<p>The conspiracy theory may not work financially at the whole school level but should work wonders at the math department level. Much like the myth that cops write lots of tickets to keep their jobs - no way a cop’s salary can be paid off tickets alone given the revenue split, a Math professor’s salary can’t be justified at the university level simply by having way too many kids needing to take the class; at the Department level, tho, the more students the more funding.</p>
<p>As I said, it’s a conspiracy theory - but the failure rate in such classes can’t be ignored. If universities were really concerned about HS’s turning out Calc AB, BC, CD, etc capable AP students that can’t cut it at the college level despite great HS grades, they could do other things about it - discount some of these golden grades, for example, or require SAT II Math type tests for all STEM majors. </p>
<p>In my birth country the math part of the national entrance exam was insane for STEM majors, but very few students who got in had any trouble - meaning the entrance exam did well in weeding out the population. Calculus is hard, certainly, but not hard enough to explain a flunk rate this high.</p>
<p>Private very selective schools use their own version of the above to weed candidates out (insanely high SAT scores or SAT II) - I would expect some MIT freshman should not have as much trouble with their Calc I, but do we need to get to the point where getting into Directional State U is as hard as getting into MIT?</p>
<p>I don’t think it helps that many schools in the U.S. teach “fuzzy math.” See “Math Education, an Inconvenient Truth” here: [Math</a> Education: An Inconvenient Truth - YouTube](<a href=“Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth - YouTube”>Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth - YouTube). How can students be ready for calculus, when they’ve never really learned long division and are completely reliant on calculators to think for them?</p>
<p>It is not uncommon for students to have a shaky understanding of some of the math concepts taught in high school, even if they took math through precalculus – and even if they took calculus in high school.</p>
<p>At some point, this lack of full understanding catches up with them if they continue to take math classes or classes that require math.</p>
<p>At the college my son attended, the University of Maryland at College Park, all entering students take a math placement test, and quite a few place lower than they expected. My son, who had passed precalculus in high school and taken AP AB Calculus (and gotten a 3 on the test), ended up having to take precalculus over on the basis of his placement test results. Evidently, there were some precalculus concepts that he had not learned (and this may have accounted for his poor score on the AP test the year later). </p>
<p>I think that offering math courses less advanced than calculus at college is a good thing. For many reasons, it is easy for students to get lost somewhere along the way during high school (or pre-high school) math, but given the way that high school courses are graded (with credit given for completing homework, for example), this may not be obvious from their GPAs. It’s good, in my opinion, that colleges give students the opportunity to correct these deficiencies so that when they do take calculus or other courses requiring math, they are truly ready.</p>
<p>the thought of Calculus scares my D for next year. Our school is on block scheduling but I think the math classes are just too short in time. Pre Cal was a struggle for her, so this year she is doing AP Stat… so now she will have a year in between her pre cal and calculus at college… scary thought</p>
<p>She may want to discuss with her college advisor whether it would be advisable for her to take precalculus over voluntarily. The credits from the remedial course may not count toward graduation, but given that most students have some AP credits that do count, this is usually not a major issue.</p>
<p>Or if there’s a math placement test, there’s no law saying that she has to try her hardest to do well on it. Kids who have not taken a subject in a while often do not exactly strain themselves to do as well as possible on placement tests when entering college because they don’t want to be placed higher than what they are currently ready for. What they are currently ready for may be less advanced than what they might have been ready for a year or two earlier. (I am trying to stop short of suggesting that she deliberately flunk the placement test, not because I think that it is wrong to do this, but because she could find herself placed all the way back in Algebra 1).</p>
<p>Another option would be to take precalculus over at a local community college in the summer before college.</p>
<p>The fuzzy math programs my kids had in school were ridiculous. Mine did everyday math in grade school. When it came to long division it was so insane, we just taught them “old school” style. The teachers would teach them the crazy convoluted way, then down the road they’d say, oh, but you can do it this way too. It was maddening. Hopefully that era of math as a language arts class and it doesn’t matter if the answer is right as long as you feel good about yourself is coming to an end.</p>
<p>Rushedmom, my daughter faced a similar situation with foreign language at her college (which requires all liberal arts students to take at least one foreign language course in college, no matter how advanced they are).</p>
<p>As a high school junior, she had taken AP Spanish, and she got a 5 on the AP test. But she knew that her skills in Spanish had deteriorated during her senior year, when she did not take any Spanish. She deliberately did not study before her college’s Spanish placement test because she didn’t want to be placed higher than what she could handle at that time. She ended up in the college’s equivalent of Spanish 4, which turned out to be the right level for her at the time. It wouldn’t have been the right level a year earlier.</p>
<p>ucb: across the total Cal State Uni system, ~50% of all college Frosh require remedial (aka HS work) to catch up. At some campuses, it’s 90%! So yes, Calif. taxpayers are paying twice (or even three times if the student has to repeat).</p>
