TY  - JOUR
AB  - Do policies that broaden educational access also foster success? We study this question in the context of North Carolina’s universal Advanced Placement (AP) exam fee waiver policy. Using student-course level administrative data, we exploit within-student variation on a sample of students who took multiple AP courses to estimate the policy’s effect on exam participation (access) and pass rates (success). We find that fee waivers significantly increased exam participation but had no overall effect on the pass rate for these enrollees. This, however, masks a robust 3 percentage point increase in the pass rates among low-SES students. We also find imprecise but suggestive evidence of gains among underrepresented minorities (non-Asian and non-White). A complementary analysis, leveraging the full sample of AP courses, shows that fee waivers had the greatest impact in courses where predicted financial barriers to exam participation were highest, and that the policy’s benefits far exceed its cost. Finally, our results help reconcile the seemingly disparate findings from prior work on AP exam funding.
AU  - Rahman, Md Twfiqur
AU  - Lawson, M. Cade
PY  - 2025
ST  - Removing Barriers to College Credits: Where and for Whom AP Exam Fee Waivers Work
TI  - Removing Barriers to College Credits: Where and for Whom AP Exam Fee Waivers Work
UR  - http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1345
ER  -