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That's misleading. It only applies if you are sending your child to a private ivy league schools. Remove those from the equation and it's not nearly as bad as the chart misleads people into thinking.

https://trends.collegeboard.or...

pssst: Ohms law is the same at community college as it is at MIT

So, two fallacies I see here, 1) Not all degrees are "cram and regurgitate" some actually require you to think. and more importantly 2) Many, Many jobs will not hire you without that worthless piece of paper that you paid over $50K for. I know, I used to educate myself in libraries. You know, FREE. I was a software developer in 1985, a field engineer, an R&D person, all without a degree, simply because I could PROVE I could do the job, but MOST big companies, well, they aren't hiring you without some external document that shows you (should be able) can do the job, hence that 'union card' we have that we call a college degree.

I spent the first 20 years of my working life working my way up into positions that normally needed a degree, then when HR could, they would lay me off, always because I didn't have the degree... and I would start all over again somewhere else.

With the degree, I have no such problems.

What can you do to save money on your degree (should you chose to get one):

A) Go to a good community college for the first two years, only taking courses that will directly transfer into the 4 year degree you want B) CLEP! I used this to earn 30 credits that succeeded in saving me from several thousands in tuition! https://clep.collegeboard.org/ C) Use the Bureau of Labor Statistics website to look into job outlooks. https://www.bls.gov/

D) Education for a job is one thing, learning because you are interested is another, do not conflate the two. You can do the second one for free at any good library in the US. The first one, your degree from the State University, for 1/2 the cost of the recognized name university teaches you exactly the same stuff...

Lastly, what is wrong with tech schools? What is wrong with learning a trade?

NOTHING! I know a guy who has his masters in Physics who makes TONS of money as a plumber, much more than he was making with the Masters degree. He reads research papers off of the Physics Archiv and enjoys having enough cash to do whatever he wishes.

Then maybe not major universities? A solid 4 year university should be considerably less...

Right wing think tanks will tell you that it's because greedy schools are following supply and demand and raising prices to soak up quick cash. I've got a kid in school and can tell you this is bullshit. There were half as many slots in my kid's 300 level classes as there were qualified applicants (GPA 3.8 or higher, yes, that's an eight, not a zero). If the schools were pricing based on demand they'd just raise the price until they got the right number of applicants.

Current US average state/local spending on higher education is $7,120 per student. And that is before any student tuition payments.

I wish we had better historical data on actual college spending per student, but I really have to think it has risen. The quality of the physical plant of most public universities I know of have risen dramatically (dorms used to be cinder-block "jails without bars").

Also the number of executive, administrative and managerial employees on US university campuses are up by 15% between 2007 and 2014.

I think it is a realistic market model to expect that some universities wish to realize the high student payments that can be extracted by the richest families, and thus many universities are competing to be "highly selective". If you "just let anyone attend", your selectivity will become low, and thus you will attract students of less well-off families who can pay less. "Less selective" universities may also face reduction in ability to enter into non-educational research transactions, and will attract less alumni funding.

Today we're at about 70% of recent high school grads enrolling in college, which is up from 60% in 1990. so clearly colleges are enrolling more students, again an indication that the market model is correct. It might be that "more selective" colleges are happy not to admit more, but "less selective" colleges are expanding enrollment.

Real wages are slowly moving up. And college tuition and fees are up, but not that bad - it's when you factor in room-and-board on-campus that things have really exploded.

The College Board, who make the AP tests among other things, allow a lot of different calculators--not just TI.

https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/takingtheexam/exam-policies/calculator-policy

Your "facts" are wrong and so is your opinion.

For example, adjusted for inflation, the average Pell grant was $2,420 in 1996 and $3,740 in 2016. The max was $3,790 in 1996 and $5,820 in 2016. So Pell grants per student have significantly increased over the last 20 years, hardly "hacked and slashed".

Also, teachers don't "have" to spend their money for school supplies, although some do anyway. Most teachers send home a list to parents of what they want them to donate, which is also ridiculous, but what do you expect when you have a Democratic Party run government institution? Lots of wasteful spending on non-essentials, like diversity administrators.

