America's poor math skills raise alarms over global competitiveness

[Anonymous]

No Math skills? Not a problem. Indians, Chinese and Bangladeshis are happy to come here to work.

Just make sure that you have law and order in control. Also, lock up these gun nuts!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of kids may be bad at math, but we do not have a dearth of CS majors. And you have to pass those math classes as part of your CS major.

China and Russia have 3x and 1.5x respectively the population as the US, so of course they will be graduating more students in STEM. Russia's economy is also crap, so even if they are graduating a lot of STEM majors, it sure isn't helping their country.

Russia's population is approximately 144M which is less than half of US population (340M) and yet they produce many many more engineers.

Good for them and the great products those engineers are producing. If there is one thing I look for when making a purchasing decision, it's the Made in Russia stamp of quality

Also, Russia has a much bigger math problem they need to solve. Combine an average life expectancy of 57 with a very low birthrate...and you have a country that is literally killing itself. The prediction is for Russia's population to decrease by nearly 40% by 2100.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are plenty of quality engineers coming out of schools like Michigan State, University of Iowa, and 200+ other that are not open admission, but are also not highly rejective.

My main point is that the vast majority of the Chinese engineer/STEM grads are graduating from the equivalent of correspondence schools. Articles like this always just grab the headline.

+1. And engineering graduates from GMU, ODU, UMBC, VCU, and other public universities also are very capable.

We are very happy to hire those ECE/CS graduates at my workplace, simply because they do very good work. My workplace does not need MechE, Civil, or AeroE graduates, but I expect employers also are happy with those graduates from those kinds of engineering schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The nation needs people who are good at math, employers say, in the same way motion picture mortals need superheroes. They say America’s poor math performance isn’t funny. It’s a threat to the nation’s global economic competitiveness and national security.

“The advances in technology that are going to drive where the world goes in the next 50 years are going to come from other countries, because they have the intellectual capital and we don’t,” said Jim Stigler, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies the process of teaching and learning subjects including math.

The Defense Department has called for a major initiative to support education in science, technology, education and math, or STEM. It says there are eight times as many college graduates in these disciplines in China and four times as many engineers in Russia as in the United States.

“This is not an educational question alone,” said Josh Wyner, vice president of The Aspen Institute think tank. In July, the think tank warned that other nations, particularly China, are challenging America’s technological dominance. “Resolving the fundamental challenges facing our time requires math."

Meanwhile, the number of jobs in math occupations — positions that “use arithmetic and apply advanced techniques to make calculations, analyze data and solve problems” — will increase by more than 30,000 per year through the end of this decade, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show. That’s much faster than most other kinds of jobs.

“Mathematics is becoming more and more a part of almost every career,” said Michael Allen, who chairs the math department at Tennessee Technological University.

But most American students aren't prepared for those jobs. In the most recent Program for International Student Assessment tests in math, or PISA, U.S. students scored lower than their counterparts in 36 other education systems worldwide. Students in China scored the highest. Only one in five college-bound American high school students is prepared for college-level courses in STEM, according to the National Science and Technology Council.

One result: Students from other countries are preparing to lead these fields. Only one in five graduate students in math-intensive subjects including computer science and electrical engineering at U.S. universities are American, the National Foundation for American Policy reports. The rest come from abroad. Most will leave the U.S. when they finish their programs.

In the U.S., poor math skills could mean lower salaries for today's kids. A Stanford economist has estimated that, if U.S. pandemic math declines are not reversed, students now in kindergarten through grade 12 will earn from 2% to 9% less over their careers, depending on what state they live in, than their predecessors educated just before the start of the pandemic.

But it also means the country's productivity and competitiveness could slide.

“Math just underpins everything,” said Megan Schrauben, executive director of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity’s MiSTEM initiative, which tries to get more students into STEM. “It’s extremely important for the future prosperity of our students and communities, but also our entire state.”

In Massachusetts, employers are anticipating a shortage over the next five years of 11,000 workers in the life sciences alone.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/americas-poor-math-skills-raise-041135854.html

Then create more seats at the college level. There are very qualified students applying to engineering and CS programs who can't get in.

That is not true for college overall...there are plenty of schools that accept 90%+ of their students that offer engineering and CS. You are referencing only the selective schools.

