Colleges across the country are grappling with the same problem as academic setbacks from the pandemic follow students to campus. At many universities, engineering and biology majors are struggling to grasp fractions and exponents. More students are being placed into pre-college math, starting a semester or more behind for their majors, even if they get credit for the lower-level classes.
Colleges largely blame the disruptions of the pandemic, which had an outsize impact on math. Reading scores on the national test known as NAEP plummeted, but math scores fell further, by margins not seen in decades of testing. Other studies find that recovery has been slow.
There’s a weird amount of accepted anti intellectualism that specifically applied to math, and I’ve never understood it.
Most people have a hard time grasping concepts as simple as compounding interests, which is an incredibly important concept if you want to either save money or not go into ridiculous amounts of credit card debt. You use algebra every single day, doing thing as simple as shopping. People just don’t realize it.