As for Kansas, well, here's total direct revenue for the last 10 years for Kansas. The only portion with a big decline after the Kansas tax cuts in 2011-12 were capital gains-related revenue, a result of the change in the federal capital gains rate, caused by President Obama’s forced expiration of some of the Bush tax cuts. The Kansas tax cuts themselves are estimated to have only affected at most 1.5% of Kansas total revenue, hardly a drop in the bucket and certainly nothing to panic about.

Did you see the AP Computer Science Principles curriculum? It has topics like "Copyright and the law", "Impact of your life", "web crawlers", "indexing pages", "ranking pages", "Privacy in the age of big data". etc. Is this a joke?

According to the College Board, 40% of the score for the new Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles course - whose higher-than-other-subject-area pass rates were recently celebrated by tech-bankrolled Code.org - is based upon assessment of non-exam "Performance Tasks."

Many of these people will be on a grant. So, yes, it has nothing to do with education cost.

I was curious how much truth there was to this. Here's what some quick Googling turned up:

Financial Aid: FAQs
In 2014-15, about two-thirds of full-time students paid for college with the help of financial aid in the form of grants and scholarships. Approximately 57 percent of financial aid dollars awarded to undergraduates was in the form of grants, and 34 percent took the form of federal loans.

International Students at U.S. Colleges
Some, but not all, U.S. schools offer international students financial aid. In 2016-2017, of the 1,293 schools that provided data on this topic to U.S. News, 425 said they awarded aid to international students - that's around 1 out of every 3. Each of these 425 schools gave financial aid to, on average, about 40 percent of the international students they enrolled.

So the overall rate at which students receive grants is (2/3)*57% = 38% (or 44% if you assume the missing 9% is scholarships)
The rate at which international students receive fanancial assistance is (425/1293)*40% = 13%

This article sums it up. OP is correct that the cost of U.S. colleges is a huge factor for foreign students.

How international students are subsidizing U.S. universities
A growing number of international students are finding that their dreams of studying in the U.S. comes with a nearly impossible price tag. Many schools have limited funds for student aid, and the lion's share of that money is reserved for U.S. students. And most foreign citizens are not eligible for federal student aid from the U.S. Department of Education.

That means that being a foreign student in the U.S. usually means paying full tuition

Here is an example of some of the questions.

The test is based on Java, and you need to know Java fairly well to pass the test. The questions are reasonably challenging. A score of 5 is impressive, and should help a kid get into a good college, and maybe land an internship.

Budget cuts for universities... For the last 20 years, tuition at universities has greatly outstripped the inflation rate. Assuming costs of running the university don't grow more than 1.4 times inflation, then there should be plenty of money to serve students. Of course, the growth in the cost of a college degree has doubled that of inflation, so...

I've been saying this for years: make Computer Science (theoretical math, logic, basic linguistics) a mandatory subject in K12 education alongside (applied) math, science, etc. Also, yank pre-calculus and calculus (save it for physics majors in college, offer it as a math elective in high school) and offer statistics for students advanced enough to get that far. Statistical illiteracy is one of the main drivers behind our fake news problem.

Brian Krebs agrees with me, citing this as Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia:

Compared to the United States there are quite a few more high school students in Russia who choose to specialize in information technology subjects. One way to measure this is to look at the number of high school students in the two countries who opt to take the advanced placement exam for computer science.

According to an analysis (PDF) by The College Board, in the ten years between 2005 and 2016 a total of 270,000 high school students in the United States opted to take the national exam in computer science (the “Computer Science Advanced Placement” exam).

Compare that to the numbers from Russia: A 2014 study (PDF) on computer science (called “Informatics” in Russia) by the Perm State National Research University found that roughly 60,000 Russian students register each year to take their nation’s equivalent to the AP exam — known as the “Unified National Examination.” Extrapolating that annual 60,000 number over ten years suggests that more than twice as many people in Russia — 600,000 — have taken the computer science exam at the high school level over the past decade.

