Even hearing the name College Board can get any high achieving AP student’s heart racing. The company has become so prevalent in today’s education that they out-profit both ACT and the International Baccalaureate, which is another smaller, comparable program to the Advanced Placement classes. 

Their massive influence on education cannot be denied. But by having one company be able to reach that many students, they can easily take over and become a monopoly. College Board has created unnecessary exams and programs that are forced down students’ throats by teachers and college-prep courses everywhere. These tests and programs that they have manipulated us into believing we need for college have infiltrated almost every aspect of the education process. Teachers are now only teaching us the information we need to know for AP exams, not to enrich our understanding of the material. Administration just wants to boost scores for tests to make the school look better.  

For a company that supposedly “just tries to break even”, they profit an extra $62,000,000 a year. According to College Board, in 2018 more than 2.1 million students took the SAT and about 2.6 million student took the PSAT. The prices that they list these at indicate that they made roughly $232,350,000 off the SAT and the PSAT alone. The money goes straight back into the company so they can provide very comfortable salaries to their executives. This gives the appearance that they are not a non-profit because they truly need the tax exemption to do good in the world, they just want to have higher pay. The greedier this company becomes, the more that students are drained of their money and time.  

The hidden fees surrounding each test that they have planted into our education are not needed for the lack of effort that these tasks require. To send scores to colleges, which is the entire purpose of the tests, there are more fees. The pain these employees must face while they send a one-digit number from one computer to another!  

There needs to be more regulation of what College Board can and cannot do. There is nothing stopping them from creating more variations of tests and programs that are made necessary for students to allow them to stay competitive in the college application process. Their influence on our society and education is one that needs to be watched carefully to avoid negative side effects to students and the academic culture as a whole.