No Matter How You Slice It, The NMSI AP Program Provides a Greater ROI

There are many ways to consider ROI when it comes to our AP program.  For example, one could review the cost per student, or cost per additional college graduate, or cost per additional lifetime earnings of students in the program, or even cost per tuition saved.  But no matter which of these one considers, all of them provide a tremendous return on investment for our donors.  
 
 An average investment per school for our donors is $500,000, which allows us to implement the AP program for three years.  During these three years, on average, the teachers of grades 6-11 who go through our rigorous training program impact over 2200 students, which brings the average cost per student to just over $200 per student.
 
 Over a period of three years, on average, our program produces an increase of 116 students passing an AP Exam.  And over a period of 10 years, based on data from dozens of schools in Texas that finished the grant in the mid 2000’s, it is estimated that our program produces in a participating school, on average, an increase of 766 students passing an AP Exam compared to the number of passing exams if the school did not have our program. Based on Dougherty’s, Mellor’s, and Jian’s 2008 report, if students pass just one AP Exam, they have a 31% greater chance of graduating from college.   Therefore, it is reasonable to estimate that our 766 students produce 143 more College graduates with our program intervention alone.  This means that per increase in college graduate produced, a $500,000 investment is less than $3500.
 
 If one looks at the additional tax base that our program produces, according to the 2010 publication, “Education Pays” by the College Board, a college graduate earns $533,000 more in his or her lifetime than a high school graduate. This means that a $500,000 investment produces, over a period of a lifetime for the students impacted, increased earnings of over $76 million dollars.
 
 And the $500,000 investment also saves families money in tuition costs.  According to the College Board’s “Trends in Higher Education,” the average per hour cost in a four-year public institution is $253.50.  On average, over a period of 10 years, it is estimated that there are an additional 1073 AP Exams passed from our initial three- year intervention.  If only 65% of students who pass these additional exams earn college credit and if all of them earn only 3 hours, on average the $500,000 investment saves families more than that amount in tuition costs.