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What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

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Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#131

Post by everybodyknows »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #28
Aurornis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war on admissions testing is one of the worst education trends. I couldn’t believe it when it was first proposed, but I was even more shocked when the trend started to spread. It does appear to be reversing a little bit in some places as schools realize they were fooled by people pushing ideology over data and results, but it’s going to take a while. For those who aren’t in the loop: There’s an ideological push t…

I wonder if college administrators are using discrimination as an excuse to decrease standards to increase number of students, which then increases their pay and job security. It is well known that not only did number of young people peak, but also that outside of the top 20 or so, college is nowhere near worth the tuition prices. The only other option is for college administrators to be disturbingly stupid.

> increase number of students, which then increases their pay and job security ...

Someone who knows how the world works! Qui bene --

https://ucsdguardian.org/2025/09/29/uc-regents-greenlight-uc...

> The expansion anticipates 13,600 new students in the next 15 years

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#132

Post by vacuity »

Aurornis wrote: post #84
FatherOfCurses wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gives off "I Am Very Smart" vibes. I was in a gifted program in grades 5-7, stopped going mainly because I had to travel to another school to attend and it was inconvenient. I didn't "suffer" being in classes with folks who weren't at my level. The teaching staff did a great job and I never felt like I was being shortchanged. My undiagnosed ADHD means I goofed around a lot, but several of my friends told me afte…

Great that it worked for you. I believe everyone should have the choice. However, please don’t force your experience to be the only allowable experience for others. If some students want to take advanced classes, we should let them. Refusing to allow students to learn at a faster rate is insanity.

As someone else mentioned somewhere in this thread, what about public schooling prevents students from learning by themselves? In my experience, the best students I know generally didn't become so due to public or private schooling, but simply personal interest and drive (and perhaps talent, but that is also school-independent).

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#133

Post by vacuity »

FatherOfCurses wrote: post #72
jackallis wrote: post #4

".....In 2020, system leaders voted to phase standardized-test scores out of admissions decisions. They argued that the tests worsened racial divides and unfairly privileged wealthy students. But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...."

Standardized tests are reliable predictors of students' abilities to solve standardized tests, which is not necessarily a 1-1 correlation with aptitude in that field. It is much like how your ability to sort a binary tree in a development interview isn't a 1-1 correlation with your ability to effectively upgrade your production website's Angular to the latest version. My wife works in private college admissions couns…

Standardized testing isn't remotely perfect, but I think I have grounds to say that it is far better than many alternatives. In this case, standardized testing would've caught the problem before admissions.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#134

Post by vacuity »

ajross wrote: post #15
netsharc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just read 5 words into the article and come to this conclusion? The article that the authors researched and told us it's been going on since before the pandemic? Ah, their next article should be about the confidence of fools...

I did! Here's the quote: > But the national trend is very clear: America’s students are getting much worse at math. The decline started about a decade ago and sharply accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. So I, a "fool", read that and think: Hm... well if the article isn't giving numbers I'm going to take the "sharp acceleration" as a statement about magnitude and clearly infer that the pandemic is at fault. A…

When the education policy is less about "how do we teach math" and moreso grade inflation, I don't think it's strange.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#135

Post by vacuity »

sevensor wrote: post #68
ajross wrote: post #3

Embarassing Occam's failure in the lede: > For the past several years, America has been using its young people as lab rats in a sweeping, if not exactly thought-out, education experiment. Good grief. No, it's just the pandemic. The kids whose middle school years got disrupted are behind on skills taught in middle school. Can you squint and blame other things? Sure. But experimental education policies are hardly new i…

It’s a shame other commenters are so busy waging culture war that this explanation is being minimized and dismissed. I’m married to a high school teacher, and not only is there a super obvious cohort that spent 8th-9th grade playing Fortnite instead of learning algebra, their successors are doing a lot better. Sure, the current cohort of college students needs remedial math. Let’s acknowledge the cause, offer them re…

Grade inflation seems to be the main long-term culprit. Lowered standards mean that any student that isn't incentivized for some other reason to learn math simply won't learn. I'm less enamored with the other explanations, such as technology distractions or relying on AI, but they probably play a small part too. You and GP seem very sure that, if the pandemic didn't happen, the decline in math skills wouldn't be happening to a significant degree, but the pandemic was a fast-forward.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#136

Post by insane_dreamer »

Ekaros wrote: post #59
giancarlostoro wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more time passes the more I hate publicly traded companies. I feel like the stock market rots companies.

