Gary Stocker of College Viability argues that U.S. universities are graduating students who can't do basic math like fractions and percentages. He blames pandemic gaps, a shift away from calculation in teaching, and universities' financial incentive to keep enrollment high rather than fix the problem.
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Let's go beyond the college brochure. I'm Gary Stocker from College Viability. They are the best and the brightest, or at least that's what the diplomas say. They have walked the high school stages, donned the caps and the gowns, and moved into the ivy-covered dorms of our nation's universities. They are college material. But lately, a strange and quiet crisis has been unfolding behind the closed doors of that college lecture hall. You see, professors across the country, from state schools to the most prestigious institutions, are walking up to their chalkboards, looking out over the class, and finding a room full of blank stairs. Not because the calculus is too hard, not because the physics is too complex, and not because it's an 8 AM class. No, it's because the students, the students can't do basic math. We're talking fractions, we're talking about decimals, we're talking about the kind of arithmetic that used to be mastered by a 10-year-old with a number 2 pencil or a basic calculator. The universities will tell you it's a learning gap. They blame the pandemic. They blame the students. They blame the new way of teaching that prioritized feeling the numbers over actually calculating them. So what is a modern university to do. Well, instead of asking how a student can be college ready without knowing how to divide, without knowing how to multiply or calculate percentages, without knowing how to measure the area of a rectangle, they've decided to change the definition of college. They are pouring millions into remedial courses, classes that teach high school or maybe even middle school math At university campuses, and sometimes, sometimes at university prices, they are softening the requirements. They are passing students who can't solve for X because they don't want to lose the tuition that is Y. The brochures promise an elite education and a competitive edge in the global marketplace. They talk about innovation and engineering the future, but beyond the college brochure is that we are sending a generation into a high-tech world equipped with a university degree but without the mathematical skills of even a 5th grader. The colleges are getting the checks, the students are getting the credits, but when the real world asks them to do the math, the numbers, the numbers, they just don't add up. And now we've gone beyond the college brochure.
