AP Money-Making

The AP program actually began during the Cold War, when Americans were afraid that high school students were not being educated sufficiently in schools to be ready for the next stages of their education. During this era, paranoia about becoming inferior to the Soviet Union was widespread, and Americans wanted to be able to have faith in the next generation to ensure that the United States would be stronger than the Soviet Union. So, in 1951, the Ford Foundation established the Fund for the Advancement of Education (FAE), which determined that many of the students who had transitioned from some of the most prestigious private high schools to some of the most prestigious colleges were advanced in their studies. This discovery led to the idea that high schoolers ought to be able to move into an “advanced placement” college curriculum based on their success in the exams which would come to be known as APs.

As the FAE also worked on creating standard curricula for the college prep courses offered by high schools, they also continued to work on the AP program. Ellen McCammon of PrepScholar provides, “Both studies together led to a pilot program with 27 schools administering the first AP tests in 1954. After the strong performance of the test-takers as compared to college freshman who had taken introductory university coursework, ten AP exams were rolled out nationally in 1956: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English Composition, Literature, French, German, Spanish, and Latin.” At the beginning of the AP program, all of the exams were less than three hours. The AP exams were scored out of five from the start and would continue to be scored on the same scale, which is still used today. Evidently, the exams were deemed successful because the program has continued to expand, and many high school students are currently taking AP exams.

One year after the first AP tests were administered, the responsibility of managing the program was given to the College Board. The AP program has led to many students being able to take more advanced courses and learn more about what is now a wide variety of subjects. However, it could be argued that the College Board is not motivated by the same Cold War era goal of a better-educated generation of high school students anymore.

It used to only cost $10 for students to take their AP exams. Today, each AP exam costs $94 in the United States. (The AP program has also spread to other countries as well, and outside of the United States, each AP exam costs $124.) And, if you take an alternate AP exam during the late-testing period, you may be charged an extra $45 fee per test. According to data from the College Board, almost 5 million AP exams were taken in 2017 (so, if the number of exams reported to have been taken last year is multiplied by the $93 each exam cost, it comes out to $461,087,583…). And, in case students want to give the College Board even more money for the AP exam, the organization also sells various prep guides and packages for students ranging from $10 to $96. Not to mention, there is an additional fee each time a student has the College Board actually send a test score to a college.

The College Board is technically a “not-for-profit organization”; yet, Elena Weissmann of the New Brunswick Patch provides that the organization (which is responsible for the SAT, PSAT, and subject tests, as well as the AP exams) brings in a $200,000,000 revenue and a $62,000,000 profit and describes the College Board as a “company that capitalizes off of students’ anxieties.” Weissmann also states, “Its newly chosen President, David Coleman, will earn a base salary of $550,000, with a total compensation of nearly $750,000. Additionally, College Board's 23 executives make an average of $355,271 per year.” To put that in perspective, the national average salary of a high school teacher is $48,000, and teachers are the ones actually teaching the material, on students’ knowledge of which the College Board capitalizes. Overall, if there was an AP exam on exploiting the education system, the College Board would get a 5.

Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/287245282462260537/

Sources:
https://blog.prepscholar.com/history-of-ap-classes-exams

https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/takingtheexam/exam-fees

https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/research/2017/Program-Summary-Report-2017.pdf

https://store.collegeboard.org/sto/filterSearchCat.asp

https://www.collegeboard.org/about

https://patch.com/new-jersey/newbrunswick/bp--the-college-board-a-very-profitable-nonprofit

https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=High_School_Teacher/Salary