I've been saying this for years: make Computer Science (theoretical math, logic, basic linguistics) a mandatory subject in K12 education alongside (applied) math, science, etc. Also, yank pre-calculus and calculus (save it for physics majors in college, offer it as a math elective in high school) and offer statistics for students advanced enough to get that far. Statistical illiteracy is one of the main drivers behind our fake news problem.

Brian Krebs agrees with me, citing this as Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia:

Compared to the United States there are quite a few more high school students in Russia who choose to specialize in information technology subjects. One way to measure this is to look at the number of high school students in the two countries who opt to take the advanced placement exam for computer science.

According to an analysis (PDF) by The College Board, in the ten years between 2005 and 2016 a total of 270,000 high school students in the United States opted to take the national exam in computer science (the “Computer Science Advanced Placement” exam).

Compare that to the numbers from Russia: A 2014 study (PDF) on computer science (called “Informatics” in Russia) by the Perm State National Research University found that roughly 60,000 Russian students register each year to take their nation’s equivalent to the AP exam — known as the “Unified National Examination.” Extrapolating that annual 60,000 number over ten years suggests that more than twice as many people in Russia — 600,000 — have taken the computer science exam at the high school level over the past decade.

$20K to $34K over 10 years averages 5.4% per year. According to College Board data on public 2yr, public 4yr, and private 4 yr colleges, tuition and fees increased from 2006-7 to 2016-17, on average, 4.5%, 5.2%, and 4.1%, respectively. (These are all compounded rates and the tuition/ fees are enrollment weighted)

So the extra debt is likely, due mostly to tuition increases, with public 4 yr colleges being the worst offenders.

FYI - Using simple averages debt went up 7% and tuition/fees 5.5%, 6.6%, and 5.0%. Still close, but compounding is more accurate, since this year's tuition increase is always based on last year's tuition.

Source for college board data is below, but you need to look at the current dollar tuition/fees from Table 4 in the excel data. The PDF and presentation are all corrected for general inflation while the original Fed presentation on student debt, that this article is based on, appears to use nominal dollars, i.e. dollars uncorrected for inflation.

https://trends.collegeboard.or... (See download box in upper right.)

Not sure what state you live in, but based on these numbers the highest cost state is New Hampshire with a rate of $15K for each year at a 4 years institution. The US average was $9650. So if you saved $73K based on the median family income of $50K, you would easily have education paid for. For those who don't make as much, you could do your first two years at a community college to save money and then transfer your courses to a 4 year university. I hear this is a great way to save on the costs of education.

50% rise in eight years? That's only 1.5^0.125 = 5.2%/year. That's less than the rise in college tuition. For the extremes of the range, there is the ridiculously low CPI of 10% over eight years and the ridiculously high ShadowStats.com of 100% over eight years (view page source to see the hidden value). The geometric mean of those two extremes is sqrt(1.1*2.0)=48%.

Maybe 50% over eight years (5.2%/year) is in fact overstating actual inflation, but it's far from self-evident. By just stating the number and expecting people to be shocked, Mark O'Neill is, intentionally or not, advancing the wage-suppression-through-inflation scam.

Naturally someone with no college experience would ask those questions while wondering why he is living in his parents' basement while people his age with degrees have careers.

There are multiple advantages to going to an actual school for college, and it extends beyond what you learn from a textbook. After all, there are ways to complete a college degree without ever going to college - for example via CLEP credits. But Finishing a degree that way cheats the student out of the experience of being in a classroom and on a campus with people with similar interests and interacting directly with instructors who are truly knowledgeable on the matters of study. Part of the college experience is maturing as an individual, which is made possible by interpersonal interactions that occur in a large community.

Employers are aware of that, as well.

The claim is that the biggest failure of science (the kind that everyone loves, as quantified by Facebook "likes") is its contributions to diet and fitness, which could be summed up as: The health benefits of food and exercise fluctuates as a function of the current weather in Denver. The conclusion is, much like Coloradan weathermen, that science is justifiably not to be trusted. Adams is convinced that people, being good enough at pattern recognition to ignore the forecast yet not good enough to know whether to bring an umbrella or a parasol, are not able to discern which science to believe and which to deny. He suggests that since people should not change their skepticism, science must improve. It is a tragedy that Science (and I mean Science the way philosophers refer to truth and to Truth) cannot improve. It is a divine numbered process set in stone, and I personally do not feel confident enough to risk pulling a Moses just yet.

