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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   28372 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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But giving such tests directly is illegal.

Is it? The College Board lets kids take AP tests that are accepted as college credit at lots of colleges. I assume a university could allow testing out of most/all classes, but AFAIK this is limited because professors (who have sway over that decision), especially outside of hard sciences, want students to have to take their courses to justify their jobs. And administrators want to keep collecting rent tuition.

There might be Civil Rights Act concerns for something novel, but universities mostly skirt by those with Tradition and maintaining a positive reputation with the justice system.

I think it could probably be done, but it's less clear that it's actually what students want or that developing the tests and maintaining integrity (cheating, leaking test questions) would be economical. IIRC some states don't require law school to sit for the bar exam, but it's not a popular option even there.

It's called the CLEP exam. You can take a CLEP test at any community college to test out of the course and then transfer it to a public university(which the majority of students attend).

CLEPs help (each exam costs $100 and is usually good for three credits, while a single credit at a state university like UF or FIU costs $200) but are seriously hampered by:

  1. Limited selection. There are only 34 CLEP exams, most of them targeting introductory college courses like calculus (or, in some cases, high school courses like algebra).

  2. Credit caps. Most schools will limit the number of credits you can earn by examination.

Using UF and FIU again as examples, you can see from their tables that CLEPs only award credits for courses at the 1000 (freshman) and 2000 (sophomore) levels, and are limited to a maximum of 45 credits. So, at most, you might be able to shave a year and a half from a four-year degree and fulfill your general education requirements by exam.

Still, I'd definitely recommend anyone doing a bachelor's degree save time and money by maxing out their exam credits, both CLEP and AP.

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