I have read articles in the past about how in China and India...like 80%+ of their engineering and STEM graduates essentially graduated from the equivalent of Devry. These countries have hundreds of colleges that give kids the degree, but it is literally worthless.

There must be a typo in the article. It references that jobs requiring stronger Math will increase by 30,000 per year...in an economy that generates millions of jobs per year, that is next to nothing which seems off to me.

I knew an Indian IT manager who would not hire Indian developers without putting them through a GRUELING assessment. He said the same thing which was that a lot of those programs aren't that good. He found some great ones but it was a whole, whole lot of effort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The nation needs people who are good at math, employers say, in the same way motion picture mortals need superheroes. They say America’s poor math performance isn’t funny. It’s a threat to the nation’s global economic competitiveness and national security.

“The advances in technology that are going to drive where the world goes in the next 50 years are going to come from other countries, because they have the intellectual capital and we don’t,” said Jim Stigler, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies the process of teaching and learning subjects including math.

The Defense Department has called for a major initiative to support education in science, technology, education and math, or STEM. It says there are eight times as many college graduates in these disciplines in China and four times as many engineers in Russia as in the United States.

“This is not an educational question alone,” said Josh Wyner, vice president of The Aspen Institute think tank. In July, the think tank warned that other nations, particularly China, are challenging America’s technological dominance. “Resolving the fundamental challenges facing our time requires math."

Meanwhile, the number of jobs in math occupations — positions that “use arithmetic and apply advanced techniques to make calculations, analyze data and solve problems” — will increase by more than 30,000 per year through the end of this decade, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show. That’s much faster than most other kinds of jobs.

“Mathematics is becoming more and more a part of almost every career,” said Michael Allen, who chairs the math department at Tennessee Technological University.

But most American students aren't prepared for those jobs. In the most recent Program for International Student Assessment tests in math, or PISA, U.S. students scored lower than their counterparts in 36 other education systems worldwide. Students in China scored the highest. Only one in five college-bound American high school students is prepared for college-level courses in STEM, according to the National Science and Technology Council.

One result: Students from other countries are preparing to lead these fields. Only one in five graduate students in math-intensive subjects including computer science and electrical engineering at U.S. universities are American, the National Foundation for American Policy reports. The rest come from abroad. Most will leave the U.S. when they finish their programs.

In the U.S., poor math skills could mean lower salaries for today's kids. A Stanford economist has estimated that, if U.S. pandemic math declines are not reversed, students now in kindergarten through grade 12 will earn from 2% to 9% less over their careers, depending on what state they live in, than their predecessors educated just before the start of the pandemic.

But it also means the country's productivity and competitiveness could slide.

“Math just underpins everything,” said Megan Schrauben, executive director of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity’s MiSTEM initiative, which tries to get more students into STEM. “It’s extremely important for the future prosperity of our students and communities, but also our entire state.”

In Massachusetts, employers are anticipating a shortage over the next five years of 11,000 workers in the life sciences alone.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/americas-poor-math-skills-raise-041135854.html

Then create more seats at the college level. There are very qualified students applying to engineering and CS programs who can't get in.

Agreed with other posters that pretty much any kid who is qualified to study engineering and CS will be able to find a match if they open their minds to a range of schools (and, no, don't tell me that anything under T50 is career suicide, because I work in higher ed). The engineering/CS kids just can't all go to the same 10 schools that DCUM considers worthwhile. If the kid really wants to be an engineer, they can go to the school that will accept them. If what they really want is to attend something in the Ivy+ range, they may have to change their plans about their major. It is hardly a losing proposition either way.

All this handwringing over mathematics, however, doesn't add up for me as a parent. DC is on a math track in MCPS that will put them in HS into a level of mathematics that my own highly competitive high school didn't even envision teaching. And DC has no expressed interest in anything STEM _at _all_ and isn't even especially great at math, just decent enough to not hate it and to execute problems as required. We're already forcing way more math on kids than most of them need. Wouldn't it be more strategic to let non-STEM populations learn a _lot_ more about the math they encounter in the real world, like competitive retail pricing, data reporting in mass media, investments, and the like?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of kids may be bad at math, but we do not have a dearth of CS majors. And you have to pass those math classes as part of your CS major.

