(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider”)
Is taking calculus overrated, or at least overvalued, by college admissions offices?
That question is at the heart of two reports issued this year by the non-profit group Just Equations in conjunction with the National Association for College Admissions Counseling. Just Equations “reconceptualizes the role of math in ensuring educational equity.”
The first report, “A New Calculus for College Admissions: How Policy, Practice, and Perceptions of High School Math Education Limit Equitable Access to College,” was issued in January, and examined the value that admissions officers place on a student taking calculus in high school. The second report, issued a couple of weeks ago, was a companion looking at how school and independent counselors view the same issue. In last week’s “Admissions Insider,” the co-authors of the two reports, Just Equations Executive Director Pamela Burdman and research associate Veronica Anderson, wrote an op-ed arguing that calculus acts as a gatekeeper for many admissions offices.
The Just Equations reports suggest that the love affair admissions offices have with calculus as a high school course is misplaced, serving as a barrier to students who attend the 50 percent of American high schools where calculus is not offered. It also argues that many students not planning to major in STEM fields would be better served by taking a course in statistics or data science rather than being herded into calculus.
The debate over the role that calculus plays in admission to college and preparation for college is a new battleground in the larger re-examination of college admission conventions and how they may impede equity. During the summer I wrote a column asking if it is time to re-think the admissions process, given that college admission may be a major contagion in teen mental health. We are in the midst of a potentially seismic shift in the role that admission tests play in the process. We have also seen recommendation letters questioned as an admission tool, and of course both legacy admission and race-based affirmative action are under attack.
The reports reveal a discrepancy in perceptions among high school counselors and college admission officers on the benefit of having taken calculus in the admissions process. 93 percent of the counselors surveyed believe that calculus improves a student’s chances of being admitted, compared with 53 percent of admission officers. At the same time 79 percent of admission officers believe that having had calculus in high school makes a student more likely to succeed in college.
The Just Equations reports argue that the reliance on calculus is an equity issue, given that only 16 percent of high school graduates in 2019 had calculus on their high school transcripts. Broken down by race, 46 percent of Asian-Americans and 18 percent of white students had calculus, compared with only 6 percent of Black students and 9 percent of Latinx students. The reports also point out that places like Harvard and Stanford don’t explicitly require calculus, and that back in 2012 the Mathematics Association of America and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics issued a joint position statement that taking calculus should not be the “ultimate goal” of the K-12 math curriculum.
ECA is always interested in probing broader underlying issues, and I think there are several in this debate.
The first is what mathematical preparation students need today to be educated citizens. Calculus has been the gold standard in the math curriculum, but does it promote mathematical literacy? Do today’s students need more training in data analysis and understanding how algorithms work? Is this an issue where what a student needs to be educated is not the same thing he or she needs to get into a competitive college?
Is the issue calculus (or “the calculus,” as it was called by Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who independently developed it), or is the issue the value of rigor? The 79 percent of admission officers who believe that having had calculus in high school makes college success more likely suggests it is the latter.
I reached out to Dr. Richard Light at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to ask about a statement I remember (or think I remember) from years ago that indicated that math professors at Harvard find that students have had calculus but don’t particularly have a good grasp of algebra. Does anyone else remember something like that? I thought it might have come from his book, Making the Most of College. He didn’t recall that or think it is true. He is a statistician by training, but he commented that a student taking calculus is a “proxy for being willing to tackle tough challenges.” He also observed that nearly all entering Harvard students have taken calculus.
Colleges may not require calculus, but that doesn’t mean they don’t prefer it. Calculus may not be as valuable for its own sake as it is as a reflection of strength of schedule. Is this an issue where what is equitable and what is predictive for success in college come into conflict?
On the equity front, the operative ethical principle in this instance is that you should never penalize someone for something they don’t have the ability to choose. Students who attend high schools where calculus is not offered can’t be held responsible for not having taken calculus. It is also the case that the path to being able to take calculus is often determined as early as middle school. We know that there are students who may not be developmentally ready to tackle Algebra 1 in middle school but may be able to handle complex math a couple of years later.
But what about students who attend schools where calculus is offered but haven’t taken it? I would be doing a disservice to my students who are able to handle calculus and aspire to a selective college if I advised them that they don’t need to take it. My flagship state university, one of the nation’s preeminent public universities, rarely admits one of my students who hasn’t made it to the second year of Advanced Placement Calculus.
One of the reasons for the perceived value of calculus may be the lack of viable alternatives. How many of us would argue that AP Statistics>AP Calculus or even that AP Statistics=AP Calculus? The most recent report indicated that only 5 percent of counselors recommend statistics as equal, although many said they wish they could. The growth of data science as a field is an encouraging step. Can we develop a data science or statistics course as rigorous and predictive of success as calculus?
The most interesting thing I found in the two reports was a quote from an unnamed dean of admissions at a selective, private university. He said that “Calculus is the gold standard that people in this business use as a shortcut.”
That led me to think about other admission shortcuts. One that rears its head annually at this time of year is the U.S. News college rankings. The rankings exist as a shortcut from a thoughtful comparison of the experience a student will receive at different places. The rankings aren’t about experience or fit, but rather random metrics that may or may not tell us something about the kind of education a student will receive. Some of those metrics, such as alumni giving, are themselves shortcuts for alumni satisfaction. Do alumni giving rates tell us about the quality of an institution or the sophistication of its advancement arm?
While on the subject of rankings, the big story last week was Columbia’s drop in ranking from 2nd to 18th following acknowledgement that the university had provided inaccurate data. That is clearly wrong on Columbia’s part, but does the corrected data justify the dramatic drop given that Columbia has ranked in the top ten for more than 20 years? Is U.S News arbitrarily punishing Columbia, or does this indicate that the distinctions among top 25 universities are miniscule? Does anyone think there are 17 national universities better than Columbia? If Bob Morse would care to take me through the math, I’d be happy to do a column making transparent how the Columbia fall happened.
Test scores are shortcuts. So is the AP brand, providing a shortcut for evaluating strength of curriculum. Selective colleges want us to believe that admit rates are a shortcut for educational quality, and graduates’ earnings are used as a shortcut for return on investment, despite the fact that the most important benefits of a college education are intangible. Are there other college admission related shortcuts?
Do we need to get rid of the reliance on calculus or do we need to get rid of admission shortcuts?