Also the same seems to extend to things when private companies discussed. Nothing is enough you cannot be happy with company making million in post tax profit a year. Next year you must do two million, then 4 and 8 and so on... Even not attempting this is somehow failure for some people...

Not nearly to the same degree. It's easier for a privately held company to focus on long-term goals without CEOs having to hit quarterly targets set by external analysts (Wall Street).

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#137

Post by insane_dreamer »

NickC25 wrote: post #23
zecg wrote: post #10

> “Who is going to trust somebody who got a degree in airline engineering who doesn’t know how to think through a problem without a computer telling them the answer?” I think the answer is Boeing

Ironically enough, they just got a Pentagon contract for 6th generation fighters.

That's because Boeing is now a defense contractor that also happens to make commercial aircraft. Which is why being located in DC is important.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#138

Post by ajross »

vacuity wrote: post #135
sevensor wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a shame other commenters are so busy waging culture war that this explanation is being minimized and dismissed. I’m married to a high school teacher, and not only is there a super obvious cohort that spent 8th-9th grade playing Fortnite instead of learning algebra, their successors are doing a lot better. Sure, the current cohort of college students needs remedial math. Let’s acknowledge the cause, offer them re…

Grade inflation seems to be the main long-term culprit. Lowered standards mean that any student that isn't incentivized for some other reason to learn math simply won't learn. I'm less enamored with the other explanations, such as technology distractions or relying on AI, but they probably play a small part too. You and GP seem very sure that, if the pandemic didn't happen, the decline in math skills wouldn't be happ…

> Grade inflation seems to be the main long-term culprit

Is it though, or is that just what your ideological sense tells you? Like I'm trying to point out, if you take the pandemic shock out of the data set, there really isn't much to argue about here. US aggregate education results have never been great internationally, but haven't ever been moving particularly fast either and seem not to have been before the pandemic either.

There really is a woke-derangement-syndrome at work among the reactionary geek set these days. Teachers have always had funny ideas, and haven't broken kids yet. People need to relax.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#139

Post by Izkata »

Aurornis wrote: post #25
triceratops wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his goal to phase out gifted education programs Gifted education programs for kindergarten. I don't necessarily agree with that either but it's important to be accurate when talking about proposed policies. The man isn't talking about taking away AP algebra. Most kindergarteners still need to be told not to eat their boogers.

“Phase out” means gradually remove. Kindergarten is where the phase out starts. That’s how you phase something out. You don’t take it away from everyone all at once because that triggers outrage. You disallow it for new kindergarten students one season, then next year remove it from 1st grade so they can’t go into accelerated programs and so on. He explicitly uses the phrase “phase out” for this reason. Read more of…

Also, they used to start that young. My gradeschool in the 90s would identify gifted students in kindergarten and give parents the option to move them to SWAS (school-within-a-school) starting in first grade.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#140

Post by progbits »

ponector wrote: post #123
NiloCK wrote: post #48

> “Who is going to trust somebody who got a degree in airline engineering who doesn’t know how to think through a problem without a computer telling them the answer?” Years ago when I was working in education (Canadian public schools) our school board had a conference ahead of the school year. The keynote was an inclusive-ed researcher / consultant / speaker who told an anecdote of how they had successfully lobbied f…

Having learned math a lot in university, it is mostly useless knowledge outside of academia. Some basic calculus and logic is useful for sure, but overall, 98% of the math is needed just to be able to learn other math topics later.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-...
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