Geography in Nebraska

I spent this last week at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska (Go Big Red!) scoring Advanced Placement Human Geography exams. I personally scored 400 exams. I was accompanied by another 200+ high school teachers and college professors, and together, we scored 40,000 exams from high schools across the country and around the world. This was my first year scoring high school AP exams, but the AP Human Geography exam has been around for 8 years now, and the number of students taking the exam has been doubling every two years!

Until I had signed up to be an AP reader, I was not even aware that high schools taught AP Geography in the US. It turns out that there are hundreds of high schools around the country that offer formal Geography courses either as electives, or in some cases, required courses! High school students who achieve a minimum score on the AP Human Geography exam can get college credit (and thereby have one less course to take).

Geography is not a required course in Massachusetts high schools, nor is it commonly offered. That could be changed. Imagine how much easier it would be to recruit Geography majors if students were already aware of Geography as a discipline before they got to college.