Despite some unnecessarily patriotic support for the human tendency to be personally irresponsible, a solution was seemingly lost with the greatest generation. [1] People as a whole never have, never will, and never should put faith in science (or even Science). Science will not work without skepticism, and it is meant only to convince the educated with evidence. The uneducated (that's the 99.983% of us who don't read Nature) may become educated or remain ignorantly skeptical. Those are unfortunately the rational options. It was earlier than the 1930s when evidence that smoking was deadly began to emerge, yet smoking rates increased dramatically. There were decades of unhealthy skepticism as tobacco funded studies and paid doctor-actors (think Phil and Oz, not Who and Quinn) muddled the issue. It was not until the Surgeon General took the authority to tell people the truth that the smoking trajectory began to reverse. [2][3][4] And that's the heart of it, it takes someone respected and trusted to become a meteorologist (Dalton, Celsius, Roker) and not a weatherman ([5]).

Science did nothing wrong. [6] Science is not to blame for the grievances of people who grew up without a smartass friend having ever haughtily parroted, "you know gravity is just a theory." Not because lifespans continue to increase [7] or because the US leads the world in quality of life measures. [8] It would be circular reasoning to use scientific measures to judge science itself. Science is not to blame because Science is not an authority and it should never be accepted based on faith. The people who don't read Nature have to rely on faith in authority to believe what is true, and they need an educated authority who will not let them get wet. The enemy is not Science. The enemy is the person we all respect, the person we trust, the person whose authority over us has mislead us for decades as our health declines and we join her in morbid obesity. The enemy is Oprah. [9]

[1] "Science failed my generation on the topic of food and exercise the same way science failed my parents generation with cigarettes."

[2] 1957 Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney declared reason to believe of a causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer.
1964 "Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General" is released to national attention.
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/NN...

[3] http://trends.collegeboard.org... Readers of Nature are considerably less likely to smoke.

[4] http://www.ep.tc/realist/56/20...

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

[6] http://www.manolith.com/2012/0...

[7]

That said, California is the gold standard for the government fucking things up, which it looks like they did for tuition too. She may want to consider an out-of-state school that offers low out-of-state tuition - an increasing number of them charge the same as in-state residents - or an online school.

And how does this translate into how good California universities are? UCLA and UC Berkeley are among some of the best in the country. The problem is that according to these numbers California isn't the most expensive public college schools. It ranks about 35 out of 50 states in terms of costs and 50 out of the 52 states and territories (DC and Puerto Rico are included) have tuitions above $5,000 per semester. 33 of them are above $7500. It's not just California that has high tuition. Your suggestion to go to another state is simply misplaced.

ncidentally, the other thing I don't understand about this is why anybody picks a TI-84 when they could have a TI-86. TI-89s are prohibited for standardized tests (because they have a Computer Algebra System), but TI-86s aren't and are better than TI-84s in every other way as far as I can tell...

I'm with you on there on the popularity of the TI-84 (and TI-82s back when I was a student), but the TI-89 absolutely is allowed in standardized tests. I used it back in the 90s when I was in high school on everything that a calculator was allowed for, including AP exams, and it doesn't seem like the policy has changed. Here are the list of allowed calculators for the SAT and Calculus AP exam.

If you think about it, the CAS really shouldn't be an issue. I mean, it's just as quick to set up a quick matrix in the TI-84 and invert / multiply to solve system of equations. Everyone I knew who didn't have a ti-89 was doing that. The multiple choice sections of those tests are designed to figure out if you know how to set up the problem. The non multiple-choice section of the calculus AP exam requires you to show work.

ncidentally, the other thing I don't understand about this is why anybody picks a TI-84 when they could have a TI-86. TI-89s are prohibited for standardized tests (because they have a Computer Algebra System), but TI-86s aren't and are better than TI-84s in every other way as far as I can tell...

