An education bubble? Data from the explosion of AP tests
gnxp.com
gnxp.com
Motivated students don't even need to take the class. Adding the cost of a $20 (used) test prep book and a chance to fail, the price of an AP is -still- cheaper than Community College. Plus, if you're disadvantaged, I believe you can get a discount on the price. Economically, it just doesn't make sense to do anything but pile on the APs.
Then again, my argument only really works for people going to school to learn, not to specifically get a degree.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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...
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.
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.
Which is fairly similar to what happens in lots of other bubbles -- we go from "What is the right price?" to "How do we get a higher price?"
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.
I think it is a trend.
As you point out, a college degree is the new high school diploma. (and the MSc is the new BSc). We are not going to step backwards on this. There will be no burst. Hence, it is not a bubble.
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.
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.
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)
Also, people end up teaching for the test, which is not good because will end up only knowing certain, specific, useless things.
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.