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Alternatively, we have decades of credentials inflation such that our high school graduates can indeed do math - but we choose to pretend they can’t and instead

Alternatively, we have decades of credentials inflation such that our high school graduates can indeed do math - but we choose to pretend they can’t and instead insist that an expensive undergraduate degree is required for entry level work.

shtzvhdx 11mo ago
Unlike the humanities, it is trivially easy to test if high school grads are just as good at math. Test them on the same questions. In fact, doesn't the SAT purposely include recycled problems to measure capability drift vs time?
- xp84 11mo ago
  You'd better duck before the people who "don't test well" come for you. There are millions of people out there who swear they know a ton of things and have great skills in math/science/whatever, but when asked to demonstrate them in any verifiable way (a "test") they freeze up and perform poorly. I don't really think those people are all lying (it's probably an anxiety disorder) but the entire notion of being able to empirically measure knowledge/skills/aptitude is controversial to some people.
  - rahimnathwani 11mo ago
    I can bend spoons with my mind, but only when nobody is watching.
  - JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
    > don't really think those people are all lying They may not be lying. But it isn't that relevant. Someone knowing how to do something they can't perform isn't going to be useful as a mechanic.
    - mhb 11mo ago
      It's also not relevant because are there more of the anxious testers now?
      - xp84 11mo ago
        There sure seem to be more. Enough that some colleges have been bullied into eliminating the SAT or ACT requirements entirely, by those who allege they're unfair to that group. So those schools just admit based on the "homework grades" that are inflated by getting credit just for showing up and trying, success optional. So IDK maybe there are more. Or maybe they are just louder now.
        JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
        > some colleges have been bullied into eliminating the SAT or ACT requirements entirely "Starting in Fall 2026, a growing list of high-profile universities will once again require standardized test scores for admission, including most of the Ivy League, Stanford, and Georgetown to name a few" [1]. [1] https://www.ttprep.com/more-and-more-colleges-are-reinstating-sat-act-as-of-2025-2026/ https://www.ttprep.com/more-and-more-colleges-are-reinstatin...
        dragonwriter 11mo ago
        The suspension of SAT/ACT requirements was mostly a pandemic measure (and is being wound down) not something colleges were bullied into by people alleging unfairness (they are people alleging unfairness, they just aren't what got the policies implemented.)
        csa 11mo ago
        > Enough that some colleges have been bullied into eliminating the SAT or ACT requirements entirely, by those who allege they're unfair to that group. So those schools just admit based on the "homework grades" that are inflated by getting credit just for showing up and trying, success optional. You drank the kool-aid. There was no bullying there. It was logistics. In almost all cases, standardized test results were made optional. They were not “eliminated”. Those who did not supply standardized test results, at least at any school that actually rejected people, had to provide a higher standard of proof of their abilities in their admissions materials. I live in CA, and I know quite a few folks who glibly didn’t take or submit standardized test scores, and they absolutely did not get into schools that they were very academically qualified for (e.g., mid-tier UC schools like UCSD). These schools normally would have been safety schools for the given caliber of applicant. Ivies made the SAT optional for a while, especially in 2020, but that was largely due to an access issue. I think they all require it now. And again, any person who didn’t have an SAT score and got admitted was almost certainly a strong admit anyway (super strong external academic validation, recruited athlete, etc.). I’m guessing precisely zero people sneaked into an Ivy by slyly not submitting a standardized test score while also being a marginal applicant. Just my informed 2 cents…
  - shtzvhdx 11mo ago
    I dont think they're lying. But these are ensemble averages, and presumably bad testers were as common before as they are today. Or maybe not. Maybe the problem is the composition of the ensemble. Seems important to figure this out.
  - xboxnolifes 11mo ago
    It doesn't matter if bad testers exist. Presumably, the percentage of them is not increasing over time, so the drift can still be measured. And if they are increasing over time, then the drift is still measuring something.
xp84 11mo ago
I feel like you and GP are both right. A ton of high school graduates can't do basic math (which also explains their economic illiteracy, like believing that just taxing billionaires more would fix everything[1]). And also at the same time, we demand college degrees for white-collar jobs that anyone who completed the alleged requirements to graduate high school could totally do. I think this stems from an outdated belief that college is difficult and challenging, and therefore getting through it proves you're exceptionally clever. A notion that has been a joke for at least 15 years if not 20. So everything is fake. The diplomas are fake, the degrees are fake, and the job requirements are fake. All of it is being used to come up with legal and justifiable ways to pick the people with sufficient brain cells to be entrusted with job responsibilities. [1] Most college graduates would likely get this question orders of magnitude wrong: If you could split the full net worth of the top 10 billionaires equally among every man, woman, and child in America how big would each one's check be? Correct answer: Just over $6,000. (Of course, we'll ignore how to deal with the market crash caused by forcing the sudden liquidation of their 2 trillion dollars in assets.)
- greesil 11mo ago
  Does going to college and learning say, compilers or differential equations not have value? Your employer won't teach you. Please don't tell me the heat equation is fake.
  - BobaFloutist 11mo ago
    I think they're saying that learning compilers, differential equations, or the heat equation aren't actually that relevant for getting a mid-level procurement job or becoming the manager of a hotel.
    - greesil 11mo ago
      I mean that's what a reasonable person might write but that's not what the parent comment actually wrote.
- dv_dt 11mo ago
JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
> we have decades of credentials inflation such that our high school graduates can indeed do math PISA math scores for American students fell over the last two decades [1]. [1] https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2025/1/23/two-charts-and-a-few-comments https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2025/1/23/...
rahimnathwani 11mo ago
8.5% of UC Davis [EDIT: UCSD, not UC Davis] freshmen start the year without having mastered high school math. See page 11 of this report: https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissions-review-docs.pdf https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissio... I'm guessing if we were to take a random sample of high school graduates, the % would be much worse.
- BobaFloutist 11mo ago
  First, that's UCSD, not UC Davis. They mention UC Davis in the report, but the 8.5% refers to UCSD. Secondly, mastering high school math is genuinely difficult these days. I'm a math major, I've made it through my calc courses and differential equations, but I found Algebra 2 legitimately hard. Logarithms and Trigonometric functions are counterintuitive, and not everybody is at their peak ability to buckle down and grind through things when they're struggling at age 17. And lastly, this is pretty obviously at least in part a knock-on affect of covid, hence the extremely recent major spike. I'm not sure it's worth generalizing from "UC San Diego Students admitted in the last couple of years are struggling with high school math (because they were in high school during lockdown)" to "We shouldn't try paying mechanics more because everyone's bad at math"
  - JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
    > Trigonometric functions are counterintuitive Machinists use trig.
    - BobaFloutist 11mo ago
      Sure. They're usually not sophomore students.
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
  - rahimnathwani 11mo ago
    From the report: While Math 2 was designed in 2016 to remediate missing high school math knowledge, now most students had knowledge gaps that went back much further, to middle and even elementary school. To address the large number of underprepared students, the Mathematics Department redesigned Math 2 for Fall 2024 to focus entirely on elementary and middle school Common Core math subjects (grades 1-8), and introduced a new course, Math 3B, so as to cover missing high-school common core math subjects (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II or Math I, II, III; grades 9-11). So actually I was wrong. I should have said: - 11.8% of UCSD freshmen haven't mastered high school math - 8.5% haven't mastered middle school math These folks may have had some disruption during the last year of middle school, and the first year of high school. But does that fully explain why they haven't mastered middle school math or, in some cases, elementary school math? The comment to which I responded quibbled with mhb saying "We used to be able to assume that high school and college graduates could do elementary school math." It's clear from the report I linked that we cannot assume that high school graduates can do elementary school math.

