Posted on 08/23/2012 5:31:40 PM PDT by wintertime
HetchingerEd is offering a rather radical proposal to increase the number of American students who graduate college: dump math. Specifically, the argument is that since many college students, a disproportionately large number of them of an African-American or Hispanic descent, are unprepared to tackle college-level mathematics courses, they might be stymied by a requirement that all those receiving a degree from a particular institution must pass the freshman version of the course.
A fifth of students entering a four-year college don’t have the needed math skills to pass the course and are forced into remediation. Nearly half of community college freshmen find themselves in a similar situation. This delay makes it much less likely that they will be able to graduate on time — or graduate at all. Only a tenth of community college students who take remedial college courses finish their college programs in 3 years, and only a third of four-year students complete theirs in 6 years.
Those statistics come from a report on remediation published in April by Complete College America. The report’s numbers suggest that math requirements may be the primary obstacle to graduation for many students: In many states, a larger percentage of students enroll in remedial math courses than in remedial English courses.
These numbers ignited a debate among education experts with many calling for better algebra preparedness in high school, while an increasingly loud minority suggesting that colleges do away with universal math requirements altogether.
(Excerpt) Read more at educationnews.org ...
Hmmm, my daughter started college at 13 and got an A in the only math class for her English major requirement. High school has turned into all day baby sitting and pc/ sex/ don’t do drugs propaganda. When my oldest daughter was attending community college, her courses were a joke. My middle schooler could have gotten As in them. Basic common sense- the cream floats to the top. College has turned into high school in a wealthy neighborhood. If the students can’t do the work, they shouldn’t be there...oh wait, then there wouldn’t be student loans. Follow the money....
As my elder brother (who is an engineer) points out, the amount of math you have take for a given degree is often directly proportional to the income potential you’ll have after you graduate. Math is the underpinning of the sciences, medicine, and business, and plays a role in a lot of other fields - psychology has its statistics classes, the school of architecture at my alma mater had a killer “structures” class, etc.
If anything, we need more math in college. And I say that as someone who, frankly, struggled in the subject at times.
We’re already suffering the effects of people not knowing math. I’m not talking about calculus, or even algebra, but basic arithmetic.
A woman was hired in a management position at my company, where part of her job is pricing our inventory based on supply & demand to maximize profits. We are a property management company, so this involves pricing rental spaces, and you must do market comparisons. Since you can’t compare apples to oranges, it’s standard practice to compare the rent per square foot, instead of the total market rent.
Now, this woman was new, so a fellow employee who had been handling this job sent her the data on our square footage and rents, separately. She responded to that by asking him what the rent per square foot amounts were. So, she had the numerator, and the denominator, but she could not concieve of how to determine the ratio of those two amounts. She. a college graduate, could not do simple division, even with a spreadsheet sitting in front of her to do the work for her!
And they can knock you back on your axis!
Most women have little to no understanding of math, so it all balances out. Well, not quite, but let’s make believe.
You did what?! You barbarian! You animal! Have you no decency?
I took out my old Sterling plastic slide rule and showed it to a class of pre-calculus students and asked them what they thought it was. No one had a clue.
You’re correct. I attended college in the late ‘90s, and it was going that way even then. I tested out of the basic required math classes, but even starting a few tiers up, we were just reviewing stuff that had been covered sophomore/junior year in high school.
I ended up taking the advanced Physics and Calculus classes that were tailored for Engineering students, just out of boredom.
And airbrushed models are imaginary.
I’ve worked with one person who had a Theatre History major, and another who majored in Archaelogy, with a focus on ancient Rome. Neither of them ended up doing anything in those fields, though the archaeologist now runs a side business selling trendy second hand stuff, including salvaged building fixtures and ornaments, so I guess you could almost consider that related.
“I took out my old Sterling plastic slide rule and showed it to a class of pre-calculus students and asked them what they thought it was. No one had a clue.”
Bwaaaa!
Scoped Ruger Redhawk 44 mag. Blew it to splinters at about 80 yards! Took a couple shots to hit it though. But the satisfaction factor was great! Did the same with that cheap Homelite weed trimmer. Now that was serious fun! Unfortunately, that wonderful pistol was lost in a boating accident! Ya know?
The time for outrage passed about 30 years ago, when even the cakey-est Calculus requirements were dropped almost everywhere. (Little extra inside joke there for the mathematicians.)
The math requirements at most universities are already a joke. Most liberal arts and HDev programs have no requirement more rigorous than "finite math," which is essentially a pre-algebra class, or "symbolic logic" which is, well, reasoning.
The introductory stat courses specifically created for social science majors have even been watered down to the point that the computer does all the math.
Even those silly requirements are often waived by the Dean's office on the basis of the flimsiest excuses: "Quantitative Cognitive Dysfunction" (actually sworn to by a psychiatrist) is one I've personally seen. Work "requirements" are also used. Again, a summer data entry job allowed as "vocational computer skill adequate to satisfy coursework" is one I've seen myself.
Keep in mind that these laughable excuses are accepted as a substitute for coursework that most students are supposed to be capable of in sixth or seventh grade. [That's one hand plus one or two fingers for those of you with Quantitative Cognitive Dysfunction; or if that's too "cerebral" for you, roughly the age you started playing with yourself.]
One of the reasons no one understands economics is that so few understand basic arithmetic. I'm not talking about math. I'm talking about addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. When one corrects the disparity in earning for education in quantified science, programming, engineering, or business math proficiency, almost all of the current "alarming" income disparity "magically" disappears. Telling those people that they may now have a college degree will not change the underlying pathology. They're functionally (sometimes totally) innumerate, and an advanced technological society has no place for them except as dishwashers, Walmart greeters and burger flippers, which means it has no place for the uneducated at all.
I seriously doubt most politicians even understand the difference between a million, a billion, and a trillion. I know our pResident doesn't.
Meanwhile, those who are actually receiving a useful education are increasingly subsidizing these deadbeats. Major universities are now charging from $1000 to $5000 per year additional tuition to business, engineering and science majors. It's a disgrace.
A college degree is an expensive piece of paper. If the students getting them are empty headed dumb asses(which half or more probably are these days), nothing is accomplished. Most of them go on to take ‘placeholder’/HR type jobs in corporate America or government workers that produce nothing. I’ve seen this first hand, and it’s no wonder other nations are passing us by. I’ve seen IT departments where there might be two or three people out of 20 that actually know anything, and the rest just run their mouths all day, schedule meetings, and have meetings about meetings, while all of them make things more difficult on those few that actually know what the hell they are doing.
Be thankful you were an architecture student. We engineers had to take dynamics next. Now all that stuff is rotating at 2500 rpm - what are the forces now!?
You are absolutely right! If more of the citizenry understood compounding interest and exponents, there would be torches and pitchforks in DC, and most every statehouse in America. When interest rates go up, they will be in for a bigtime crash course when we're spending $700 billion per year to 'service' our debt, while those EBT cards and socialist security are cut back.
Let’s eliminate all required courses. Just take 42 electives. Oh, is that too much? Perhaps 21 electives to the Baccalaureate.
I had enough when I hit the partial differential equations course.
If I were an employer these days, a college diploma would be THE LAST THING I’d want to see. The first thing I’d do is check for a pulse and then see if the applicant can actually “fog a mirror”. JMO
Too bad they didn’t teach Kenyan students math a few years ago.
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