It is awful thay they were forced into remedial courses in college. Would it not be better to avoid this stigma? Let them take the regular courses, fail them and let them be kicked out of college for subpar academic performance. But at least they are not stigmatized and humiliated.
I don’t know,,,,, interesting question. I can see some disciplines that would require nothing more than basic Math. History, English, Languages, etc., shouldn’t require a lot of Math. But I don’t think they do. As an Architecture major, I had killer math/engineering requirements. I hated the course called “Statics!” “Put the front wheels of a 25.6 ton tractor trailer, 9.4 feet onto a steel truss bridge. What is the tension or compression on a strut 100.8 feet away?” Problems took two hours to solve,,, with a damn slide rule! I was a designer. I wanted to take my designs to the engineering department and say, “Here’s my design. Figure out how to build it!” Sheesh! That course was abdo-lute Hell! You’d get one problem as homework. I’d get an A one day, and an F the next. 3/4s of the way through, TI introduced the first pocket calculator. Man! What a relief! I actually put a bullet through my slide rule!
Agreed. A bunch of those students might even pass. There was a report that colleges make money from remedial courses and lose money on some of the college-level courses. Who knows how many of those students really need to take remedial classes... No doubt, they're performing poorly on the entrance exams, but maybe once in class they'll remember what they learned in high school.
Many eons ago, I was one of those students - twice ordered into remedial math, first at a community college and later at a university - after being away from school for awhile. Thanks to some fast-talking, I was allowed to register for college level math, anyway, and I earned an A in both courses.