The College Board Monopoly
The College Board is a non-profit organization that today has the most control over the school and college acceptance system in the USA. The tax-free organization charges thousands of students a year to take exams like the SAT and PSAT or the AP courses which all have become crucial for the college application process. Rather than a generous organization looking forward to the future of children is has become one of the many corrupt monopolies taking advantage of the education system.
From the beginning, colleges divide students based on their scores as it seems like a more reliable and objective way to combat grade inflation seen over the years. GPA has been on a rise as each institution, has no way to mandate what each grade and student deserves and its specific rubrics. Generally, it may seem unreasonable to score a student based on a standardized exam that has nothing to do with the student as a person and their hobbies. What is most shocking is that there is no other way out for students. The College Board is not an organization for students but for universities, acting more like a business monopoly rather than a charitable organization. They take advantage of the needed preparation for their standardized testing, selling you prep books for the PSAT which is itself a preparation for the SAT all in the eyes of the world. While at the same time reusing leaked SAT questions on new exams rather than creating new ones. The integrity of the company has reached such a low level of manipulating children into this business model.
AP courses are not much of a different story. Colleges look at AP courses away to view the academic successes and challenges each student has established for themselves. The College Board has taken advantage of this by charging approximately 100 dollars per student per exam. When the results come back is a single-digit result with no justification or feedback on the work on the exam. The whole point of taking the exam is to be able to share your results with colleges and universities but the organization still charges a fee to send them.
The bigger problem here has come to the idea that there is no other escape. There are other corporations such as the ACT that use the same system of standardized testing at such high prices while selling recruiters and colleges our information. As both companies work on the same system they have learned not to compete with each other as this could lower prices lowering the highly profitable costs they have been working with for years letting students continue to pay overpriced exams every year.
