13 ms·

The bigger issue in general is that college curriculum in general needs to be realigned to fit the needs of the current marketplace. I'm personally an accountin

The bigger issue in general is that college curriculum in general needs to be realigned to fit the needs of the current marketplace. I'm personally an accounting major, took business calculus in college and currently work in the tax industry. Five years after graduation and four years working professionally, I have never used anything remotely related to calculus. Statistics and data analytics, on the other hand, I use all the time. The vast majority of my peers also say the same thing - they never use calculus. So I would say the statements in the article are true. Colleges these days are dinosaurs at changing and keeping up with the times. The reality is most college majors probably need to be shifting more heavily towards computer related skills in general. The whole idea that you need a CS degree to learn programming skills is an obsolete idea as well. Computer programming is a general-purpose skill as far as I am concerned. Anyone studying a STEM major needs to know how to write computer programs, at least at a basic level.

Spartan-S63 6y ago
Rather we need to realign expectations of what college means. College as a means of preparing students for grad school accomplish those means perfectly. College as a means to train folks for the workforce, that's less perfect. I'd argue that we _shouldn't_ alter the purpose of college, but find new ways to fill the gap in the market for professional jobs that aren't research-focused (i.e. academia) or vocational. There's a very real middle-of-the-market segment of education/job training that's missing. Programming bootcamps are a good example of filling the middle-of-the-market, but they're probably too short and too simplistic to bring a graduate up to the real entry-level, junior developer. It illustrates, in my opinion, that something needs to exist between vocational schools and colleges to fill professional needs.
- sidpatil 6y ago
  Sounds like a job for community colleges.
  - newguy1234 6y ago
    That is true but employers insist on people having bachelor's degrees. That's the problem so you have lots of people going to college that really only want to focus on career growth. Also these same employers are always complaining about how the new grads don't have the "skills" they want.
    - shirakawasuna 6y ago
      Sounds like we need to figure out why employers want things that are not necessary for excelling at positions.
      - Jtsummers 6y ago
        Because they've externalized training costs, and the closest thing to what they want (without training people themselves) are people with BA/BS degrees. The best I've seen with an employer focusing on employee education to a non-BS/BA target was a USAF base that partnered with a nearby technical school to get a lot of mechanical and electronic technicians. But that's not the norm, and I suspect politics were involved to set up the program in the first place. EDIT: The other positive case I know of was NC partnering with the pharmaceutical (drug manufacturing) industry in the late '00s, but I have no idea how that turned out. They were partnering with community colleges and universities throughout the state to develop a targeted non-BS program for the drug manufacturers to pull from.
      - newguy1234 6y ago
        Employers, in general, just want to hire "smart" people and the BA degree has become symbolic of something that "smart" people have. So every employer uses it as a way to just screen out the "dumb" people. At the same time, employers increasingly want new employees to have some sort of skill set that can be applied to the job. If you listen to complaints from new grads you can see a common trend - "college did not prepare me for the real world", "college did not give me the skills I need to succeed" and so on. This is why I say we need to move away from the one size fits all view of college. We need BA degrees that are "career focused" and we need BA degrees that are more academic focused. It may also be wise to have a hybrid version as well.
- newguy1234 6y ago
