Essentially what I am saying is suppose the politicians' reasoning, that @currymj suspects and offered above, and I agree with them is the likely one, was to be

Essentially what I am saying is suppose the politicians' reasoning, that @currymj suspects and offered above, and I agree with them is the likely one, was to be true. Then the word calculus (and university admission perhaps with other goals in life) can be treated as variable(s). There is no inherent reason the set of deduction rules are dependent on the choice of topic. Let us denote the reasoning for brevity as a proposition p(s, g) with s\in Subjects g \in Goals: Start substituting other subjects in there. Their reasoning goes that for an s \in Subjects to be in AcceptedSubjects \subset Subjects it must hold that: p(s,g):=\(For the majority of students), \exists g \in Goals: p'(s,g). Where p(s,g) relaxes also the goal here -- doesn't have to be college admissions. Then start adding art, debates, writing and other topics I mentioned.