Families, especially those considering sending their children to a private four-year university, need all the help they can get in funding college. Annmarie Guzy's essay "AP, Dual Enrollment, and the Survival of Honors Education" in this issue powerfully spells out the financial benefits that accrue from using AP courses to satisfy college credits and how states have begun to legislate quite terrifying directives mandating the acceptance of "uniform minimum AP . . . credits." The essential issue--as Guzy has aptly put it--boils down to money, probably even more for students headed toward private colleges and universities than those enrolling in state schools. Naturally, families search for strategies to bring down the cost of college as well as the time it takes to complete a degree. Taking college courses or AP courses in high school facilitates this plan. Both are offered at rates cheaper than college tuition, and they often permit a student to cut out as much as one whole semester. Author Joan Digby writes here that for many reasons she is in favor of accepting AP credit rather than taking the position that students have wasted time and money. AP classes boost self esteem and academic confidence. That said, Digby also points out that AP classes and so-called "college classes" in high school are nothing like college equivalents, and when she speaks with prospective honors students about their high school AP classes she lets them know that the college experience of core courses will be very different from high school. Digby reveals that her greatest fear is that college is pretending to be higher education, and that AP and other fast-track schemes seem based on Lady Macbeth's premise about murder that "'twere well it were done quickly." Such schemes are just the edge of a more harrowing discussion current in the media about whether a college degree is a credential worth having.