it turns out, middle and high school students are having most of the fun, building their erector sets and dropping eggs into water to test the first law of motion. The excitement quickly fades as students brush up against the reality of what David E. Goldberg, an emeritus engineering professor, calls “the math-science death march.” Freshmen in college wade through a blizzard of calculus, physics and chemistry in lecture halls with hundreds of other students. And then many wash out.
Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree. That increases to as much as 60 percent when pre-medical students, who typically have the strongest SAT scores and high school science preparation, are included, according to new data from the University of California at Los Angeles. That is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors.
For educators, the big question is how to keep the momentum being built in the lower grades from dissipating once the students get to college.
This was a problem when I was an undergraduate from 1978-1982 (and, yes, I am a science major [chemistry]). Read it all–KSH.
Physics? Not a problem. Chemistry? No sweat. Calculus, on the other hand… That was my brick wall (three times!) and why I’m not a geologist now.
It sounds to me as if part of the problem is in high school teaching, and hence in part the disparity with other nations where probably the high school teaching is more rigorous. Here in the UK university engineering faculties have gone public to complain about the fact that they have to start off with special classes in remedial math, even although most of the students will have attained high grades in school examinations.
Calculus and Organic Chemistry did for me. Switched majors and got a Masters in History, went into the Army and then Law school.
The problem most likely is lousy science teachers in college. I found that to be the case with my education. It’s kind of hard to learn classical mechanics in a class of over 100 physics and chemistry majors when the professor is interested in his research, not in teaching undergraduates. It’s also kind of difficult to understand Maxwell’s equations in your electricity & magnetism class when the Math department curriculum for physical science majors hasn’t even gotten to differential equations yet. At my undergraduate university the attitude was “you’re on your own – sink or swim.”
Unfortunately, some of the worst (and a select few of the best) teachers I had were in Math and physical sciences classes.
A colleague once asked me why I majored in Nuclear Engineering. I said, “Because I could.” He heartily agreed. The reality for me was that I’d never really had to work before in my life until I got to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1980. And honestly, if I hadn’t thought I needed the engineering degree in order to pay my student loans back, I don’t know if I would have gutted it out for four years getting C’s after a lifetime of A’s.
This article captures pretty well the sort of nerdy boot-camp mentality that has always been the stock-in-trade of schools like my alma mater. We always felt superior to the losers at MIT since we got actual grades freshman year while they were taking everything pass/fail. But frankly, it’s a crappy way to go to college and I disliked engineering school intensely, however proudly I wear the badge now.
I agree with the idea of finding ways to more effectively engage students…and yet I can’t help feeling like a veteran reacting to the idea of a kinder, gentler Marine Corps. If I were going to gripe about the engineering curriculum (I don’t know how much of a meat grinder science and math majors are), I’d say that it’s main problem is that it packs a professional degree into a measly four years, meaning that students don’t have time to get much in the way of a well-rounded education. We got to take one – count ’em – humanities/social science class per semester. Much better would be to cut out some of the math and spread the basics out over the undergraduate years along with english, business, and H/SS classes (I haven’t done an integral in 25 years but I write reports every week), and have students get their concentration (mechanical, chemical, nuclear, etc.) in grad school. Regardless, there’s no substitute for doing the hard work of learning math and science.
I also wonder if some of the “softer” majors aren’t easier because they’re not taken as seriously in this society. A topic for another time, I suppose.
I remember a drastically tough year as an undergrad — four lab sciences and calculus — and I was on the football team. The football got dropped in a hurry.
Previously a very fast reader, the physics textbook drove me down from nearly 1000 wpm to something under 100, not counting having to go back and re-read the dense parts. My physics prof, Benny Wissler, would have done any Marine DI proud. He made us learn it.
I never got back to anything like the same reading speed, but 40 years after grad school I can still do some nuclear radiation equations in my head. Needless to say, I find media treatment of science topics rather infuriating, and that’s on a good day.