I'm with you on there on the popularity of the TI-84 (and TI-82s back when I was a student), but the TI-89 absolutely is allowed in standardized tests. I used it back in the 90s when I was in high school on everything that a calculator was allowed for, including AP exams, and it doesn't seem like the policy has changed. Here are the list of allowed calculators for the SAT and Calculus AP exam.

If you think about it, the CAS really shouldn't be an issue. I mean, it's just as quick to set up a quick matrix in the TI-84 and invert / multiply to solve system of equations. Everyone I knew who didn't have a ti-89 was doing that. The multiple choice sections of those tests are designed to figure out if you know how to set up the problem. The non multiple-choice section of the calculus AP exam requires you to show work.

College is no more expensive, taking inflation into account, than it was 30 years ago.

Oh please, that's an obvious falsehood.

LOL, oh you're serious, let me laugh harder. If you think skipped courses due to AP credits reduce the number of hours needed to graduate at the vast, vast majority of schools you're mistaken. No, it will just let you skip an intro course and fill the hours requirement for your major for something a little less dull.

False.

Heck, it's even on the official AP exam website:

You can save money and get a head start on your degree when you enter college with credit youâ(TM)ve already earned through AP.

But if you're not convinced, let's look at some of the top schools in the U.S., and what they will do for a person with AP credit. Harvard says the following:

Students may be allowed to use an AP exam score (or appropriate international credential) to meet certain requirements (foreign language, introductory departmental course, etc.).

Students with a full yearâ(TM)s worth of advanced workâ"documented by AP exams, an IB diploma, or certain other international credentialsâ"may be eligible to petition for Advanced Standing. The College grants four Harvard full-course credits, the equivalent of a year of study, to those students who activate Advanced Standing.

In other words, you not only can pass out of a number of requirements, but you can also skip an entire year of college... at one of the top colleges in the U.S.

Even MIT, which is notorious for having one of the most restrictive AP policies in the U.S., will still give you credit for and let you pass out of the first semester of calculus or physics (both required of all MIT graduates) with sufficient AP scores. And you'll get unrestricted credit that can count toward miscellaneous electives you need for your degree or whatever for some other AP tests (e.g., humanities).

Bottom line: At the "vast, vast majority of schools," many AP courses WILL reduce the number of credits you need for graduation, as well as allowing you to skip intro classes.

You're right that many schools will still require you to take something else within your major to fulfill a minimum set of required credit hours. But you'll often still be able to use miscellaneous AP credits toward random electives.

Seriously -- do at least a minimum of research before you show your ignorance while wrongly making fun of somebody.

Two points:

1. Few students graduate at 22 with that much debt. 22 year olds get an undergradate degree, and those numbers are mostly far lower. When you see numbers that high, you should think 'professional degree', ie lawyers and doctors. And I suppose a number of people who, having matriculated with a degree in Literary Arts, double down on failure and go back for an M.A.

2. Students are allowed to borrow for room and board. And they often do. When looking at 'net price trends' for 4 year public instiutions, the average price in 2013 dollars is roughly 13,000 a year. Room and board makes up 9,500 of that. So tuition is a pretty small fraction of the overall indebtedness.

As for why the US's most famous universities are private, I figure a lot of it comes down history: most of the earliest universities were founded for religious purposes, and the many Provinces were usually in favor of religious tolerance. Even Massachusetts, the State closest to a state religion, favored State neutrality by 1780. And the US constitution intentionally tied its hands on matters of theology. So universities have never really been seen as tools of the state during periods of socialist fervor. The land grants, established for more secular purposes, were nearly 100 years after the Revolution. They're younger and so it's not surprising they're less prestigous.

So why isn't supply responding to the glut of money?

It is. For example, total enrollment in college went from 8.6 million students in 1970 to 19.1 million in 2010. Also, female enrollment rates have gone up a lot. So supply more than doubled over that time period.

Almost no colleges offer credit for taking AP tests regardless of score so high schoolers have absolutely no reason whatsoever to take those tests. You can either study for just your real final exams that actually go into your grades or you can add in an even harder test that benefits you in no way. Hmm, tough one. Oh and they typically charge money to take the tests as well.

