I was in high school in the late 70’s, when basic geometry and algebra 1 and 2 were commonly followed by pre-calculus and then, if you were in an upper-middle-class school with AP-type courses, calculus. Thus, if you were even on a regular college-prep course in an average high school you should have been ready for calculus 1 to start your freshman year of college. No math or science major credit would be awarded for anything less than that.
Since then AP has become much more common, but on the lower end, endless terms of “college algebra” (which are no such thing and should make one think of linear algebra) seem to have become the norm.
A math major (associate degree program) at my local community college would start at calculus and take a total of 4 semesters of calculus & Analytic Geometry . Anything less, college algebra, trig and or basic statistics will not count towards the major. The prerequsites for calc. are college algebra and trig, if you don’t have them in HS or score high enough on the SAT you start there and turn a 2 year program into a three year program.
The problem in the US is not the colleges, it’s the public school systems, they don’t teach math, they don’t impress onthe students the need to know math, they pass kids that don’t have any math skills. But then there are those kids who for some reason love math. This group would include my two kids and they have shamed me into learning math, which by the way I’m going to be a student of for the rest of my life. Talk about an overreaction!