Should calculus be eliminated for non-science/engineering/finance majors?

[Fredrik]

considerable training occurs after hiring, including the kinds of computations that will be required. Toyota, for example, recently chose to locate a plant in a remote Mississippi county, even though its schools are far from stellar. It works with a nearby community college, which has tailored classes in “machine tool mathematics.”

I'm not sure what "machine tool mathematics" is, but this argument only makes sense if it doesn't involve algebra at all.

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

In the United States, it's largely because we have a decentralized educational system and a lot of college is intended to make up for deficiencies in high school. This isn't necessarily a bad system. In a lot of other countries, people go through insane stress in high school, but college is a cake walk.

There are also funding issues. Lower division classes are cash cows that are used to subsidize upper division classes and research. There's also "weed out". If you can't pass Freshman English then that keeps you from even applying to the more advanced stuff.

There's also issue of keeping the market closed. If it was easy to be a doctor or lawyer, then everyone would be one, which would cause salaries to plummet. In a lot of countries, doctors and lawyers are bachelor degrees but in those countries, doctors and lawyers handle a lot of the things that in the United States would be done by nurses and paralegals (and doctors and lawyers get paid accordingly).

Besides, what's the hurry? It's not as there's a ton of jobs waiting for you...
Thereby training them to be cogs in the corporate machine. A large part of the educational system is intended to whip people into shape. Complying with silly requirements so that you don't get fired is going to be something you have to learn to do.

I've heard about this, in the USA high school is considerably easier than in other countries.
In Brazil the courses are like that, you can be a lawyer or medical doctor with a BS, but we have 2 things different from the USA that makes this possible
Being a third world country we didn't have as many lawyers and doctors before, although we are already saturated with lawyers.
The government hires a lot of people with law degrees to maintain it's gigantic bureaucracy machine.

We are nowadays in the boom phase, so there are in fact tons of jobs, but the crash will happen sometime in the future.
As the weed out class in the mathematical sciences we use Calculus, half of the students can't pass Calculus I. Maybe it would be wise to use Freshman Portuguese.
Since the educational system is basically "free"(maintained by absurdly high taxes) we don't need people to subside the higher classes but on the other hand we don't got the same quality as an American institution.
Professors know they can't be fired so they only work as much as they want. Tons of corruption, professors routinely steal material from labs, and who cares? The employer is the government that don't really care.
How is it in China? I think you're living there nowadays?

It's very possible one day I will live in Taiwan since my girlfriend is from there, it seems such a different place. I know it's different from mainland China but yet I'm pretty interested in anything Chinese.

 

[Astronuc]

I'm not sure what "machine tool mathematics" is, but this argument only makes sense if it doesn't involve algebra at all.

I think it means basic arithmetic - add, subtract, multiply, divide.

Most CNC machines need only to be set up. Somewhere there is a programmer who writes the detailed code. It does help to have a smart operator who knows machining and what a program is supposed to achieve.

I once watched an operator putting a program through its paces on a relatively expensive part. I would have through a test plate would be appropriate. Whoever wrote the program indexed a drill bit incorrectly, the bit came down hard on the part and proceeded to torque it out of spec in addition to buckling part of the structure.

The operator stopped the machine, looked at me, looked at the part and walked away, ostensibly to find the engineer responsible for the area and/or the programmer.

The education process should teach folks to teach themselves, as well as how to think critically.

 

[twofish-quant]

The operator stopped the machine, looked at me, looked at the part and walked away, ostensibly to find the engineer responsible for the area and/or the programmer.

Having large numbers of educated people makes a big difference. One reason I think that teaching algebra is important is what I've seen in China. There is this myth that Chinese factories are staffed by "illiterate peasants", when in fact one reason China has become a manufacturing powerhouse is that it has a pretty decent system of math education, and most people working in manufacturing can do basic algebra and read instruction manuals. This makes a big difference because if something unexpected happens, the line workers can deal with it without having to call in higher level people.

Among people in East Asia, there is a stereotype of Americans as being "fat and bad at math."

Conversely, language is taught in a very different way in East Asia. In the US, you are encouraged to say what you think in an essay. If someone in China asked you to write an essay on the Communist Party, you aren't going to write what you really think. If it's someone you trust, you might verbally tell them what you really think, but you are never going to write it down.

So what happens is that language involves learning classical and flowery phrases and literary allusions. And so when you write an essay, you know what the topic and the conclusion is going to be, the tough part is using complicated language to show people how smart you are. If someone asks you to write an essay on the Communist Party, your school, your family, or your parents, then we *know* what the content is going to be (my parents are perfect people). You show off by using flowery language.

 

[twofish-quant]

I've heard about this, in the USA high school is considerably easier than in other countries.

Yes, but college is harder. A lot of people in the US think this is a bad thing, but having seen it done the other way, I sometimes wonder how much pressure is too much pressure.

Being a third world country we didn't have as many lawyers and doctors before, although we are already saturated with lawyers.

I wonder if the same thing is happening with the United States. One problem with lawyers is that you can have arbitrarily large number of lawyers since they can just end up making laws and sue each other.

How is it in China? I think you're living there nowadays?

It's relatively hard to get into college, although it's been made a lot easier. However, because there has been this massive expansion of colleges, except for the very top level institutions, the quality has been lacking, and the government is scrambling to figure out how to generate new jobs for college graduates.

There is this "marriage of convenience" between US colleges and Chinese undergraduate students that is seriously worrying me. The thing is that you have an urban middle class that has a ton of money. It's hard to get into a good school in China, and no one wants a degree from a low ranked school. At the same time, US universities are cash strapped, and they can't raise tuition too much on local students.

So you have this arrangement in which Chinese students pay full tuition to US universities. I worry that this all is going to end in a mess in a few years.