school year (10 hours a week, can be done from home), and she plays a spring sport so is putting in 30 hours per week for that. I just talked to her and she was at the grocery store buying supplies to make a Chinese New Year dinner for her friends.
My nephew’s done just about the same at another school. He did take a summer course because he got a D in Calc 1 so had to repeat that, and took Calc 2 in the summer to stay on sequence.