The Mathematical Sciences: A Report (1968) / Chapter Skim
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7 Undergraduate Education
7 Undergraduate Education
Pages 121-134
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From page 121... ...
We give a briefer discussion along similar lines in the sections below, on total mathematical-science course enrollments and on quality and distribution of mathematicalscience faculty. The first thing to be emphasized about the recent history of undergraduate education in the mathematical sciences is the extent of its growth and change over the past 25 years.
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From page 122... ...
The following items occur repeatedly: very significant increases in mathematics-course enrollments; spectacular increases in numbers of mathematics majors; new undergraduate major programs in the mathematical sciences; many new advanced courses; increased undergraduate enrollments in graduate courses; impact of improved high school curricula on beginning college mathematics courses; special new courses for statistics, computing, and the social sciences; significant increases in staff size; difficulties in recruiting new staff. THE INCREASE IN MATHEMATICS MA TORS Perhaps the most striking item on the above list is the greatly increased number of mathematics majors.
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From page 123... ...
Admittedly, projections can be no more than rough guides; and, in fact, discrepancies for 1965 between the above actual figures and the Once of Education's slightly earlier projected figuresl8 suggest that the above projected factors of increase for 1965-1975 might turn out to be somewhat high for mathematics and statistics and somewhat low for the biological sciences. Even so, there seems little doubt that increased numbers of majors will contribute considerably to college staffing strains in the mathematical sciences over the next few years.
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From page 124... ...
The second is the fact that majors in several fields are no beginning to take more courses in the mathematical sciences than formerly and by 1970 will almost surely be taking significantly more such courses on the average than in 1965. Chapter 4 of the report of our Panel on Undergraduate Education~ has analyzed, for each of the principal fields concerned, the extent to which one or both of these factors may be expected to increase mathematical-science course enrollments over the 196.~1970 period, above and beyond the 310,000 attributable to the gen
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From page 125... ...
For this reason, the Panel on Undergraduate Education has, in Chapter 4 of its report, considered the consequences of varying its projected data and its hypotheses in several reasonable ways. The prediction of intensification, for several years to come, of the shortage of qualified college teachers of the mathematical sciences is found to be stable under all these variations.
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From page 126... ...
For engineering, the projected 1965-1970 increase in majors is at 21 percent instead of the general figure of 29 percent, which by itself would yield a deficiency rather than an excess in mathematical-science course enrollments; but this deficiency is more than offset by the tendency, already beginning to be seen, for the undergraduate engineering curriculum to shift from a five-semester to a seven-semester sequence in the mathematical sciences (see reference 24~. For the biological sciences, psychology, and the social sciences, the figures shown in Table 2 are just half as large as those in the report of the Panel on Undergraduate Education.
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From page 127... ...
The recently published Pierce reports recommends that by academic year 19701971 all college students should have an introductory course in computing. It may turn out that the ideal place for such an introductory course is in high school rather than college; or it may turn out that introductory computing courses oriented toward various subject-matter fields will tend to be taught in various college departments, much as elementary applied statistics courses tend to be today.
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From page 128... ...
We now try to assess what the quality of the additional faculty Is likely to be, using as a rough measure of faculty quality the proportion of full-time faculty holding doctorates, as is done in Cartter's studies.26 ik For academic year 1965-1966, the CBMS survey found the 10,750 full-time faculty in the mathematical sciences to have highest earned degrees distributed as shown in Table 3. Thus in academic year 1965-1966 some 53 percent of the mathematical-science faculty held doctorates in some field, a little over 46 ~ Academic degree is, of course, only one dimension in the measure of quality.
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From page 129... ...
of doctorate holders from college and university teaching. Also, in accord with information from the csMs survey, they assumed that 70 percent of the newly produced mathematical-science PhD's will go into college and university teaching, as opposed to Cartter's value of approximately 33 percent for all academic fields combined.
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From page 130... ...
, we consider what may be done to meet anticipated shortages in qualified faculty in the mathematical sciences, especially in the weaker colleges and in certain critical fields. THE JUNIOR COLLEGES There are now more entering freshmen in junior colleges than in universities, and over one third of all entering freshmen are junior college students.
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From page 131... ...
Thus 38 percent of all junior college students are in California, and slightly over 50 percent attend junior colleges in California, Florida, or Illinois. Against this background of general student enrollments we now give a few results from the 1966-1967 CBMS survey of the mathe TABLE 6 Total Enrollments in Fall 1966, Nondegree Credit and Part-Time Students Includeda THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS TOTAI~ FULL-TIME PART-TIME Universities 2,4821,789 693 Other four-year institutions 2,6261,941 685 Two-year institutions 1,331739 591 All institutions 6,4394,469 1,969 aFigures from reference 20.
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From page 132... ...
, 55 percent of all mathematics course enrollments by entering freshmen for the [all of 1966 were below the level of college algebra and trigonometry. While junior college freshmen tended to have a generally lower attainment level in high school mathematics, the differences shown in Table 8 appear to reflect not so much differences in ability as differences in goals.
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From page 133... ...
" about 73 percent of the junior college mathematics departments responding to the CBMS questionnaire said, somewhat surprisingly, that they did not. Probably the principal reason for this is that the better high school teachers form an enormous and highly available pool of supply.
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From page 134... ...
. should represent adequate training for teaching transfer students in junior colleges, provided the teacher continues to remain intellectually alive." Although there are no firm percentages, many with experience gained in teaching-institute programs for college teachers feel that numerous junior college teachers with master's degrees fail to meet these criteria (see reference 16, Chapter 5)
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