
An education bubble? Data from the explosion of AP tests - robg
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/05/education-bubble-data-from-explosion-of.php
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neovive
I think the increase in AP exams comes down to basic economics. If each test
only cost $86 these days and is the equivalent of 3-4 college credits
(depending on the course), passing just one exam is a great savings to the
student in both money and time. With tuition costs at even local community
colleges ranging from $100-$200 per credit, taking a chance on an AP exam for
$86 is a great deal. Students are likely just piling in as many AP classes as
possible.

~~~
speek
As much as AP courses are cost efficient, they're not good enough. The caliber
of a good freshman introductory course ranges from school from school, but on
the whole they're much better and more interesting than APs.

Then again, my argument only really works for people going to school to learn,
not to specifically get a degree.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
Even if you're going to school for a degree, APs are frequently insufficient
preparation. They're sufficient for "get rid of my liberal arts requirements",
but if you plan on taking a higher level course because you AP'd out of the
prerequisite, you could have problems. A lot of classes in college build on
their prerequisites, and assume you know them cold.

If your only calculus experience is the practice tests out of the AP book,
even if you got a 5, multi-variable will kick your butt. If your only
economics knowledge comes from a Barrons AP review book, you'll be behind in
your banking class.

Passing the test is necessary, but not sufficient, proof that you learned the
material. If your AP test wasn't backed up by a hard class, plan on studying
extra your first semester.

~~~
neovive
Very true. Certain AP classes, such as History, English and other AP courses
that fill in elective credits should be fine for most. However, if you plan on
majoring in a subject area that requires in-depth knowledge of specific
material (e.g. Calculus for CS, Econ or Math majors), you should still be
required to take the intro Calculus course or at least pass a math placement
exam prepared by the college.

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pie
I balked at the idea that "the main determinant of doing well in AP classes is
IQ," which I'm not so sure about, especially when conflated with the idea that
IQ is also a measure of student intelligence. In my experience, AP classes are
focused on test preparation, which I would argue is not so strictly bound to
intelligence at all.

Probably what we're seeing is an expression of the widespread American notion
that every child is special and smarter than the other kids and is bound for
greatness, and that success is to be achieved through excellence in
traditional educational and career channels.

Aspiration is one thing, but many parents are actually trying to force their
children through the educational system to "become the next president" in some
sense. We simply have a deeper well of more diverse test takers in the AP
exams (i.e. more variety in preparedness), thus the trending in scores.

~~~
screwperman
Here's a discussion on reddit on an Indian entrance examination:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/8bxt9/an_indian_underg...](http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/8bxt9/an_indian_undergraduate_entrance_examination/)

The exam is more rigorous and broader in scope than the APs. It also has a far
more punishing "grading curve" (a 1.8% admit rate). The general notion among
Indians seems to be that preparation -- and only preparation -- matters.

While I agree that not every American should aspire to be the next president,
one should put things in a global perspective: it's only fair that water-
deprived kids from Third World countries who spent their childhood cramming
end up taking the jobs of the more fortunate who did not take a single simple
AP exam. In an earlier post on HN, a highly upvoted comment went like "take
every AP exam". That is a good idea, but it hardly ambitious at all, given
that you are in the land of opportunity. Participating in olympiads and
science fairs is far more worthwhile in every way.

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sethg
According to the statistics provided in the article, (a) the number of AP
tests taken per capita is going up, and (b) the proportion of AP test-takers
who get a 4 or 5 is remaining constant. So there are students who took the AP
test and got college credit in 2008 and who, in 1988, wouldn't have even tried
to take the test.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
This is true - more people are getting 4s and 5s. However, AP grades are
complex. It's mostly on a weighted bell curve, so you're grading against the
other people taking the test (and it's also adjusted against previous tests).
So a roughly constant percentage should be getting 4s and 5s.

What we don't know is what accuracy is required to get a 4 or a 5, and how
that has changed year-over-year. I know it fluctuates from test to test, such
that I've got 5s on tests that I got every question right on, and 5s on tests
I know I lost at least a 5th of the possible points on.

What this article neither proves nor disproves is the bigger issue - of the
people getting 4s and 5s, how many are actually prepared to skip an intro-
level college class in the subject?

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jimbokun
He certainly likes pejoratives. 4 uses of "dumb/dummies", 1 "stupid", 1
"losers". Makes it somewhat harder to pay attention to the data and arguments
presented. Is the argument really strengthened by parenthetically adding
"stupid" to clarify "ill-prepared"?

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mattmcknight
The real education bubble is the number people willing to borrow nearly
$200,000 for a BA (or PhD) in Anthropology that exceeds the number of
positions available that require that degree at that price. I read an article
yesterday that mentioned a detective with a PhD in Anthropology. [1] While it
seems to be working for him, I just don't see it as economically efficient. If
we look at the causes of this inefficiency and bubble, we see similar
government incentives and payouts to those that drive up the price of houses
and medical care.

As far as the increase in AP goes, the real push behind that is the lack of
curriculum standards in the US and the unfairness of the GPA system. If you
have a class of students taking the AP exam where none of them get higher than
a two, I would expect that someone in that class would still be getting an
'A'. There's nothing "bubble-like" about AP- it's simply fulfilling a gap in
the educational system.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/05...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/05/09/AR2009050902458.html)

~~~
krschultz
I don't understand why you aren't getting more upvotes for this. AP exams are
no indication of a bubble at all. I took as many AP exams as I thought I could
pass - a bunch of them I didn't even take the class for I just bought a review
book and passed them on my own. If you have a choice between 40-100 hours of
hard studying, $30 for a review book, and $90 for the AP exam vs 4 months of
work and $3,000 in tuiton what rational person would NOT take a bunch of AP
exams?