China and Russia have 3x and 1.5x respectively the population as the US, so of course they will be graduating more students in STEM. Russia's economy is also crap, so even if they are graduating a lot of STEM majors, it sure isn't helping their country.

Russia's population is approximately 144M which is less than half of US population (340M) and yet they produce many many more engineers.

Good for them and the great products those engineers are producing. If there is one thing I look for when making a purchasing decision, it's the Made in Russia stamp of quality

yea, I did correct myself up thread that Russia's population is smaller than the US, but that their economy is sh1t so what does it matter that their kids are better at math. It's not helping their economy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The nation needs people who are good at math, employers say, in the same way motion picture mortals need superheroes. They say America’s poor math performance isn’t funny. It’s a threat to the nation’s global economic competitiveness and national security.

“The advances in technology that are going to drive where the world goes in the next 50 years are going to come from other countries, because they have the intellectual capital and we don’t,” said Jim Stigler, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies the process of teaching and learning subjects including math.

The Defense Department has called for a major initiative to support education in science, technology, education and math, or STEM. It says there are eight times as many college graduates in these disciplines in China and four times as many engineers in Russia as in the United States.

“This is not an educational question alone,” said Josh Wyner, vice president of The Aspen Institute think tank. In July, the think tank warned that other nations, particularly China, are challenging America’s technological dominance. “Resolving the fundamental challenges facing our time requires math."

Meanwhile, the number of jobs in math occupations — positions that “use arithmetic and apply advanced techniques to make calculations, analyze data and solve problems” — will increase by more than 30,000 per year through the end of this decade, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show. That’s much faster than most other kinds of jobs.

“Mathematics is becoming more and more a part of almost every career,” said Michael Allen, who chairs the math department at Tennessee Technological University.

But most American students aren't prepared for those jobs. In the most recent Program for International Student Assessment tests in math, or PISA, U.S. students scored lower than their counterparts in 36 other education systems worldwide. Students in China scored the highest. Only one in five college-bound American high school students is prepared for college-level courses in STEM, according to the National Science and Technology Council.

One result: Students from other countries are preparing to lead these fields. Only one in five graduate students in math-intensive subjects including computer science and electrical engineering at U.S. universities are American, the National Foundation for American Policy reports. The rest come from abroad. Most will leave the U.S. when they finish their programs.

In the U.S., poor math skills could mean lower salaries for today's kids. A Stanford economist has estimated that, if U.S. pandemic math declines are not reversed, students now in kindergarten through grade 12 will earn from 2% to 9% less over their careers, depending on what state they live in, than their predecessors educated just before the start of the pandemic.

But it also means the country's productivity and competitiveness could slide.

“Math just underpins everything,” said Megan Schrauben, executive director of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity’s MiSTEM initiative, which tries to get more students into STEM. “It’s extremely important for the future prosperity of our students and communities, but also our entire state.”

In Massachusetts, employers are anticipating a shortage over the next five years of 11,000 workers in the life sciences alone.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/americas-poor-math-skills-raise-041135854.html

Then create more seats at the college level. There are very qualified students applying to engineering and CS programs who can't get in.

That is not true for college overall...there are plenty of schools that accept 90%+ of their students that offer engineering and CS. You are referencing only the selective schools.

I have read articles in the past about how in China and India...like 80%+ of their engineering and STEM graduates essentially graduated from the equivalent of Devry. These countries have hundreds of colleges that give kids the degree, but it is literally worthless.

There must be a typo in the article. It references that jobs requiring stronger Math will increase by 30,000 per year...in an economy that generates millions of jobs per year, that is next to nothing which seems off to me.

Uh in India, you don’t get to choose what you study. The Indian students I went to graduate school with all had to test into their major. I don’t think we should feel threaten from China or India. China is imploding right now. India has such a rigid social structure that leaves many folks behind. You can’t be successful if you disenfranchise a large percentage of your population.

[Anonymous]

I get the point but all those Russians and Chinese engineers will be happy to come work here if you let them. After getting rid of advanced classes, America can focus on equity in basket weaving. So what is the problem?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The nation needs people who are good at math, employers say, in the same way motion picture mortals need superheroes. They say America’s poor math performance isn’t funny. It’s a threat to the nation’s global economic competitiveness and national security.

