The College Board will officially add an AP business and personal finance class in the 2026-27 school year. The course aims to equip students with foundational business knowledge and essential financial literacy through rigorous, project-based curriculum. Much to the excitement and surprise of many St. Mark’s students, the new class could provide fresh perspectives from a business standpoint and broaden possible career paths. The class offers opportunities to high schoolers to get a head start toward business, which is the most popular college major in the United States.

Founder of the Future Founders Club (FFC), sophomore Clayton Sacha, was ecstatic to hear the news of the possibility of a new AP business class. Sacha’s eyes are already set on a career in business, which he plans to pursue by running his club and taking an economics class during his junior year.

“I think having an AP business class would be really beneficial,” Sacha said. “It would give these guys who use FFC as their main way of learning about business a more official and educational side of business.”

Sacha’s new club focuses on bringing in influential guest speakers to give their first-hand experiences with business to the 25 or so students who attend the club. While most students interested in business take the AP economics: microeconomics and macroeconomics course at the school, an AP business class would showcase a different side of business to students who prefer personal finance over economics.

Unfortunately for students looking forward to this new business opportunity, History and Social Sciences Department Chair David Fisher claims it won’t be so easy to incorporate the class into the school’s curriculum, despite believing that the premise of the class is well-intentioned.

“I think it’s a great idea for a national school system that it’s an option as a class,” Fisher said. “We just don’t have enough room. I would be making a value judgment because I know a lot of kids would sign up for it, but they certainly shouldn’t sign up for it at the expense of AP economics.”

Fisher points out that sacrificing important classes such as special operations, European history, government or microeconomics and macroeconomics would leave too large of a hole in the curriculum. Fisher doesn’t want St. Mark’s to prepare kids to go on to be finance bros in college, but instead hopes to expose students to a wide range of social sciences and politics.

“Maybe the kids in economics will go off to a finance and business career, or maybe not,” Fisher said. “We decided to rather go in the direction of AP psychology to broaden out our offerings, rather than to narrow it, since we have two finance and business courses that are available to kids at the school.”