Dartmouth College recently announced its decision to stop granting credits for high Advanced Placement (AP) scores, starting with the class of 2018, after a nearly unanimous faculty vote. This new policy has caused a lot debate among students, faculty, and administrators at various universities about whether or not advanced standing credits should carry over to university. Dartmouth’s decision is based on the claim that AP courses don’t match the academic rigour of the programs at their Ivy League institution. Their plan, therefore, is a sweeping change in policy in which they would stop accepting AP credits completely.
With tuition costs at an all-time high, and bachelor’s degrees depreciating in value, many students are looking for ways to cut down on some of the time and money spent on their undergraduate degrees. AP courses provide a cheap way for talented and motivated students to earn university credit in high school, and potentially exempt themselves from a semester, or even an entire year at university. This could save students tens of thousands of dollars on their educations, and reduce the high levels of student debt that lurk over so many students upon graduation.
In addition, despite Dartmouth’s claims, many students who scored well on their AP tests may, in fact, possess equal or even greater knowledge to that which they would have acquired at a university. The small settings of AP classes in high schools, and the close attention that teachers are able to provide often result in students who are tremendously knowledgeable about the subjects that they study. If universities stop accepting AP credit, many students may be forced to take classes for material they have already learned.
McGill’s current policy requires students to report all the AP exams they have taken, and students are usually granted credit for scores of 4 or 5. As a result of this rule, many incoming students to McGill are granted U1 status in their first year.
While entering McGill as a U1 certainly has many advantages, it can cause some students to feel overwhelmed, as they are expected to declare their majors earlier, take more challenging courses right away, and complete their program in three years. The Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) recently addressed this issue in a general assembly motion, calling for the AUS to lobby the faculty of the arts to change the advanced credit system. The proposed reform would allow students entering with 24 or more credits (the number needed to enter as U1) to instead enter as U0 if they so desired. Students would still have the option to use advanced standing credits to avoid prerequisites. Since every student is different, this would be a more personalized and flexible way for students to apply their advanced standing credit towards university, and it could help ease the stress that many students face when they enter as their first year.
Dartmouth’s decision, however, brings to light an important concern. Universities shouldn’t be expected to accept advanced standing credits if they aren’t compatible with their standards of education. However, advanced standing credit is beneficial to students for a variety of reasons, and shouldn’t be done away with. The main purpose of APs is to allow students to tailor their education to their own needs. Therefore, the solution to how universities should treat advanced standing credits is to adopt a more personalized system.
As the AUS motion proposed, students should be able to choose whether or not they want their advanced standing credits to carry over to university. Universities, too, should be able to tailor the system of advanced credits to their own requirements by administering placement tests to ensure that students who are “advanced,” according to their AP scores, do indeed meet the requirements to enter certain higher level courses. There is no need to stop accepting advanced standing credit as Dartmouth plans to do. A much less drastic change is required: a more tailored system that takes into account both the needs of individual students and university standards.