“The advances in technology that are going to drive where the world goes in the next 50 years are going to come from other countries, because they have the intellectual capital and we don’t,” said Jim Stigler, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies the process of teaching and learning subjects including math.

The Defense Department has called for a major initiative to support education in science, technology, education and math, or STEM. It says there are eight times as many college graduates in these disciplines in China and four times as many engineers in Russia as in the United States.

“This is not an educational question alone,” said Josh Wyner, vice president of The Aspen Institute think tank. In July, the think tank warned that other nations, particularly China, are challenging America’s technological dominance. “Resolving the fundamental challenges facing our time requires math."

Meanwhile, the number of jobs in math occupations — positions that “use arithmetic and apply advanced techniques to make calculations, analyze data and solve problems” — will increase by more than 30,000 per year through the end of this decade, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show. That’s much faster than most other kinds of jobs.

“Mathematics is becoming more and more a part of almost every career,” said Michael Allen, who chairs the math department at Tennessee Technological University.

But most American students aren't prepared for those jobs. In the most recent Program for International Student Assessment tests in math, or PISA, U.S. students scored lower than their counterparts in 36 other education systems worldwide. Students in China scored the highest. Only one in five college-bound American high school students is prepared for college-level courses in STEM, according to the National Science and Technology Council.

One result: Students from other countries are preparing to lead these fields. Only one in five graduate students in math-intensive subjects including computer science and electrical engineering at U.S. universities are American, the National Foundation for American Policy reports. The rest come from abroad. Most will leave the U.S. when they finish their programs.

In the U.S., poor math skills could mean lower salaries for today's kids. A Stanford economist has estimated that, if U.S. pandemic math declines are not reversed, students now in kindergarten through grade 12 will earn from 2% to 9% less over their careers, depending on what state they live in, than their predecessors educated just before the start of the pandemic.

But it also means the country's productivity and competitiveness could slide.

“Math just underpins everything,” said Megan Schrauben, executive director of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity’s MiSTEM initiative, which tries to get more students into STEM. “It’s extremely important for the future prosperity of our students and communities, but also our entire state.”

In Massachusetts, employers are anticipating a shortage over the next five years of 11,000 workers in the life sciences alone.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/americas-poor-math-skills-raise-041135854.html

Then create more seats at the college level. There are very qualified students applying to engineering and CS programs who can't get in.

Agreed with other posters that pretty much any kid who is qualified to study engineering and CS will be able to find a match if they open their minds to a range of schools (and, no, don't tell me that anything under T50 is career suicide, because I work in higher ed). The engineering/CS kids just can't all go to the same 10 schools that DCUM considers worthwhile. If the kid really wants to be an engineer, they can go to the school that will accept them. If what they really want is to attend something in the Ivy+ range, they may have to change their plans about their major. It is hardly a losing proposition either way.

All this handwringing over mathematics, however, doesn't add up for me as a parent. DC is on a math track in MCPS that will put them in HS into a level of mathematics that my own highly competitive high school didn't even envision teaching. And DC has no expressed interest in anything STEM _at _all_ and isn't even especially great at math, just decent enough to not hate it and to execute problems as required. We're already forcing way more math on kids than most of them need. Wouldn't it be more strategic to let non-STEM populations learn a _lot_ more about the math they encounter in the real world, like competitive retail pricing, data reporting in mass media, investments, and the like?

Your kid is top 1-5% in the country. You just don't see it because such people are clustered here.

Your other ideas are great...for economic class. Which depends on... math!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The nation needs people who are good at math, employers say, in the same way motion picture mortals need superheroes. They say America’s poor math performance isn’t funny. It’s a threat to the nation’s global economic competitiveness and national security.

“The advances in technology that are going to drive where the world goes in the next 50 years are going to come from other countries, because they have the intellectual capital and we don’t,” said Jim Stigler, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies the process of teaching and learning subjects including math.

The Defense Department has called for a major initiative to support education in science, technology, education and math, or STEM. It says there are eight times as many college graduates in these disciplines in China and four times as many engineers in Russia as in the United States.

