Understand math,understand the Universe (except Women)
That means they have had > $120,000 spent on them by twelfth grade. AND THEY CAN'T COUNT!!
Fire every teacher and start over (with vouchers if you want them to learn anything).
Just “deem” kids college graduates upon birth.
Well...at least the ones that survive birth.
It is awful thay they were forced into remedial courses in college. Would it not be better to avoid this stigma? Let them take the regular courses, fail them and let them be kicked out of college for subpar academic performance. But at least they are not stigmatized and humiliated.
If your basic education system, K-12, is turning out graduates that can not handle college level mathematics then you have only two viable solutions:
First, go back to the K-12 system and force it to produce graduates that have competence in college level mathematics, and I don't mean entry level course for a degree in math. But this would upset too many unionized teachers and their associated union overheads.
Or, you reduce the number of high school graduates seeking to enter college to just those who have passed college level entrance mathematics tests. But this would reduce the number of college professors and their associated union overheads.
Or, get rid of the union overheads and improve the level of education at both the K-12 and college levels.
But, then that ain't going to happen either - too many union jobs lost.
Printing diplomas on the back of cereal boxes will increase the “grad” rate, too.
Damn! I knew Art History was the ticket.
What college major would you not need math?
I was a phych/poli sci major and had to take a year of statistics. I needed college algebra to be able to take that class, high school algebra would not have cut it.
Do they think that Americans aren’t testing low enough and need to be brought down even more?
Frankly, I have an idea- separation of school and state.
Why not just sell a degree? See? No academic requirements!
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!
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.
Let’s eliminate all required courses. Just take 42 electives. Oh, is that too much? Perhaps 21 electives to the Baccalaureate.
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.
Where I work if you don’t understand at least the basics of calculus (integrals and derivatives), if you don’t live and breath algebra, and if you cannot do boolean logic in your sleep - don’t even apply.