The thing the article misses is that the number of tests taken is not really
correlated to the number of people taking tests. Maybe 20 years ago people
only took what they were good at, I took a dozen AP exams in subjects I
couldn't care less about becuase then I avoided taking those in college.
Plenty of other people did the same. I am one of the people inflating the
number of AP exams arbitrarily.

That has nothing to do with me thinking a lot of people in college are not
getting their money's worth in their education. The bubble is the cost of
tuition vs the payoff afterwards.

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dxjones
Is the increase in students taking advance placement tests a "bubble" or
"trend"?

The article makes a good argument in favour a bubble.

Others would argue it is a trend, ... since enrolment for bachelors degrees is
up, and there is growth in graduate enrolment too.

It is only a "bubble" if it is unsustainable and going to collapse. Do we
really think there will a sudden and large decrease in college enrolment?
Empty lecture rooms? Idle professors? I doubt it.

It would be ok if fewer students took the AP test. If that's the only place
there's a bubble, ... no big deal.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
This is an education bubble. It's an education bubble because the more people
who go to college, the less valuable a Bachelor's degree is. To get the top
jobs, you need to have gone to a top school, or you need to have a
postgraduate degree. With the value of a Bachelor's degree declining as
tuition rises dramatically, college will soon become "not worth it". At that
point, one of several things will happen:

1) College simply becomes accepted as "mandatory education" in the same way
that high school is now, and a college degree is seen as worth what a high
school diploma is now.

2) More and more people swear off colleges for more useful "trade schools"
that are cheaper than college and better prepare them for work in a specific
sector.

3) We have a great education reorganization, where we push a lot of the
"liberal arts education" burden back on high schools (and tighten diploma
requirements). This restores the value of a college degree while making high
school graduation actually mean something.

I'm not an intellectual elitist. If this increase in AP tests and going to
(and graduating from) college was because people were actually getting
smarter, I'd be thrilled. But it seems to be the case that "more people going
to college" is a result of our culture pushing people into college, which is
actually bad for them. It's getting harder and harder to find a middle class
job that doesn't involve 4+ years of college (and the attendant expenses and
loans). The end result is people need 4 more years of education to get the
same sorts (economically) of jobs people 40-50 years ago could get without
college.

~~~
krschultz
#2 simply will not happen.

The best of the best have no concern for what college costs because of
scholarships. They will never be going anywhere but colleges because there is
no reason to go a cheap school if you can go free to the college of your
choice.

The trade schools are then left picking from who is left, and no matter what
they do their best will not match the colleges bests because of time and raw
talent.

Thus the trade school will never surpass colleges in reputation. They will not
attract that top talent (positive feedback loop!)

People with college degrees have a vested interested in keeping them valuable
and so will always be biased towards the college degree making it even harder
for trade schools.

So with that landscape in front of them, middle of the road students will
logically go to regular college instead of trade schools whenever possible so
that they are not disadvantaged. These people actually get more value out of
their degree than the best of the best. The best of the best would be able to
work their way into jobs regardless of education, but the average person needs
the credentials to boost them up.

The only bubble that could burst are overly expensive private schools. You can
go in-state to a public school for less than $30k a year including all living
expenses. Anything beyond that would be in danger of losing ground to ever
expanding public state schools. I think that will ultimately be the real
solution - cheaper, larger, 4 year public schools and fewer people taking out
loans for $50k a year private liberal arts colleges.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
The best and the brightest (let's say 16%^) are going to go to college because
of scholarships, etc. But as to the other 80% of high school graduates? Right
now, 65-70% of high school graduates are going to college. That means that
49-54% of the college population isn't "the Best and the Brightest", and can't
count on scholarships to anything but lower-tier schools.

While public schools are cheap now, at a tuition increase rate of 6%, those
tuitions are doubling every 12 years. At those rates, the tuition of a child
born today will be 3.2x current tuition.

We've got to do something, because 70% of the country simply won't be able to
afford to send their child to college at those sorts of prices, especially
with the earning power advantage disappearing. As it is, you have to plan
years in advance for college. Doubling the costs is going to make it
impossible for at least some Americans to go to traditional college.

^ - 16% is one or more standard deviations above the mean, which means 1230+
on the old SAT, or 115+ IQ, to give you an idea.

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aneesh
There's an important fact not mentioned in the article: schools and students
often have incentives to take more AP exams. For example, I was in a school
district where AP exams were _free_ for students. And the schools often get
special recognition based on the number of AP exams taken. Indeed, the oft-
cited Newsweek high school ranking simply ranks schools by the number of AP &
IB exams _taken_ per capita; it doesn't matter what you score! (Citation:
<http://www.newsweek.com/id/39380>). Clearly, students and schools have almost
nothing to lose, and a lot to gain by taking the exams.

Given this perverse set of incentives, the only thing that surprises me is
that the number of AP exams taken isn't growing faster! (We're still at about
0.3 AP exams taken per HS junior/senior)

~~~
ZachPruckowski
Not only did we (Loudoun Valley HS, #164 on that list, 2001-2005) offer free
tests if you took the class, the class grades were weighted for AP classes. An
A- in an AP class was worth an A+ in a regular class, and a B+ was worth an A
(+0.7 on your GPA for the class).

The elimination of a lot of non-AP honors classes increased AP tests taken
even more. I was in 7 APs my senior year, simply because there were two
tracks: AP and general. If you had been honors-track in Middle School and
early High School, you were basically pushed into taking AP History (World and
US), AP Government, and AP English.

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blurgestory
Does it matter if I took the physics/cs/calc AP exams for fun? :)