The emphasis has been to push kids into math and science. Society and the education system emphasize job openings, need, good salaries, yada-yada-yada, but few people have heart-to-heart talks with the kids to see if this is what they WANT to do, where their talent lies, and if a lifetime of logic, numbers, and data will be fulfilling for them. For some students, the answers to the questions will be “YES!” but for a lot of others, the answers will be “no.”
When they get to college — and this happened to my son — they realize that it isn’t at all what they were led to expect. Yes, the work is hard, and they were told that, but the financial rewards and jobs aren’t necessarily there. My son’s engineering advisor told him frankly that he would have more career opportunities and ways to use his skills with an IT systems management degree from the college of business than he would with a computer engineering degree from the engineering department. With computer engineering, he said he would be sitting in a cubicle writing code, if he could even get hired to do that since companies are favoring the foreign engineers who will work for much less and sit in their cubicles in better spirits.
Believe it or not, there’s nothing wrong with being an English major, a history major, an art major, etc., but kids these days are made to think there is. So, they dutifully declare a math or science major and many find out they’re miserable. Unfortunately, many will flunk out or struggle to change their major and add more time and debt to their college experience. I did English communications, political science, and philosophy, and went back to complete my teaching credentials and graduate work. I was qualified for a variety of fields. The humanities, social sciences, arts, and the like don’t have to be the cause for chronic unemployment, as they’re often portrayed.
When I was teaching and watched them pump so much money, equipment, and time into focusing on math and science, I pointed out that all of this was useless if the kids couldn’t read. People don’t want to hear it but it’s true — most of our secondary public school students aren’t reading at grade level. Something begins to happen around the 6th Grade when reading skills drop off and the gap widens through high school. While all of the emphasis is on putting together robot kits and doing fun experiments, English, arts, and history classes, in particular, are laughed off as frivolous and unimportant. Great care is now taken to attract science and math teachers but they’ll throw football coaches who need to teach a couple of classes into history and, increasingly, English. It’s a disaster.
Kudos to those who have a gift for math and science but it’s not for everyone. Nor should it be. Sorry, but a future without great literature, profound philosophy, beautiful and inspiring art and music is depressing. We’re already suffering the soul-sapping effects of science and math practitioners increasingly being unfettered by pesky things such as ethics and morality. Considering that an increasing segment of the population is functionally illiterate and cannot comprehend and synthesize information for common decisions they have to make, we’re in trouble. I am far less concerned that many people can’t solve a quadratic equation than I am that people cannot properly read and comprehend documents they are signing. There will always be limits on how many skills deficits technology and gadgetry can cover for people.
The article and the comments so far have reminded me of my undergrad days too. However, I never was a science major, so the person I have in mind was my beloved college roommate. As an ROTC scholarship holder, he knew he was going to be an Army officer, no matter what he majored in. And I quickly lost track of all the various majors he tried out.
I do remember, however, that he started out in Physics, but dropped it after just one semester, when he discovered that it was considered the hardest major on campus (back then at Wheaton). Among other things, he tried Psychology, and Literature, before finishing as an Ancient Languages major. He definitely took more courses in the Humanities than in the Sciences.
But during six long years serving as an artillery officer in Germany, he used his spare time in the evenings to take the science courses he’d missed in college. To my surprise, he decided to get out of the military and try to get into med school. And lo and behold, he scored very well on his MCAT’s and got in. Today, he’s been a doctor (specialist in Internal Med) for over two decades, and just loves it. (And presumably, all his training as an undergrad in Latin helped him in med school).
So I guess there’s always hope…
David Handy+
What I have found, tutoring my eldest is that science and math courses have gotten VERY much harder in the 30 years since I left college. Her basic 101 level physics course was given over a summer, and crammed more information than my honors college physics course, given over a year. Her basic chemistry course given over a semester taught everything in both my inorganic chemistry and physical chemistry courses taught over a year. Furthermore, while I did have lecture halls with 300 students in them, I also had TA led study sessions on a daily basis when I was in college, and there are no TAs now. Anybody who needs help is supposed to sign up for a tutorial session 3 weeks away, which means that they are 3 weeks further behind by that time. Otherwise they can see if they can grab the professor for 10 minutes. My professors had gobs of office hours when I was in school. They were expected to teach, not publish research reports. I was in poor Dr. Schluter’s office weekly for half an hour when I was studying physics, and he was SO patient and kind with me. Her physics professor simply does email, which requires that one understand enough to be able to frame the question.
