High Cost of Testing

The Advanced Placement program is developing too rapidly for its own good, the latest reports of its founders indicate. Last year 3,000 people took the tests; this year 17,000 are expected to register. The Educational Testing Service, which runs the project, expects to lose $100,000 on the A.P. program this year and even more in the future.

For the moment, ETS is perfectly capable of absorbing the loss with profits from its regular College Boards, but as the Advanced Placement program grows in size, such support will become financially impossible. The money must come from some other source; either students or schools or colleges must take over the economic burden.

The first move in this direction was to increase the cost from ten dollars flat fee for an unlimited number of tests to five dollars registration fee and eight dollars for each test. The new rate takes effect this year, but the tests already cost between thirty and fifty dollars apiece to administer and grade.

To charge the full cost of the tests to students would seriously damage the program; the average student may pay thirty dollars for his tests under the present program; a charge of a hundred would simply prevent many of them from taking any tests. Because the program is of immense benefit to the colleges, both by reducing pressure on introductory courses and by giving schools a real incentive to offer advanced courses, it seems reasonable that the colleges should pay at least part of the costs.

It would be unwise, however, to transfer operational duties to the college. One of the great attractions of the present program is that it gives a standard, both of grading and of content, which shifts duties from college departments to the central testing organization. The avoidance of grading has been a major reason for departmental acceptance of the A.P. program.

It is vital that the A.P. program should be continued; its expansion is a healthy contribution to inspiring high academic ideals in the schools, and it helps to make the college curriculum challenging and interesting to well prepared students. Colleges and schools may find that sacrifices are necesary in order to make their contribution to the program, although as Advanced Placement is presently divided among colleges, the richest would make the largest--yet comparatively modest--contributions. They should recognize, however, that whether or not a student derives monetary benefit from the tests by his course exemptions, he is usually in no position to pay their full cost. To attempt to force him to do so would only reduce the scope of a program vital to both schools and colleges.