Once upon a time, such as when I entered college in 1962, it was possible—correction: it was relatively easy—to graduate in three years with the help of Advanced Placement scores that you submitted upon arrival.
The policy (at Harvard) back then was: If you had scored at least 3 on at least 3 AP exams, you could matriculate as a sophomore. It was optional—and there were solid arguments in both directions—but dozens of otherwise-freshmen availed themselves of the opportunity, including my roommate and me. (As best I can recall, I submitted two 3’s and two 4’s. Solid student though I had been in high school, I scored no 5’s.)
AP was still new and small back then—its first courses had launched in 1955—and the International Baccalaureate (IB) program wouldn’t reach American shores until 1971, so relatively modest numbers of students enjoyed this option, but what a great opportunity it offered: not just saving a year’s tuition and getting a faster launch into adulthood (or graduate school or whatever), but also skipping a bunch of freshman-level courses that, for those who managed AP during high school, would mostly have repeated stuff we’d already learned.
But of course it meant the college received just 75 percent of the tuition dollars it would garner from a four-year student, not to mention room-and-board, dorm occupancy, health service fees, etc. And as AP (and IB) widened their offerings across the land while colleges and universities ballooned their budgets and grew ever more dependent on “enrollment management,” that revenue loss would prove nearly fatal to the three-year BA option.[1]
This sorry saga is recounted and ably documented in a useful study by Paul Weinstein Jr. of the Progressive Policy Institute, which updates—and deepens the gloomy findings of—a 2016 PPI analysis of college policies then in place regarding Advanced Placement.
Today’s bottom line, writes Weinstein, “is both unmistakable and outrageous: The data reveals that many institutions of higher education are purposefully limiting the use of AP and IB credit towards a degree (or banning it for credit completely). This results in students (on average) having to pay more in tuition and fees.”
He explains three main strategies by which colleges do this: disallowing college credit altogether for AP and IB; limiting the number of subjects eligible for such credits; and raising the minimum scores on AP and IB exams that must be achieved to qualify for credits, for placement into upper-level courses, etc.
Such placements, when available, still benefit students by skipping them over those introductory classes that often take place in large lecture halls while repeating material covered in advanced high school courses. They do not, however, eat into the tuition that students (and families, Pell grants, loans, etc.) must pay into college coffers.
Dartmouth’s admissions website briskly summarizes this strategy: “Dartmouth will grant credit on entrance for AP or IB examinations. In many subject areas, these courses will be used for exemption and placement. Credit on entrance appears on the Dartmouth transcript, but it does not count towards the thirty-five credits required to graduate.”
But it’s not just Dartmouth. In a related column for Forbes, Weinstein summarized key findings from his review of current policies at 150 top institutions:
Ten schools offer zero credit for AP and/or IB work, no matter how high students scored on their work. These include some of the most elite higher education institutions in the country:
1. Dartmouth College
2. Brown College (Accepts IB but not AP)
3. California Institute of Technology
4. Williams College
5. Amherst College
6. Harvey Mudd College
7. Colby College
8. United States Military Academy
9. Yeshiva University (Accepts AP but not IB)
10. Soka University
Interestingly, some colleges and universities from the list above will exempt students from introductory classes—providing some benefit to the student but with no loss of tuition revenue for the school.
More than half of the 150 schools surveyed cap the total amount of credit students can apply to their degree, in some cases at levels just below the number needed to finish a semester or two early. Seventy-five don’t accept scores in all subject areas, and almost half have hiked the minimum score to earn credit.
Note, of course, that Weinstein confined his analysis to 150 elite institutions, so it can’t be extrapolated to American higher education as a whole. (The College Board offers a “tool” by which one can learn more about AP-generated college credit—or not—at many institutions, and individual university websites almost always include an explanation of what credit may be generated by AP and, sometimes, IB scores. This information often appears in the section treating “transfer” credit.)
Note, too, that Weinstein’s list of worst offenders consists almost entirely of private institutions, because the College Board’s dogged lobbyists have induced most states to require their public universities to offer credit to students scoring high enough on AP tests. (The specifics vary widely, but here’s Ohio’s policy.)
I admit to two-mindedness when it comes to the minimum AP score that’s needed for college credit. The College Board has long insisted that scores of 3 (or better) should qualify but they’ve also made it easier to reach that benchmark and have added dozens of courses that are reputed to be easier than, say, calculus, physics, and European history. Yet college is also getting easier as admission to many campuses is wide open, as grade inflation is rampant, and as what once were deemed “remedial” courses now count for degree credit. So it’s a little hypocritical to raise the threshold for AP and IB scores at the same time. And it’s more than a little hypocritical to do that while expanding “dual credit” offerings that generally have lower standards and no external quality control but that ordinarily yield the same revenues to participating colleges as they receive (whether from tuition or state subsidies) from conventional full-time students.
Bottom line: At a time when American colleges and universities should be striving to curb their own costs while easing the financial burden on students and widening opportunities to earn degrees without loss of rigor, their handling of AP and IB results is both bad in and of itself and bad for high schools, where those challenging courses typically represent the apex of what’s academically possible and where the chief incentive for doing all the hard work that they entail is to get a head start on college.
[1] Partly in response to Europe’s “Bologna Process,” plus the mounting cost of college, there’s been a modest movement in American higher education to institute three-year bachelor’s degrees, although often those require students to attend year-round and sometimes to accumulate as many credits as the four-year kind require.
