College Board has been broadening its program for decades, making taking AP classes the norm at schools across the U.S. AP classes are objectively known to improve success in college, and make student transcripts look rigorous for top colleges. In addition to these academic advantages, they can also save college students thousands of dollars by enabling them to avoid taking and paying for expensive college classes. 

So who needs AP credit the most? Low-income students, First-gen students. But that isn’t who College Board is reaching, for one big reason, the unaffordability of the fees. 

If you take multiple AP exams, maybe one for each core class, that’s wracking up several hundred dollars. With siblings, that can rack up to several thousand dollars. That’s just unattainable for many families. To pay the fees, many low-income students have to get a job, and end up having to pick between gaining college credit and high scores on AP exams and their hobbies and sports. It’s a no-win tradeoff because both extracurriculars and high AP scores are essential for high school students to be strong candidates for top colleges and universities. 

What’s even worse, low-income and first-gen students are the ones who need to save money for college the most, with most colleges costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, which can be more than triple what a low-income family makes in a year. College Board clearly is aware of this issue because during its expansion process, it pitched College Board programs to low-income schools and to their students, marketing AP exams as an economic equalizer for college. 

But they haven’t executed on that promise, demanding about $100 dollars. Even then if low-income students are able to gather up the money for their exams, over half of them would score too low for college credit.

The frustrating thing is College Board reports earning millions of dollars from government funding. But even after government funding, they still charge hundreds of dollars for their exams towards families. They have over a billion dollars in assets. The executive director of the College Board alone takes a grand total of over $2 million per year. Overall, College Board is a corporate organization that is centered more on profit than it is around the benefit of students, especially low-income students.

Some people might argue there are scholarships available and grants. But there’s always a limit of scholarships, and in many cases, it relies heavily on other parents of the school who are already paying hundreds of dollars for their own kid’s exams. Applying to scholarships is competitive and can often be lengthy, adding an even greater unfair burden of time and effort on low-income families. Furthermore, in many schools, students have to go speak with their AP coordinator or teacher, admitting they are low-income, which can be extremely humiliating for many students.

Overall, scholarships and grants as a solution to this problem subconsciously count on the fact that a limited number of low-income students will apply because there are simply not enough scholarships for AP classes full of low-income students. It excludes fully capable low-income students from rigorous classes that they deserve and need.

So what is the solution to this? Government funding from the state education agencies. AP Classes need to be recognized as a major component of secondary education and need to be treated as such, including the exams. Making students pay for exams, goes completely against the concept of public education, and is failing too many students.

More coverage of the affordability of college

Two-year colleges offer many pluses

‘We regret to inform you...’

SAT, ACT offer unfair advantages to privileged students

Free our college