<p>This is not about saying that students should always take calculus, but that college freshmen should be ready to take calculus or a similar level course (e.g. statistics) if they need it. Many college freshmen are somewhat undecided, so being ready to take true college level math or statistics courses keeps the door open to a larger number of possible majors than if the student is a few levels behind.</p>
<p>It is also about the enormous waste of time and money involved in teaching high school level math to many students twice because it was taught poorly the first time.</p>
<p>For a student who knows that s/he will need remedial courses, doing them at a community college is a better choice, since it avoids using up valuable schedule space at the four year university with remedial courses.</p>
<p>We have kids attending college now, who one generation ago wouldn’t have been considered college material, and two generations ago might not have graduated high school. If this country had decent paying jobs for blue collar workers maybe we wouldn’t have such a glut of college students, especially kids who can’t handle the academic load. There’s nothing wrong with blue collar jobs.</p>
<p>I can tell you that my kid’s high school did not finish the book in the high school calculus class. There were a lot of concepts they just didn’t get to. I’m sure many of them are struggling in college calculus.</p>
<p>My son bought and studied the practice books for the SAT and SAT II stem subjects. It clearly pinpointed areas he needed to self-study, and he did it.</p>
<p>That’s a good point, ucbalumnus, but summer study at a community college might not be the best choice for a student who has other, more valuable things to do with that particular summer.</p>
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<p>It’s even more of a waste if a student gives up on math – and on all academic fields that involve math – because a particular portion of it wasn’t taught/learned well the first time around. I consider a second exposure to the same material to be a far better choice than a decision like “I would love to major in economics [or physics or computer science or accounting or whatever], but I’m going to have to choose something else because my understanding of math is too shaky.” Wouldn’t it be better for such a student to firm up his/her knowledge of basic math concepts and be able to study the subject that he or she wants?</p>
<p>Personal note: My son, who failed UMCP’s math placement exam and had to take precalculus over, went on to major in computer science, get a master’s degree in that subject, and work in software engineering. For him, correcting his math deficiencies worked. Isn’t this part of what education is supposed to be about?</p>
<p>My youngest son is a business student…his school gives a placement exam to all incoming students in the business school. The curriculum requires calculus and statistics. We were talking with our son’s advisor when we ran in to him at the local Starbucks…the day before the students had taken the placement exam, and he had spent the previous evening reviewing them and the tentative schedules the students had made out for him to review and approve.</p>
<p>He was shocked at the number of students that did not place into the school’s calculus or even pre-calculus classes…he said that a lot of parents were going to be extremely unhappy because this could put students behind up to a full year on fulfilling the curriculum. Calculus was a co-requisite for a lot of the other business classes, such as economics, etc.</p>
<p>Course sequences can usually be tweaked to accommodate such issues. My son was able to tweak his schedule so that he graduated on time despite the need to retake precalculus even though he was a computer science major, and computer science is more math-dependent than business.</p>
<p>If the student’s schedule can’t be tweaked, the ultimate solution (though drastic) is to take a leave of absence, take the math courses at a local college while working during the leave, and then return to full-time college. This means graduating a semester or a year later than scheduled, but it is much cheaper than paying for more than 8 semesters of full-time study.</p>
<p>Marian, you are exactly right. My son’s school is a pricey private, and advisor was as much worried about dealing with the parents as the students that morning! </p>
<p>He said that schedules could be re-arranged to a certain degree but it might make future semesters very difficult for these students. For example, calculus is a co-requisite for economics and a pre-requisite for accounting (because of the analysis required), and completion of the basic accounting sequence is required for a lot of the management classes, etc.</p>
<p>Not the answer a lot of parents wanted to hear… especially as a lot of the kids had very high high school grades in math etc…and apparently either the curriculum in the high school was not truly rigorous, or else there was severe grade inflation.</p>
<p>So who moved the cheese? High schools not being rigorous enough with college prep kids or colleges expecting more out of freshman than what they are accepting?</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone moved the cheese. I think the problem has always been there. But in the past, colleges just let kids cope (or flunk) on their own. More and more, nowadays, they’re using placement tests to identify weaknesses in preparation at the very beginning of college, when they’re a lot easier to correct than they would be when the student is already deeply into a major.</p>
<p>If you listened to the veteran Profs(teaching from the early 1970’s or before) I’ve read/chatted with…they’d say K-12…including high school not being rigorous enough. And they’d also cite how they’ve had to DUMB DOWN their own intro/intermediate level classes at the behest of the administration/chair to maintain/increase their retention/5-year graduation rate. </p>
<p>If you listened to some parents…especially those from areas with mediocre/abysmal school systems…they’d say colleges have been expecting more of incoming freshmen and cite the skyrocketing GPA/SAT requirements.</p>
<p>The placement tests divide the students into two groups - those who received adequate prepartion and those who did not. In effect, these tests cut the cheese.</p>