That's not true at all. You can go to the College Board website and search by school to find what they offer credit for. I got half a semester of credit from AP exams when I was in high school.

I meant inflation-adjusted cost.

Why are the costs going up? The main reason is that the cost of living is going up, while the states keep cutting the portion of the tuition that they pay so that they can spend that money on other programs. Most universities are getting smaller and smaller portions of their operating budget from the state, which inevitably means that they have to charge higher and higher tuition to make up the difference. There's no market magic involved here. There's no supply and demand at work. The demand is fixed; everyone wants an education. The supply is also fixed; every school can handle only a certain number of people. There's no profit margin—most schools are purely nonprofit and cannot make money except as temporary savings towards future costs—therefore, the cost is purely driven by the cost of operation. Any statements to the contrary, at least as far as public universities are concerned, are just plain wrong.

The "sticker price" of universities are going up much faster than the "net price." For example, look at the average net price for private institutions over time.

From 1992-93 to 2012-13, the sticker price of tuition and fees has gone from $17,040 to $29,060 while the net price has gone from $10,010 to $13,380. The net price is a much more reasonable increase both in terms of percentage and total change in cost.

This pricing model has allowed for the universities to segment their market effectively and have people of different income levels pay what the universities feel is proper. So while it seems that universities have been getting MUCH more expensive, in reality, the pricing increases have been modest.

For more pricing trends for universities, try this link.

Why are the costs going up? The main reason is that the cost of living is going up, while the states keep cutting the portion of the tuition that they pay so that they can spend that money on other programs. Most universities are getting smaller and smaller portions of their operating budget from the state, which inevitably means that they have to charge higher and higher tuition to make up the difference. There's no market magic involved here. There's no supply and demand at work. The demand is fixed; everyone wants an education. The supply is also fixed; every school can handle only a certain number of people. There's no profit margin—most schools are purely nonprofit and cannot make money except as temporary savings towards future costs—therefore, the cost is purely driven by the cost of operation. Any statements to the contrary, at least as far as public universities are concerned, are just plain wrong.

The "sticker price" of universities are going up much faster than the "net price." For example, look at the average net price for private institutions over time.

From 1992-93 to 2012-13, the sticker price of tuition and fees has gone from $17,040 to $29,060 while the net price has gone from $10,010 to $13,380. The net price is a much more reasonable increase both in terms of percentage and total change in cost.

This pricing model has allowed for the universities to segment their market effectively and have people of different income levels pay what the universities feel is proper. So while it seems that universities have been getting MUCH more expensive, in reality, the pricing increases have been modest.

For more pricing trends for universities, try this link.

I'm not sure I see the difference. The site you linked to says "All costs are per year in Australian dollars." So that $15k-33k translates to $13.5k-30k in USD. So while the$28k you quote is at the high end, it's not outrageous.

The US average in that topuniversities link is really $28.5k, and is actually just the private (i.e. expensive) universities -- it excludes the cheap publicly-funded schools. From what I've found, the average in-state tuition at a public college is only $9k, while the average for out-of-state students is $22k.

It's not clear at all that an Australian school is really that much cheaper than an equivalent US school.

dom

Having the best university isn't remotely close to saying you have the best level of education for your population

Dude, average US IQ levels are only 98, compared with Germany, Italy, and Netherlands at 102, and the UK at 100. So you know, we're going to be a little slow!

But seriously, the percentage of 25- to 64-year-Olds with an Associate Degree or Higher in 2007 was 40.3% in the US, higher than any other EU country. The closest is Finland with 36.4%.

This year is the first year that the AP test has been given in Java. The switch was made this year as well, so turnout was probably a bit low as schools were slow to switch. Here's a PDF explaining why the language was switched.

you're on the right track but the exact term is CLEP tests. You take them in order to skip certain classes if you think you already have the knowledge for it. However, it's an official College Board program (ie: SAT, AP) and I don't think they have CLEP tests for higher-level classes. You'd probably have to talk to the university to see if you could test out of certain courses.

Furthermore, to receive a Bachelor's in CS from most good universities, you need two years of humanities, and that's what would probably kill you.

(The clept term came from the saying I CLEP'd a class.)