“This is not an educational question alone,” said Josh Wyner, vice president of The Aspen Institute think tank. In July, the think tank warned that other nations, particularly China, are challenging America’s technological dominance. “Resolving the fundamental challenges facing our time requires math."

Meanwhile, the number of jobs in math occupations — positions that “use arithmetic and apply advanced techniques to make calculations, analyze data and solve problems” — will increase by more than 30,000 per year through the end of this decade, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show. That’s much faster than most other kinds of jobs.

“Mathematics is becoming more and more a part of almost every career,” said Michael Allen, who chairs the math department at Tennessee Technological University.

But most American students aren't prepared for those jobs. In the most recent Program for International Student Assessment tests in math, or PISA, U.S. students scored lower than their counterparts in 36 other education systems worldwide. Students in China scored the highest. Only one in five college-bound American high school students is prepared for college-level courses in STEM, according to the National Science and Technology Council.

One result: Students from other countries are preparing to lead these fields. Only one in five graduate students in math-intensive subjects including computer science and electrical engineering at U.S. universities are American, the National Foundation for American Policy reports. The rest come from abroad. Most will leave the U.S. when they finish their programs.

In the U.S., poor math skills could mean lower salaries for today's kids. A Stanford economist has estimated that, if U.S. pandemic math declines are not reversed, students now in kindergarten through grade 12 will earn from 2% to 9% less over their careers, depending on what state they live in, than their predecessors educated just before the start of the pandemic.

But it also means the country's productivity and competitiveness could slide.

“Math just underpins everything,” said Megan Schrauben, executive director of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity’s MiSTEM initiative, which tries to get more students into STEM. “It’s extremely important for the future prosperity of our students and communities, but also our entire state.”

In Massachusetts, employers are anticipating a shortage over the next five years of 11,000 workers in the life sciences alone.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/americas-poor-math-skills-raise-041135854.html

Then create more seats at the college level. There are very qualified students applying to engineering and CS programs who can't get in.

That is not true for college overall...there are plenty of schools that accept 90%+ of their students that offer engineering and CS. You are referencing only the selective schools.

I have read articles in the past about how in China and India...like 80%+ of their engineering and STEM graduates essentially graduated from the equivalent of Devry. These countries have hundreds of colleges that give kids the degree, but it is literally worthless.

There must be a typo in the article. It references that jobs requiring stronger Math will increase by 30,000 per year...in an economy that generates millions of jobs per year, that is next to nothing which seems off to me.

Uh in India, you don’t get to choose what you study. The Indian students I went to graduate school with all had to test into their major. I don’t think we should feel threaten from China or India. China is imploding right now. India has such a rigid social structure that leaves many folks behind. You can’t be successful if you disenfranchise a large percentage of your population.

Those Indian students are a very small %age of Indian students...the Indian students that are accepted into the small number of elite schools are a tiny, tiny slice of the population. Those students are all legitimate STEM kids.

There are hundreds of schools that exist below this tier that claim to train Indian kids as engineers...but those schools often have teachers that don't understand the subject at all (and probably not trained) and they literally teach the kids nothing. These are inexpensive, but for-profit schools. All those kids graduate and call themselves engineers (and are included in the statistics), even though they learned practically nothing.

Also, some of these kids are getting trained to be HVAC repair, car mechanics, etc. Useful skills, but also categorized as engineers. I don't think any western countries count those people as engineers.

[Anonymous]

"Most will leave the U.S. when they finish their programs. "

Says who?

[Anonymous]

China PISA is inflated because low scoring kids don't even take the test.

[Anonymous]

For those interested, here are the PISA 2018 results. PISA will release new 2022 results in the next few months. It will be a first look at how the world fared post-COVID.

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/5f07c754-en/1/2/5/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/5f07c754-en&_csp_=6aa84fb981b29e81b35b3f982f80670e&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book

[Anonymous]

A large part of the problem is due to the teachers union.

[Anonymous]

Americans have an unwarranted math phobia. Everyone thinks it is hard when in reality students all over the world learn higher level math at a much earlier age because they teach it in an integrated manner rather than topic based (Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus).

Fortunately, the push to lower math education for the sake of equity has fallen off or America would really be in trouble.

Wake up America before it is too late.