And me, I was a science major. My kid is just getting her science requirements out of the way as part of a history major that did not require science back in my day. This is craziness. My jaw drops at the expectations laid on these kids today. I’m not sure I could have passed and I was a good student, who did nothing but study, and who loved science. Furthermore, when we say that American kids today are uncompetitive, compared to India and China, their kids take science over a decent period of time, and have tutors.
Just increasing the requirements and saying “jump this high” is not the way to make Americans competitive in the sciences. It is simply the way to destroy lives and careers.
While I’d like to believe that it doesn’t matter what you do, here in the UK, at least, arts and humanities degrees don’t, in fact, land the jobs as easily as the numerate ones. My oldest son (math degree from Oxford) waltzed into a decent job in software engineering; he applied to two companies and the second one phoned him as he was on his way to an interview with the first one. My second son (English Literature degree this summer, also from Oxford) is still hunting for someone who’ll employ him. And while this is mere anecdote, the statistics do support their experience.
“Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)â€
I graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 1962 with a degree in physics.
And I regret every minute that I spent at that school. The curriculum for science and engineering students at RPI was based upon a rigorous knowledge and application of calculus and other areas of mathematics, that is, a fluency in calculus and other areas of math.
Competence in mathematics is like language competence for those who will use math as a means of learning and deeply comprehending difficult areas of science and engineering. Just as a student of French Studies or French Literature would be expected to be competent in the French language, a student of science or engineering should be expected to have/achieve a level of competence in mathematics.
Just as a French student who has only learned the rudiments of French (e.g. “See Jacques run.,†“See the dog jump.â€) can’t be expected to grasp the subtleties of French poetry you can‘t expect a student who hasn‘t ‘internalized‘ the real meanings of the language of science/engineering to do well in such studies.
You can’t expect a student who is not fluent in calculus to ‘keep up’ with a student who is already fluent in calculus. And as time goes on, the gap between these two students will only increase.
Well, RPI did just that when a was a student there. An d from my vantage point, the school didn’t seem to care a single bit. I perceived and still perceive RPI’s attitude towards its student as ‘sink or swim and the school doesn’t give a d**m about either outcome.’
The first responsibility of a school like RPI is to insure the mathematical competency of its entering students and to track that competency as the student progresses through school’s course curriculum.
This should start with a careful evaluation of the entering freshman class. Students who have not successfully completed courses in pre-calculus should be required to complete such a course before taking calculus.
Students with no exposure to calculus should not be placed in the same class with students who have had the equivalent of several semesters of calculus and they shouldn’t be graded against each other.
Yes, there is the absolute standard of either ‘you know it or you don’t know it,’ but there is also the obligation of an institution of higher learning to exhibit a concern for and an expertise in the learning process and where its students should be placed in that process.
If you do not follow the above precepts then you will definitely cause intelligent and enthusiastic students to fail and be dropped, to quit, or to underachieve (that is, not perform at their actual/natural level of capability).
And I witnessed plenty of that at RPI. I know of one student, a physics major who dropped out and lost his scholarship during his freshman year, re-entered the following year and again dropped out. And then entered Cornell University, majored in electrical engineering ( a difficult major) and graduated with honors from Cornell. There are more anecdotes than these available. I also worked with a woman whose husband obtained his undergraduate degree and then his doctorate at RPI and who developed a strong dislike for the school.
My recommendation to those with family members wishing to study science or engineering as undergraduates has been to stay away from schools like RPI and instead seek out a small school with a solid science or engineering department so that they can concentrate on developing a deep-seated fluency in the science and math that supports their major area of study.
The “name schools†are just that, names. When a student is exposed to a “name†professor, it is usually in a huge lecture hall. Those who have experienced a useful and beneficial and personal exposure to a “name†professor are among the fortunate few.