College Board’s Monopoly

While I was taking the SAT in August, my proctor tried to lighten the mood by spending the entirety of our first break period complaining about the College Board. He told us to look up the definition of a non-profit organization, to find out how much College Board CEO David Coleman was compensated in a year, and to “draw our own conclusions.”

The College Board considers itself a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible non-profit organization and is legally classified as such. That special status means that it does not have to pay any taxes, which is certainly a nice situation to be in for an organization that generated a net income of almost $140 million in 2017. The United States Tax Code defines 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations as “charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals.” Examples of non-profits are the Girl Scouts, the Humane Society, and organizations that feed the hungry free of cost.

Though most non-profit educational organizations are schools, that aspect seems to be the only part of the definition that the College Board is involved in. By definition, non-profits are not supposed to make profits, but rather have a purpose that serves the public good. They do not sell shares and make money for investors like for-profit companies do.

In contrast, the College Board constantly prioritizes its own revenue over truly helping students. Recently, a new AP Precalculus course was introduced, despite Precalculus being a primarily high school course and therefore not very useful as a college course for students trying to receive credits. It seems to be nothing more than a cheap cash grab by the College Board, yet it is a course students will inevitably take to boost their resumes. “Easy” and relatively pointless courses like AP Precalculus are more profitable for the College Board than more rigorous AP courses. For instance, the College Board used to offer a more accelerated computer science course, AP Computer Science AB. However, not enough students took it for the College Board to see large income, so they scrapped the course entirely and just kept the easier AP Computer Science A course that made them more money. College Board CEO David Coleman (Stuyvesant ’87), received an annual compensation of $1,532,201 in 2018, around 30 times what the average teacher makes.

The College Board claims that its AP exams allow students to accumulate college credits early and skip beginner level courses, but it is not guaranteed that students will receive credit for the exams they take. Even upon receiving a perfect five for certain exams, many private universities do not accept credits for anything further than a universal course placement exam. Students are promised that they will be saving money and receiving credits when they sign up and pay for these exams, but the reality is that they are often paying for nothing more than a sheet of paper with some course titles and numbers.

The College Board has a vice-like grip on college-related testing. Besides the SAT, it has continuously expanded its list of AP exams. As far as these all-important exams are concerned, the College Board is the only company in town. In other words, it is a monopoly. Albert, using the College Board’s own AP Microeconomics course, provides this definition: “A monopoly is a market structure where one company or seller has complete control over the market and has very limited to no competition, often resulting in high prices and low quality products.”

“Complete control” and “very limited to no competition” precisely describe the College Board’s power over standardized testing. In the early stages of the pandemic, the College Board continued to charge nearly $100 for each Advanced Placement exam, even though they had switched the exams’ format to a glitchy, ineffective virtual platform that did not allow students to fully demonstrate their knowledge of the course material. Additionally, in some cases, the College Board does not even generate new exams for each test-taking section. It was revealed in 2018 that the College Board reused a 2017 international exam from China for an American exam the year later. If students are paying $90 for an exam, the least they can get is an original one.

Despite fitting into this definition perfectly, the College Board is somehow treated as a charitable, non-profit organization. In reality, the College Board is a corporation with a monopoly on standardized testing and should be viewed as such.