For the majority of students at Lambert High School, Advanced Placement (AP) classes are an integral part of their academic journey. These classes are at a college level difficulty, and taking the AP exam allows students to earn college credits. With the deadline for paying for AP exams coming up on October 24, students have many questions and criticisms regarding this monetary exchange. While the AP exam fee may seem costly, the funds it generates have a multitude of uses and help create a higher quality AP experience.
In order to take the AP exam, students are required to pay a $25 one-time administration fee and $99 for each exam taken. The only way to exempt the cost is by completing the STEM waiver that’s offered through state funding. The waiver allows students to take one exam for a course that falls under the STEM category for free. While the administration fee goes towards funding for Lambert, the money for the exams goes directly to Collegeboard. For the most part, what the money goes toward isn’t disclosed, but it is expected that it goes towards procedures for the AP exam.
“It’s [AP exam costs] a lot of things like shipping and handling,” Lambert’s Assistant Administrator Drew Candela noted. “They have to pay their workers to process the exam and a lot of the logistics that go into having their tech support that fixes things when there’s massive network outages.”
With AP exams transitioning from paper to online format, much of the money is expected to go towards supporting the exam technology.
On the school’s side, the administration fee is invested in various different areas, all pertaining to improving the AP program. For example, the funds have been used to pay for exam materials, such as papers, pencils and fold-out tables to seat hundreds of students in both gyms. The proctors’ salary and Lambert’s mental health program Louie’s Lounge, which was set up last year to help with anxiety and stress surrounding the AP exam and finals, are also funded through money from the AP exams.
“Money generated from AP exams has to be spent on things that improve our AP program,” Candela explained.
The funds from the administration fee also go towards teacher certifications. In order to maintain the quality of the AP program and ensure that all the AP classes are being taught according to how College Board wants, Lambert sends teachers an AP training hosted by College Board. The rough cost of attending this program per teacher is about $1000, so the AP certification process takes up a good amount of Lambert’s AP exam funds.
“When teachers get certified in an AP course, they have to go on a three day professional learning program,” Assistant Principal Jes O’Kelley said. “It’s about eight hours every day and College Board will send teachers to come and teach the teachers who are going to then teach AP classes.”
Despite the various areas AP Exam funding pays for, many students still believe that charging near a hundred dollars per exam is unreasonable on College Board’s part. Since students at Lambert like to challenge themselves by taking many AP’s, the total cost for AP exams rises. Because of the high-level of rigor in AP classes, competitive colleges see the AP exam as a student’s mastery in the class and they award college credits for high scores, which can alleviate some of the college tuition. However, this contradicts the promises of free education through the public school system by pressuring students into paying for high school courses just to get into college. Despite this inconsistency, College Board is still an irreplaceable part of high school education, as there are no other programs that offer college courses directly to the high school.
“At the end of the day, College Board has a monopoly on this,” O’Kelley explained. “There’s not another competitor, so College Board can have great customer service if they want to or terrible customer service if they want to.”
While paying for AP exams can seem like a tedious and expensive task, it reflects the transactional nature of pursuing higher education. College itself is a business, students can get higher paying jobs from attending college, but only after spending money on all the courses required for the degree. From high school to collegiate education, the system becomes a gamble of paying for the right courses to get someone the farthest on their educational journey. With the AP program being an important part of a student’s academic journey, the exam fees are a necessary cost to improve the quality of education at Lambert, and prepare students for the future of their education.
