Via U News: Ivy League school no longer accepts Advanced Placement credits. Will this be a trend? — They tried to rationalize it from an education standpoint, but that is a joke. The AP tests are standardized, which would mean that it wouldn’t matter what high school someone went to. They either knew the material or they didn’t. And the college pretends that they have something special to offer in basic classes like history, English, etc. that no one else has access to. Sure.
This is about money: They want you to pay $50,000 per year to take basic courses, which is ridiculous.
I highly encourage people to take dual-credit classes at their local community college. The community colleges cost a fraction of the state schools, and if you are a high school student they cost almost nothing. If you home school you can graduate high school with almost a year’s worth of credits.
The good news is that the college model is starting to crack. It simply can’t stand another 10-20 years of cost increases that are multiples of inflation. It is a bad move that they are taking away AP credits, but good news that they may drive people to more cost-effective solutions.
Eternity Matters 
Good news, IMHO.
APs are not what they were even ten years ago. Back then, even the top-notch students only took one or two a year – the classes were intense. A “five” on the exam meant that you could probably get an A in the same class at almost any college in the nation.
Since then, schools have renamed their classes “AP” and shuttled the students into the exams. The College Board has loosened their grading standards, so that far more kids are getting fives on the test than they had in previous years – despite the fact that the students are, on the average, putting in much less time per class and have less preparation for each class.
In my high school, for example, AP physics was taken after honours physics; it was the second, not the first, physics class students took. Ditto AP chem. Now, most high schools label the first physics class “AP”, don’t even have a real college-level physics class, and then brag about all the AP classes their kids take.
Like a lot of other things, AP has been inflated into uselessness.
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And now…they have APs in every kind of subject while less and less college are accepting them as actually fulfilling prerequisites…sigh.
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I think you are correct. My son is teaching an AP history class. He loves it because the students want to be there. But the standards have definitely been lowered.
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I remember going to college and not all the AP tests was worth college credits. I agree, it seems like one of their rational is to ensure you take some of the GEs for tuitition reason and personally I also think to ensure classes that has agendas usually in the humanities will thus be taken by students and thus justify the place for radical professors
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It always irritated me that I had to take classes that had nothing to do with my major. All it was is a money grab. If I am an engineer I should not have to take a liberal arts class. I’m not there to be well-rounded, I’m there to get a degree in the field of my choice.
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I’m with you, Jeff. I really hated my Bachelor’s classes. Most of them were filler, doing nothing to actually teach me anything. On the other hand, my Master’s courses were designed for one thing; to get an advanced degree in engineering. I enjoyed those classes and did well in them.
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I remember going to college… but I don’t remember ever hearing of an AP class. 🙂
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My husband teaches AP Calc. AB and BC. I taught AP US History. And you are right. Kids get put into the course who can’t do the work, because everyone deserves a chance. These are advanced courses. If you can’t handle it, don’t take it. If you don’t want to read 30 pages a night in history, don’t take it. The school pushes them into it to build their transcripts for college applications. It’s all a game for the College Board and colleges to make more money. When are we, they, going to wake up and realize that we have to teach kids how to think, not just pass a test and pay for it? Lots of problems!
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