It also robs society of the diversity of many STEM graduates, which one would think based on the university's mission statement, they would want to strongly encourage.
As an additional 'and it gets worse', is that this dysfunctional dynamic is replicated with the Management majors, whose required math sequence to graduate is College Algebra -> Managerial Pre-Calculus -> Managerial Calculus. Estimating the additional number of affected students, a cursory glance comparing the number of sections of the relevant math classes between the two colleges leads me to estimate that you can roughly add an extra 50%
The motivation for this late addendum is my current grading an exam from a Managerial Pre-Calculus class where a student converted 2x^3+x^2-8x to 3x+2x-8x=-3x, completely misunderstanding the foundational idea of what an exponent is. A cursory glance at their exam leads me to conclude that they'll earn 0 out of 70 points. The minimum ALEKS score to qualify taking this course is a 59 and this student somehow received a 67 in July, which they definitely did not earn.
Provost and his second in command both come from School/College of Education. Funnily enough, we have a peer institution in the same system who also had unproctored math placement exams until they got a provost who came from engineering; he quickly changed policy enforce proctoring.
(Re Ceasar/Caesar: Ugh! Thank you! I'm not sure if I can edit or not...)
By the way, you focus on things like the financial penalty of re-taking courses, but you could make more of the damage to the morale, self-image and motivation of students placed into classes that they are not ready for and cannot realistically cope with.
This is 100% correct. Unfortunately, this is difficult for me to quantify, and I have a general preference to stick to the more quantifiable aspects. It feels more concrete to me and much more difficult to argue against. But you are correct, that there's pretty serious psychological damage being done as well. I should make an effort to look into some research on this.
I have a question: The concern with overall DFW rates makes me think the problem involves a significant fraction of students, but for the cost estimates you assumed one student misplaced per class, which seems like a very small fraction. In your estimation, how many misplaced students do you think there are? And how widespread do you think the cheating is?
Short answer: I don't know. One issue is that the problem lingers. For example, students withdraw, but we don't know if it's because they don't know the material or if it's because they have family obligations which dominate. And if they do struggle, is it because they placed into the wrong course, or is it because a previous faculty member passed them in a previous class even though they didn't know the material.
What I think is that the cheating/misplacing is 1) directly contributing to higher DFW rates, 2) indirectly contributing to higher DFW rates, and 3) hindering our ability to provide a better education. Like, there are always two components: Identify the problem, then address the problem. The cheating/misplacing is both causing a problem, and preventing us from identifying other problems to resolve.
And this is not the only problem we have. Another big one is that university advisors are encouraging an enormous number of unprepared students to go into STEM even if they don't have the background for it or active interest in it. We need those advisors to be able to set realistic expectations for students and they aren't. Unfortunately the Math Department has less influence here, but it's something we are working on.
It also robs society of the diversity of many STEM graduates, which one would think based on the university's mission statement, they would want to strongly encourage.
As an additional 'and it gets worse', is that this dysfunctional dynamic is replicated with the Management majors, whose required math sequence to graduate is College Algebra -> Managerial Pre-Calculus -> Managerial Calculus. Estimating the additional number of affected students, a cursory glance comparing the number of sections of the relevant math classes between the two colleges leads me to estimate that you can roughly add an extra 50%
The motivation for this late addendum is my current grading an exam from a Managerial Pre-Calculus class where a student converted 2x^3+x^2-8x to 3x+2x-8x=-3x, completely misunderstanding the foundational idea of what an exponent is. A cursory glance at their exam leads me to conclude that they'll earn 0 out of 70 points. The minimum ALEKS score to qualify taking this course is a 59 and this student somehow received a 67 in July, which they definitely did not earn.
Excellent analysis!
I recently started a podcast devoted to the Math War.
https://callin.com/link/SmSWVIpsMb
Keep up the great work!
Jenny Hatch
Let me guess, the Provost is a non-scientist who simply doesn't understand that maths & science build on prior concepts? (PS Caesar, not Ceasar)
Provost and his second in command both come from School/College of Education. Funnily enough, we have a peer institution in the same system who also had unproctored math placement exams until they got a provost who came from engineering; he quickly changed policy enforce proctoring.
(Re Ceasar/Caesar: Ugh! Thank you! I'm not sure if I can edit or not...)
By the way, you focus on things like the financial penalty of re-taking courses, but you could make more of the damage to the morale, self-image and motivation of students placed into classes that they are not ready for and cannot realistically cope with.
This is 100% correct. Unfortunately, this is difficult for me to quantify, and I have a general preference to stick to the more quantifiable aspects. It feels more concrete to me and much more difficult to argue against. But you are correct, that there's pretty serious psychological damage being done as well. I should make an effort to look into some research on this.
I have a question: The concern with overall DFW rates makes me think the problem involves a significant fraction of students, but for the cost estimates you assumed one student misplaced per class, which seems like a very small fraction. In your estimation, how many misplaced students do you think there are? And how widespread do you think the cheating is?
Short answer: I don't know. One issue is that the problem lingers. For example, students withdraw, but we don't know if it's because they don't know the material or if it's because they have family obligations which dominate. And if they do struggle, is it because they placed into the wrong course, or is it because a previous faculty member passed them in a previous class even though they didn't know the material.
What I think is that the cheating/misplacing is 1) directly contributing to higher DFW rates, 2) indirectly contributing to higher DFW rates, and 3) hindering our ability to provide a better education. Like, there are always two components: Identify the problem, then address the problem. The cheating/misplacing is both causing a problem, and preventing us from identifying other problems to resolve.
And this is not the only problem we have. Another big one is that university advisors are encouraging an enormous number of unprepared students to go into STEM even if they don't have the background for it or active interest in it. We need those advisors to be able to set realistic expectations for students and they aren't. Unfortunately the Math Department has less influence here, but it's something we are working on.