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Absolutely.I got 24 college credits because of AP courses I took senior year (Chem, Calc BC, English Lit, and US Gov). Combined with 16 credits I got from junior year (Bio, Stats, English Lang, and US History), I am able to graduate from RPI with dual major in two fields related to my intended career, in only 3 years - saving my parents about $30,000, and saving myself about $8,000 in loans. Plus, I will be able to get into the workforce and start earning early, making potentially $100,000 - which will allow me to have more years of work experience (i.e. be eligible for more promotions and even higher wages) down the line.Even though the courses I took were not that related to my intended major, even though my GPA was probably slightly lower because I took them, and even though I did not get into my top choice colleges (regardless of the amount of stress that I spent taking these courses), I do not regret at all my choice to take as many AP classes as I was allowed during high school - and I would urge anyone to do the same.

There was a popular TV show in America during the early 70‘s called “The 6-Million Dollar Man” which featured a former astronaut, Colonel Steve Austin, portrayed by actor Lee Majors. The intro shows a crash and the voice-over says that Austin lost two legs, an arm and an eye, but “we can rebuild him”. It then shows an operation where “Dr. Rudy” blends the best of electronics with the best of biology and, $6 million dollars later ($36 million in 2018 dollars), Steve Austin emerges with bionic powers (2 incredibly fast legs, 1 super-strong arm and an eye that can zoom-in and out plus see things in the dark). Due to this superhuman strength he is employed as a secret agent by a fictional U.S. government to fight crime.The show became quite popular and Lee Majors became a big pop culture icon in the 70’s. All the boys in my grade school wanted to be just like Steve Austin and have superhuman powers. Not me. I wanted to be Dr. Rudy and build more Steve Austin’s. However, I came from a blue-collar town and knew no one that had ever gone to college. In fact, no one in my family or neighborhood ever mentioned the word “college” to me. I understood nothing about it. Most everyone I knew, like my brother and sister, just got a job after high school and worked in a store or restaurant or as a pipe-fitter or truck driver. It was a great blue-collar town.When I had my first meeting with my high school guidance counselor in Junior Year, she asked me what I wanted to do after graduation, and I told her my dream. She didn’t know what bionics were, so she looked it up in a college catalog and reported I should pursue something called Biomedical Engineering after I graduate and that 3 universities in the country offered it: RPI, MIT and Duke. I said ok, as did my parents, as long as they didn’t have to pay much since my dad was a truck driver and was only making $6/hour while raising 4 kids.I applied to all three, got accepted to all 3, and then drove my beat-up Ford Pinto to visit all 3. Rensselaer Polytechnic was 90% male, cold and boring. MIT was 95% male, cold and unfriendly.So I headed south, to Durham, North Carolina…I arrived on campus in March and it was sunny and 75 degrees on the quad. As I walked up towards the Bell Tower, there were lovely young ladies throwing a Frisbee back-and-forth and chatting in sweet southern accents. There were guys on the benches studying their bio or physics books that would look up and give me a nod when I walked by, and everyone was wearing Duke gear – 50% female, 50% male.There was tons of infectious energy and school spirit everywhere I turned. In the classrooms I visited, the professors reminded me of Dr. Rudy with their intensity and wisdom. Compared to the other two choices, Duke also offered a much better financial aid package, asking me to pay just $1,000 yearly from my summer job and $500 from a work-study job on-campus while asking my parents to pay just $100 per year (which was the max they could afford). Duke then covered the rest of my fees over the 4 years with grants and student loans.That’s why I chose Duke.Four years later I graduated with a double-major in biomedical and electrical engineering. Soon thereafter, I wasn’t building bionic men, but I was designing space systems to make it easier for astronauts, like Steve Austin, to communicate with Mission Control. Best decision I ever made.

When I was at university in the ’60s and ‘70s, on a maximum grant and not because my parents were rich enough to use an accountant, like some of my peers, but because they were poor, university education was a perk mainly of the rich and the well-off. I saw at the time and wrote that it was pretty scandalous that rich people were being subsidised in this way. Even though the grant and fees were means tested, the costs involved were a great subsidy for the rich and better off. The rich saw it as being entirely proper and obviously affordable since the money was going to them.The generation that benefited from this, then had the horror of noticing that with the increased percentage of 18–21 year olds going to university, that rich and well-off people were subsidising poorer people, and to people like Tony Blair this was obviously not on. He introduced fees with no manifesto promise behind it, out of the blue, and with the justification that university education had become unaffordable for the state, that is rich and well-off people. (The affordability argument is always used by rich people if they think that poorer people benefit from it - think of their incessant attacks on the NHS for being unaffordable because it is disproportionately beneficial to poorer people.) With relish, the Tories initially trebled the fees and, more insidiously, changed the interest regime from an affordable one to one that smacks of usury - interest was payable from day one of the loan being taken out at RPI - the highest measure of inflation - PLUS 3%. This will be 6.1% in September. The average poorer student would come out of a three year course owing £55k, which would increase at some £4k per year. No wonder only 30% - the richest 30% - would ever pay the debt off even over 30 years. It was essentially a tax on poorer students. (You can see why the Tories and Blair wouldn’t have wanted a graduate tax - oh, dear, no. Do you realise who’d pay the most if there were one?)This isn’t an attack on 55 year olds and over - but a question of intergenerational fairness - and it is unfair. The Tories, who don’t believe in anything called a society, only see this in individual terms - their own selfish interest. So they see the benefit of a university education as a personal and individual benefit. Yet those more highly skilled graduates will be paying the national insurance and the taxes that will be supporting this society - and while the Tories apparently believe that we can be a great country again taking in each other’s washing, the key to future prosperity is more highly skilled people - whose achievements will benefit all of us.