  True but the reality is there are a lot of people going to college purely for career growth. Accounting is a good example. People studying accounting want to be accountants, more or less. Right now college is a one-size fits all shoe and has only be slighting molded to fit both objectives. I would argue that we need to make a hard slip. The obvious career majors (accounting, business, marketing etc.) should become more career focused while the more traditional majors should focus on the traditional vision of college.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  The "what college is really for" line hasn't been true in a long time. Most if not all colleges programs advertise job placement rates for graduates, earning potential, and host career fairs, all aimed at undergraduate students (in addition to what the graduate schools offer of course). The end result is a mish-mash of idealism meets reality, and a lot of students take out loans to practice learning things that they'll not use again, all in the hoped of getting a job.
- skybrian 6y ago
  The perception that college is about getting a job is what allows many colleges to charge very high prices. If everyone were clear that it is not about getting a job, how many would be willing to take out student loans to do it?
PopePompus 6y ago
I'm surprised you haven't needed calculus. Simple questions like "If my savings are X dollars, and I expect to live until age Y, and earn Z% on my money, how much can I spend per year in retirement without going broke before I die?" are differential equations, requiring the concepts taught in calculus to solve. I find knowing how to solve such questions to be very useful.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Many of these scenarios are practically solved by either known formulas (plug and chug) or tools that assist with the modeling. Likely both. In practice, most professionals just don't need anything more than algebra and basic statistics. If they're numerate, they can get the job done because their industry already has a collection of mathematical tools that have been developed to solve the problem. It's only the ones making new tools that really need more advanced math.
  - newguy1234 6y ago
    This is exactly the situation for most business professionals. We don't need to know how the software works behind the scenes, we simply need to know how to use the software and understand the bigger picture - what does the data mean and so on.
  - failuser 6y ago
    If the only thing you do is plug numbers into code you don’t understand can you be replaced by a data entry clerk or an interface other software would call?
- mrmonkeyman 6y ago
  Algebra.
Scarbutt 6y ago
How can you truly grok statistics without calculus?
- newguy1234 6y ago
  Statistics is completely different and personally I like it way better than calc. Most of the statistical analysis I do these days is all software based.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    Statistics is not even close to completely different than calculus. In fact I'd say it's the opposite, statistics is completely derived from calculus. You can't even derive a PDF or moment or mle without calculus, literally the most basic aspects of stats. Sure you can study applied and not know how any of the software you use works but I'd say you're missing something if you do that.
  - fingerlocks 6y ago
    It's not an either/or thing. Statistical methods use calculus as a tool. Let's say someone handed you a pile of data on some event that fires after some random time (earthquakes, light bulbs burning out, bacteria lifetime, etc). You're tasked with figuring out the probability that event is going to happen whenever. How would you do that? You would probably say, oh that's easy! Add up each lifetime of each event that happens before whatever time, and divide by total number of events. Congratulations, you just did calculus.
tgflynn 6y ago
> I have never used anything remotely related to calculus. Really, you've never had to calculate an amortization schedule or the time value of money ?
- newguy1234 6y ago
  We use excel to calculate these types of things now.
  - tgflynn 6y ago
    One of the reasons for studying math is so that your tools, whether it's software today or formulas or tables in the past, aren't just mysterious black boxes to you but something you can understand and figure out from first principles if the need arises.

