At the height of midterms, I'm making a suggestion that is not likely to elicit warm feelings from my peers: you may need to beef up your course load.
Advanced Placement (AP) courses have become a staple of the competitive high school experience — the number of students taking these courses reached 1.6 million in 2009, reflecting a leap of almost 50 percent in the past decade.
What these numbers don't show, however, is the socioeconomic, racial and regional inequality that marks the access to these classes. The College Board reports that in 2009, only 34 percent of public schools in the nation offered AP or IB courses in the "four core subject areas." In Illinois, while the majority of high schools in the Chicago area offer some AP classes, less than half past the reaches of suburbia have the option. In 2010, only 3.9 percent of those who passed AP tests were black.
It is overly utopian to envision an education system in which students' chances of success reflect only their work ethic and innate intelligence. Giving credit for courses that are much more readily available to the affluent, however, gives intensely unequal footing based on factors largely out of students' control.
The Tufts administration's 2009 switch to limit the number of AP credits wasn't received glowingly. The university should be commended for moving in the right direction, and should consider further restricting their role.
Giving credit for AP scores is intended to reward students who challenged themselves in high school. It is indisputable that there are rigorous AP courses. However, doubts remain as to whether they are truly equivalent to college curriculum. In a national study conducted by Harvard, having passed an AP exam barely translated into better grades in introductory courses in that subject. A 2004 study of the University of California system demonstrated a very weak relationship between the number of AP courses taken in high school and college performance.
While many argue acknowledging high school scores does not disadvantage those who lacked the opportunity, receiving credit places students on different paths for the entirety of their college career. Under the current policy, Liberal Arts and Science students can receive up to five credits. Those without AP access are thus left grappling to compete with peers who have the luxury of spending much more time on those courses.
I share the general frustration with the bureaucracy of academia, the rigidity of major requirements and difficulty in transferring credits. In subjects with a clear hierarchy of material, like foreign language and some math classes, it makes sense to have entrance placement exams to avoid redundancy. These should not, however, be counted toward graduation.
A common argument for giving credit for AP scores is that it allows students to graduate in fewer years, actually helping economically disadvantaged students. However, Tufts has stringent residency requirements that make graduating more than a semester early quite difficult. Furthermore, the students who can least afford Tufts tuition are generally those very same students who lack access to AP classes.
The education community has made admirable strides toward increasing availability to AP courses. The College Board helps make the exams free for students who qualify for reduced lunch, and in New York minority enrollment in AP courses has jumped considerably. But disparities still run deep — less than 4 percent of high school graduates in Louisiana and Mississippi passed an AP exam last year — and affluent preference runs rampant. Until we can ensure that this system reflects the values of our university and the rigor of our curriculum, we should halt awarding credit for pre−college coursework.
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Amanda Johnson is a senior majoring in international relations. She can be reached at Amanda.Johnson@tufts.edu.