shtzvhdx 11mo ago

Unlike the humanities, it is trivially easy to test if high school grads are just as good at math. Test them on the same questions. In fact, doesn't the SAT purposely include recycled problems to measure capability drift vs time?

xp84 11mo ago
You'd better duck before the people who "don't test well" come for you. There are millions of people out there who swear they know a ton of things and have great skills in math/science/whatever, but when asked to demonstrate them in any verifiable way (a "test") they freeze up and perform poorly. I don't really think those people are all lying (it's probably an anxiety disorder) but the entire notion of being able to empirically measure knowledge/skills/aptitude is controversial to some people.
- rahimnathwani 11mo ago
  I can bend spoons with my mind, but only when nobody is watching.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
  > don't really think those people are all lying They may not be lying. But it isn't that relevant. Someone knowing how to do something they can't perform isn't going to be useful as a mechanic.
  - mhb 11mo ago
    It's also not relevant because are there more of the anxious testers now?
    - xp84 11mo ago
      There sure seem to be more. Enough that some colleges have been bullied into eliminating the SAT or ACT requirements entirely, by those who allege they're unfair to that group. So those schools just admit based on the "homework grades" that are inflated by getting credit just for showing up and trying, success optional. So IDK maybe there are more. Or maybe they are just louder now.
      - JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
        > some colleges have been bullied into eliminating the SAT or ACT requirements entirely "Starting in Fall 2026, a growing list of high-profile universities will once again require standardized test scores for admission, including most of the Ivy League, Stanford, and Georgetown to name a few" [1]. [1] https://www.ttprep.com/more-and-more-colleges-are-reinstating-sat-act-as-of-2025-2026/ https://www.ttprep.com/more-and-more-colleges-are-reinstatin...
      - dragonwriter 11mo ago
        The suspension of SAT/ACT requirements was mostly a pandemic measure (and is being wound down) not something colleges were bullied into by people alleging unfairness (they are people alleging unfairness, they just aren't what got the policies implemented.)
      - csa 11mo ago
        > Enough that some colleges have been bullied into eliminating the SAT or ACT requirements entirely, by those who allege they're unfair to that group. So those schools just admit based on the "homework grades" that are inflated by getting credit just for showing up and trying, success optional. You drank the kool-aid. There was no bullying there. It was logistics. In almost all cases, standardized test results were made optional. They were not “eliminated”. Those who did not supply standardized test results, at least at any school that actually rejected people, had to provide a higher standard of proof of their abilities in their admissions materials. I live in CA, and I know quite a few folks who glibly didn’t take or submit standardized test scores, and they absolutely did not get into schools that they were very academically qualified for (e.g., mid-tier UC schools like UCSD). These schools normally would have been safety schools for the given caliber of applicant. Ivies made the SAT optional for a while, especially in 2020, but that was largely due to an access issue. I think they all require it now. And again, any person who didn’t have an SAT score and got admitted was almost certainly a strong admit anyway (super strong external academic validation, recruited athlete, etc.). I’m guessing precisely zero people sneaked into an Ivy by slyly not submitting a standardized test score while also being a marginal applicant. Just my informed 2 cents…
- shtzvhdx 11mo ago
  I dont think they're lying. But these are ensemble averages, and presumably bad testers were as common before as they are today. Or maybe not. Maybe the problem is the composition of the ensemble. Seems important to figure this out.
- xboxnolifes 11mo ago
  It doesn't matter if bad testers exist. Presumably, the percentage of them is not increasing over time, so the drift can still be measured. And if they are increasing over time, then the drift is still measuring something.