Doctoral-level education is overkill. Requring that teachers be able to pass the College Board's Advanced Placement Exam in physics is probably good enough. That exam, after all, is intended for bright high school students. Teachers at the middle school level and above should be able to pass it.

High school physics should be Newtonian and experimental. The classic PSSC Physics still gets good reviews.

It's not just universities... Java is becoming the official language of AP Computer Science in 2003-2004, so now high school students throughout the US will be exposed to it.

The only problem is that they're not being exposed to the language. The syllabus is available here; according to it, the following things (among others) are considered "potentially relevant but not tested" (translation: you don't have to learn them):

• short, long, byte, char, float
• Bitwise operators (&, |, etc.)
• Any type cast that isn't (int) or (double)
• Any input functions (e.g. System.in) at all
• public static void main
• do/while, switch, break, continue
• Importing packages with wildcards (import x.y.*)

Note especially the lack of any input functions or public static void main - it seems that students could easily get a 5 (the highest possible score) on the AP exam without being ever able to write a working program.

Given the many shortcomings of the new curriculum, I'm guessing that the most motivated students - the ones who plan to study computer science - are going to go out and learn stuff on their own anyway. The American students who only know what they learned in AP Computer Science aren't going to be getting the best programming jobs because they haven't learned enough programming...

Moderators, pay attention. That was the most important statement in the entire discussion (at the high school level). AP Courses should use the language that's in the AP Exam. Period. Otherwise the students will not get AP credit which can save them $$$ in college tuition.

The current AP CS Exams use C/C++, but they will switch to Java in 2003. College courses should use whatever language is best for them; personally I recommend Scheme or Python. But for the high school level, you ignore the Board at your own peril.

I've decided to lump them together as they deal with Java's use as a learning language, as opposed it's traditional use as an application language, and in many cases, which looks to be replacing C/C++ in this role

You're not the only one.
The AP Computer Science Course for high schoolers announced this year that in 2003, they will be replacing C/C++ with Java.

Under his proposal, the university would drop the requirement that applicants submit scores from the SAT I, an aptitude test, but continue to require the so-called SAT II, which tests students in subject areas, including English, math, history, science and foreign languages.

In a letter Dr. Atkinson sent to the University of California's faculty senate today and in a speech he will give here on Sunday to the American Council on Education, an advance copy of which the
school released tonight, Dr. Atkinson criticized the reliance on SAT's to rank students for admission to schools, saying that they are "not compatible with the American view on how merit should be defined and opportunities distributed."

How will they define merit? Will this "holistic" approach consider test scores and gpa's from highschool take differences between schools into account? By no account will that remove bias. Both the schools that grade students and the ways those grades would be weighted in university admissions processes will be biased. That could lead to the wholesale exclusion of students from certain regions from the best schools, due to a lack of any universal ranking factor that disregards the quality of their highschool educational systems.

Furthermore, stuff like advanced placement tests are not a good solution. It takes money to train teachers to teach administer the yearly AP classes.

Unless the poorest schools, in the poorest regions, get federal money to introduce a better universal standard of measuring highschoolers, lets not replace the one we've got.

the APCS site

A lot of these suggestions are great ideas, many of them things I wish I had done in highschool. However, most of the interesting ones are either way outside the curiculum, or too advanced.

The goals of APCS are learning the language (presently, C++, but in the past, Pascal), proper programming methodolgy, common algorithms (sorting, searching), and abstract data types. The intent is to teach a class equivalent to a first year college CS class.

Of all the ideas here, I think the one best suited to the scope and goals of the class is the implimentation of the virtual computer. Not only is it something that can take advantage of some of the idea learned, but it would help prepare them for future classes in computer arcitechure.

A few other interesting ideas:
- a maze navigating program :always taking a left turn is a fairly easy way of solving the maze. Depending on the system you're using, display may be the difficult part

- the BlackBox: an NxN box with some number of mirrors (at 45 degree angles: / & \) inside it, into which, at any point around the outside, a laser can be shot in, and where it exits is determined. One the lasers are implimented, you can make it a logic game, or an AI test bed...