The College Board Monopoly
JESSICA MALOSH | FEB. 4, 2021 | OPINIONS
The College Board is an organization which most, if not all, students in the U.S. are familiar with. The tests that it offers – the Advanced Placement (AP) subject tests, SAT, and PSAT/NMSQT – are designed to measure the aptitude and college readiness of students. For colleges that require submission of SAT scores, the SAT scores largely determine admission decisions. Because these tests play such a major role in college admissions, students strive to get as high a score as possible, which increases their chances of getting into more selective colleges. Out of this desire for higher test scores, a lucrative industry has formed which capitalizes on students’ need to improve their SAT/AP scores. What's more, a myriad of counseling services that claim to “raise” students’ SAT scores have grown increasingly common in the recent decades. No organization should hold this much power over the future of thousands of students.
The College Board is considered a nonprofit, which means it receives federal tax exemption. What's more, despite its nonprofit status, it brought in $94 million in profit during 2018. The College Board also indirectly receives money from federal grants that go to school districts in need. The schools that receive these grants use this money to cover the costs of the AP exams for students, which goes directly to the College Board.
Even though the College Board offers supplemental material such as past AP tests, AP test preparation, and practice tests, the brunt of the costs falls on the schools that offer the courses. According to the College Board, it costs between $1,900 to $11,650 to launch an AP course, which includes materials, textbooks, and professional development. This projected cost does not include the salary of the teachers or the cost of maintaining classrooms. Financially, the College Board offers nothing to the AP students during the course of the school year. A nonprofit is supposed to do the public good or further a social cause; the College Board does not do this.
This monopoly on testing adversely affects low-income students’ while bolstering the wealthy students in the college admissions arena. In his revolutionary book “The Years that Matter Most,” Paul Tough exposes the advantages that students who come from well-to-do families enjoy when it comes to getting higher SAT and AP scores and how these advantages play in the college admission process. These wealthy students not only enjoy the benefit of guidance, experience and legacy status that comes from their college graduate parents but also the financial resources needed to afford SAT prep courses, pricey private counseling that identifies specific areas of weakness, as well as advising on SAT taking strategies. Additionally, the students from well to-do families also enjoy the opportunity to take the pricey tests multiple times after spending countless hours of preparing - the hours that low-income students spend working a part time job or doing chores to help their families.
Students have the option to take the tests more than once if they do not get the score that they want. But because of the high test price ranges, only low-income students bear the heavy financial burden of taking the tests more than once, and some are deterred for that reason. For the low-income students who do not receive federal grant funding, the College Board offers a $33 reduction fee, which knocks the price down to $53 per test. This is still a heavy burden on low-income families, especially those with students who take more than one AP test.
This unfortunate phenomenon is supported by data that the College Board gathers and releases in its SAT Suite of Assessments Annual Report. It shows the breakdown of scores and categorizes them by race, gender, and parental education of the test taker. A predictable yet unfair trend can be observed by analyzing the mean scores categorized by highest level of parental education - a good proxy of household income. As seen in the graph below, the higher the parental education level, the higher the students’ scores.
The College Board’s monopoly on test-taking is strengthened by the lack of competitors in the industry. The only organization that approaches the College Board’s reign on standardized tests is ACT, Inc., but it still pales in comparison. Even though the ACT is gaining test-takers, its numbers still trail behind with 1.8 million test-takers compared to the College Board’s 2.2 million SAT participants in 2019.
There is also an outside industry that surrounds preparation and score improvement for these tests. There are many test prep books and courses, even professional tutors, who charge top dollar for tips on these standardized tests. For instance, the company “Prep Expert” offers three to six week online SAT prep courses for $999, with a 100-200 point improvement guarantee. There are a plethora of books such as the “Princeton Review’s Cracking the SAT,” “Barron’s SAT Premium Study Guide,” and “McGraw-Hill Education SAT Elite” that charge $20 to $40 depending on the brand. These services disproportionately target the wealthy, which gives them another advantage over low-income students during the test.
Fortunately, recent news suggests the College Board’s empire of standardized testing is starting to fall. A decreased appetite for standardized tests that was evident in the past year, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, has contributed to the College Board’s decision to eliminate the SAT subject tests and the SAT optional essay. The decision came on Jan. 19, when the College Board announced the elimination of these tests in favor of creating an online SAT test. In its statement, the College Board said that a digital SAT test would be more streamlined and allow for the needs of students to be met. The College Board emphasized AP tests’ increasing popularity and “widespread availability for low-income students and students of color” as a reason for discontinuing the SAT subject tests.
The recent actions of the College Board may signal the crumbling of its testing monopoly. The SAT subject tests have met their demise because of lack of participation, and the emphasis placed on the AP tests is just a scramble to keep profits high.
Whatever the motive is for scrapping the SAT subjects tests and optional essays, it is a move in the right direction. If this trend endures, hopefully students will be judged on what classes they have taken, how well they did in their classes, and the types of extracurriculars they are involved in, not just their SAT score.
In fact, because of these factors, some colleges, including many Ivy League colleges, are moving towards test-optional college applications. Hopefully, more colleges follow this test-optional trend, and the College Board will lose its monopoly on the future of high school students.