Spartan-S63 6y ago

Rather we need to realign expectations of what college means. College as a means of preparing students for grad school accomplish those means perfectly. College as a means to train folks for the workforce, that's less perfect. I'd argue that we _shouldn't_ alter the purpose of college, but find new ways to fill the gap in the market for professional jobs that aren't research-focused (i.e. academia) or vocational. There's a very real middle-of-the-market segment of education/job training that's missing. Programming bootcamps are a good example of filling the middle-of-the-market, but they're probably too short and too simplistic to bring a graduate up to the real entry-level, junior developer. It illustrates, in my opinion, that something needs to exist between vocational schools and colleges to fill professional needs.

sidpatil 6y ago
Sounds like a job for community colleges.
- newguy1234 6y ago
  That is true but employers insist on people having bachelor's degrees. That's the problem so you have lots of people going to college that really only want to focus on career growth. Also these same employers are always complaining about how the new grads don't have the "skills" they want.
  - shirakawasuna 6y ago
    Sounds like we need to figure out why employers want things that are not necessary for excelling at positions.
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      Because they've externalized training costs, and the closest thing to what they want (without training people themselves) are people with BA/BS degrees. The best I've seen with an employer focusing on employee education to a non-BS/BA target was a USAF base that partnered with a nearby technical school to get a lot of mechanical and electronic technicians. But that's not the norm, and I suspect politics were involved to set up the program in the first place. EDIT: The other positive case I know of was NC partnering with the pharmaceutical (drug manufacturing) industry in the late '00s, but I have no idea how that turned out. They were partnering with community colleges and universities throughout the state to develop a targeted non-BS program for the drug manufacturers to pull from.
    - newguy1234 6y ago
      Employers, in general, just want to hire "smart" people and the BA degree has become symbolic of something that "smart" people have. So every employer uses it as a way to just screen out the "dumb" people. At the same time, employers increasingly want new employees to have some sort of skill set that can be applied to the job. If you listen to complaints from new grads you can see a common trend - "college did not prepare me for the real world", "college did not give me the skills I need to succeed" and so on. This is why I say we need to move away from the one size fits all view of college. We need BA degrees that are "career focused" and we need BA degrees that are more academic focused. It may also be wise to have a hybrid version as well.
newguy1234 6y ago
True but the reality is there are a lot of people going to college purely for career growth. Accounting is a good example. People studying accounting want to be accountants, more or less. Right now college is a one-size fits all shoe and has only be slighting molded to fit both objectives. I would argue that we need to make a hard slip. The obvious career majors (accounting, business, marketing etc.) should become more career focused while the more traditional majors should focus on the traditional vision of college.
zdragnar 6y ago
The "what college is really for" line hasn't been true in a long time. Most if not all colleges programs advertise job placement rates for graduates, earning potential, and host career fairs, all aimed at undergraduate students (in addition to what the graduate schools offer of course). The end result is a mish-mash of idealism meets reality, and a lot of students take out loans to practice learning things that they'll not use again, all in the hoped of getting a job.
skybrian 6y ago
The perception that college is about getting a job is what allows many colleges to charge very high prices. If everyone were clear that it is not about getting a job, how many would be willing to take out student loans to do it?

PopePompus 6y ago

I'm surprised you haven't needed calculus. Simple questions like "If my savings are X dollars, and I expect to live until age Y, and earn Z% on my money, how much can I spend per year in retirement without going broke before I die?" are differential equations, requiring the concepts taught in calculus to solve. I find knowing how to solve such questions to be very useful.

Jtsummers 6y ago
Many of these scenarios are practically solved by either known formulas (plug and chug) or tools that assist with the modeling. Likely both. In practice, most professionals just don't need anything more than algebra and basic statistics. If they're numerate, they can get the job done because their industry already has a collection of mathematical tools that have been developed to solve the problem. It's only the ones making new tools that really need more advanced math.
- newguy1234 6y ago
  This is exactly the situation for most business professionals. We don't need to know how the software works behind the scenes, we simply need to know how to use the software and understand the bigger picture - what does the data mean and so on.
- failuser 6y ago
  If the only thing you do is plug numbers into code you don’t understand can you be replaced by a data entry clerk or an interface other software would call?
mrmonkeyman 6y ago
Algebra.

Scarbutt 6y ago

How can you truly grok statistics without calculus?

newguy1234 6y ago
Statistics is completely different and personally I like it way better than calc. Most of the statistical analysis I do these days is all software based.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Statistics is not even close to completely different than calculus. In fact I'd say it's the opposite, statistics is completely derived from calculus. You can't even derive a PDF or moment or mle without calculus, literally the most basic aspects of stats. Sure you can study applied and not know how any of the software you use works but I'd say you're missing something if you do that.
- fingerlocks 6y ago
  It's not an either/or thing. Statistical methods use calculus as a tool. Let's say someone handed you a pile of data on some event that fires after some random time (earthquakes, light bulbs burning out, bacteria lifetime, etc). You're tasked with figuring out the probability that event is going to happen whenever. How would you do that? You would probably say, oh that's easy! Add up each lifetime of each event that happens before whatever time, and divide by total number of events. Congratulations, you just did calculus.

tgflynn 6y ago

> I have never used anything remotely related to calculus. Really, you've never had to calculate an amortization schedule or the time value of money ?

newguy1234 6y ago
We use excel to calculate these types of things now.
- tgflynn 6y ago
  One of the reasons for studying math is so that your tools, whether it's software today or formulas or tables in the past, aren't just mysterious black boxes to you but something you can understand and figure out from first principles if the need arises.