What makes you think I’m not shooting for the PhD? And yeah, the math is not easy, but seeing what passes for a work ethic among the typical undergrad, I conclude it’s a lack of persistence rather than a lack of raw talent that defeats most of them. STEM majors work hard for it, and have to forgo some of the vomiting and STD’s that seem to be part of the modern liberal arts curriculum. As a fringe benefit, our profs tend to keep their ideology, whatever it may be, mostly to themselves.
Well, if you are convinced that it’s just a matter of ambition versus a talent—and that’s what it really is—for math, then we have nothing more to say to each other.
P.S. I would ask that you run this by, say, the head of a college engineering department and see if he or she thinks that every student can successfully handle an engineering curriculum.
