The College Board Monopoly

       We've talked about the gas and electric monopoly, or the cable provider monopoly, even the public transport single-winner.  However, as high school seniors, too often do we ignore the glaring atrocity that stares back at us from our half-lit laptop screens two hours before the first AP test of the season: the College Board homepage.  Ew.

       Since our freshman year at Los Altos, excepting those of you lovely people who may have repeated/skipped a year, College Board has ramped up the prices of both their AP tests and their SAT options (with/without essay) by a significant margin.  We, or perhaps I should specify my friends and I, spend year after year complaining about the utility of AP credit in further academic pursuits, as well as the effectiveness of colleges valuing students based on their SAT scores.  Even some universities nationwide have reached similar conclusions: standardized testing, at least as offered to high schoolers by the College Board, is simply an insufficient indicator of undergraduate success.  Harvard and the University of Chicago are two of many such schools that no longer require freshman applicants to report their SAT scores.  So then why the hell (that was solely for the purpose of academic discussion) do we continue to service them?

        This article is not meant to be a call to action.  It is an observation I am making and have chosen to share with you, especially given the marginal utility of the grade aspect.  Yet I will note that it is important for us to reflect on the problematic nature of our post-secondary education institutions.  As many colleges rid themselves of archaic I.Q. calculators formerly used to assess potential students for value, the Board has begun increasing prices at a very rapid rate in order to maintain the financial success that is their monopoly.  Since AP tests still appeal to students who crave and can attain college credit for a 3/4/5 score, they are now priced at $105 apiece (+$35 per as a late fee if you chose to sign up for tests after hearing back from the earliest of colleges).  One SAT costs up to $75 if you set yourself up to have the best chance at getting into universities, which means purchasing the essay portion (I have not included the late fee).  To be fair, the College Board only truly has a monopoly on AP tests, for the ACT (American College Testing) offers an alternative to the SAT at a comparable price.  The Board simply has an oligopoly when it comes to the SAT/ACT thing.  But for AP tests, why them?

        I guess the simple answer is that this decision is not completely up to students.  Until most universities/colleges/further educational opportunity providers can rely on some coeexisting generic (or perhaps even nongeneric, I'll give benefit of the doubt) metric to measure a student's college-level understanding of material, they are going to only accept AP scores.  Some schools no longer even take those anymore in an attempt to limit the Board's monopoly.  Yet, that also in turn hurts students looking to maximize their spending and who are willing to take Advanced Placement classes.  Thus, if this is a fight that we want to fight, the Fight For Fair College Stuff, it's going to have to start soon.