xp84 11mo ago

I feel like you and GP are both right. A ton of high school graduates can't do basic math (which also explains their economic illiteracy, like believing that just taxing billionaires more would fix everything[1]). And also at the same time, we demand college degrees for white-collar jobs that anyone who completed the alleged requirements to graduate high school could totally do. I think this stems from an outdated belief that college is difficult and challenging, and therefore getting through it proves you're exceptionally clever. A notion that has been a joke for at least 15 years if not 20. So everything is fake. The diplomas are fake, the degrees are fake, and the job requirements are fake. All of it is being used to come up with legal and justifiable ways to pick the people with sufficient brain cells to be entrusted with job responsibilities. [1] Most college graduates would likely get this question orders of magnitude wrong: If you could split the full net worth of the top 10 billionaires equally among every man, woman, and child in America how big would each one's check be? Correct answer: Just over $6,000. (Of course, we'll ignore how to deal with the market crash caused by forcing the sudden liquidation of their 2 trillion dollars in assets.)

greesil 11mo ago
Does going to college and learning say, compilers or differential equations not have value? Your employer won't teach you. Please don't tell me the heat equation is fake.
- BobaFloutist 11mo ago
  I think they're saying that learning compilers, differential equations, or the heat equation aren't actually that relevant for getting a mid-level procurement job or becoming the manager of a hotel.
  - greesil 11mo ago
    I mean that's what a reasonable person might write but that's not what the parent comment actually wrote.
dv_dt 11mo ago

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago

> we have decades of credentials inflation such that our high school graduates can indeed do math PISA math scores for American students fell over the last two decades [1]. [1] https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2025/1/23/two-charts-and-a-few-comments https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2025/1/23/...

rahimnathwani 11mo ago

8.5% of UC Davis [EDIT: UCSD, not UC Davis] freshmen start the year without having mastered high school math. See page 11 of this report: https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissions-review-docs.pdf https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissio... I'm guessing if we were to take a random sample of high school graduates, the % would be much worse.

BobaFloutist 11mo ago
First, that's UCSD, not UC Davis. They mention UC Davis in the report, but the 8.5% refers to UCSD. Secondly, mastering high school math is genuinely difficult these days. I'm a math major, I've made it through my calc courses and differential equations, but I found Algebra 2 legitimately hard. Logarithms and Trigonometric functions are counterintuitive, and not everybody is at their peak ability to buckle down and grind through things when they're struggling at age 17. And lastly, this is pretty obviously at least in part a knock-on affect of covid, hence the extremely recent major spike. I'm not sure it's worth generalizing from "UC San Diego Students admitted in the last couple of years are struggling with high school math (because they were in high school during lockdown)" to "We shouldn't try paying mechanics more because everyone's bad at math"
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
  > Trigonometric functions are counterintuitive Machinists use trig.
  - BobaFloutist 11mo ago
    Sure. They're usually not sophomore students.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
- rahimnathwani 11mo ago
  From the report: While Math 2 was designed in 2016 to remediate missing high school math knowledge, now most students had knowledge gaps that went back much further, to middle and even elementary school. To address the large number of underprepared students, the Mathematics Department redesigned Math 2 for Fall 2024 to focus entirely on elementary and middle school Common Core math subjects (grades 1-8), and introduced a new course, Math 3B, so as to cover missing high-school common core math subjects (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II or Math I, II, III; grades 9-11). So actually I was wrong. I should have said: - 11.8% of UCSD freshmen haven't mastered high school math - 8.5% haven't mastered middle school math These folks may have had some disruption during the last year of middle school, and the first year of high school. But does that fully explain why they haven't mastered middle school math or, in some cases, elementary school math? The comment to which I responded quibbled with mhb saying "We used to be able to assume that high school and college graduates could do elementary school math." It's clear from the report I linked that we cannot assume that high school graduates can do elementary school math.