The Bleemer and Mehta paper states, "The gap in the economic value of college majors earned by underrepresented minority (URM) and non-URM graduates has increased more than three-fold since
the mid-1990s, with Black and Hispanic graduates earning degrees that have 3 percent lower average earnings than those received by their white and Asian peers." Unless I missed it, neither the Brookings nor the Society of Actuaries asked questions or explained why some students don't meet some standards. What is happening generationally in grade, middle, and high schools that may cause URM's to be less represented? Many Illinois schools produce URMs by the thousands - 90 to 100% of students not performing at grade. Consequently, because of K-12 results, I suspect universities are seeing a smaller pool of good candidates, and generally, the pool is less qualified. Now, Brookings expects universities to fix this by liberalizing admission policies.
I will likely come back to this -- I didn't mention this, but pre-STUMP (and post-STUMP) I wrote about education issues quite a bit on my livejournal (yes, really):
Some of it is on the "MATH NEEDS CHICKS" line, and I will not address that now. The sex disparities are only very large at the tippy-top of math-related fields.
But it's much worse when you've got the situation as Chicago's public schools, where Wirepoints has detailed very well that basic skills aren't being achieved in K-12, forget about the higher education levels that I was talking about in this podcast. As you mention, URMs are not performing at basic levels.
It's kind of tough to major in math when you are having trouble with the equation of a line. I taught Calculus, as I mentioned in the podcast. The Calculus class that's used as a weed-out class for many STEM majors. I didn't tell the anecdote of the students (this was in the 1990s, btw) who claimed not to know the formula for the area of a circle. In the first semester Calc class for the STEM majors. This is in the premier engineering school in North Carolina. (NCSU)
To be blunt, the top STEM students at NCSU, even back in the 1990s, weren't taking 1st semester Calculus. They all placed out of it (like I did). Many/most of the students in my class probably got diverted into CHASS - the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Even if they got good grades in my class, many of them obviously didn't understand the subject well. They had huge weaknesses in math at much lower levels than calculus, and they weren't going to get fixed.
And that's at a much higher level than not being able to get through Algebra I in high school.
Mary Pat, I believe we agree that the broader issue you raised isn't about calculus or being a math major. I believe the underlying question you raised (like Wirepoints) is about what's happening to students who are in the middle - close to the mean, median, and mode. My interest is how their K-12 experience could disqualify them from the future they see and want. For this, I place 80% of the fault on the deterioration of numerous systems. College applicants are, in large numbers, being rejected because their K-12 experience harmed them forever. This could lead to their personal "Aha" moment. As they experience rejection in the application process, they may reflect on what they experienced and also how they can decide differently going forward.
The Bleemer and Mehta paper states, "The gap in the economic value of college majors earned by underrepresented minority (URM) and non-URM graduates has increased more than three-fold since
the mid-1990s, with Black and Hispanic graduates earning degrees that have 3 percent lower average earnings than those received by their white and Asian peers." Unless I missed it, neither the Brookings nor the Society of Actuaries asked questions or explained why some students don't meet some standards. What is happening generationally in grade, middle, and high schools that may cause URM's to be less represented? Many Illinois schools produce URMs by the thousands - 90 to 100% of students not performing at grade. Consequently, because of K-12 results, I suspect universities are seeing a smaller pool of good candidates, and generally, the pool is less qualified. Now, Brookings expects universities to fix this by liberalizing admission policies.
I will likely come back to this -- I didn't mention this, but pre-STUMP (and post-STUMP) I wrote about education issues quite a bit on my livejournal (yes, really):
https://meep.livejournal.com/1838810.html
Some of it is on the "MATH NEEDS CHICKS" line, and I will not address that now. The sex disparities are only very large at the tippy-top of math-related fields.
But it's much worse when you've got the situation as Chicago's public schools, where Wirepoints has detailed very well that basic skills aren't being achieved in K-12, forget about the higher education levels that I was talking about in this podcast. As you mention, URMs are not performing at basic levels.
It's kind of tough to major in math when you are having trouble with the equation of a line. I taught Calculus, as I mentioned in the podcast. The Calculus class that's used as a weed-out class for many STEM majors. I didn't tell the anecdote of the students (this was in the 1990s, btw) who claimed not to know the formula for the area of a circle. In the first semester Calc class for the STEM majors. This is in the premier engineering school in North Carolina. (NCSU)
To be blunt, the top STEM students at NCSU, even back in the 1990s, weren't taking 1st semester Calculus. They all placed out of it (like I did). Many/most of the students in my class probably got diverted into CHASS - the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Even if they got good grades in my class, many of them obviously didn't understand the subject well. They had huge weaknesses in math at much lower levels than calculus, and they weren't going to get fixed.
And that's at a much higher level than not being able to get through Algebra I in high school.
Mary Pat, I believe we agree that the broader issue you raised isn't about calculus or being a math major. I believe the underlying question you raised (like Wirepoints) is about what's happening to students who are in the middle - close to the mean, median, and mode. My interest is how their K-12 experience could disqualify them from the future they see and want. For this, I place 80% of the fault on the deterioration of numerous systems. College applicants are, in large numbers, being rejected because their K-12 experience harmed them forever. This could lead to their personal "Aha" moment. As they experience rejection in the application process, they may reflect on what they experienced and also how they can decide differently going forward.