Baruch College recently lowered the minimum grade to progress from MTH 1030 to higher-level math classes. This change reveals a decline in math proficiency and indicates that Baruch should do more to support its students struggling with math classes.
Students now require a D grade to pass MTH 1030 instead of a C.
This revision does not help increase the math proficiency rate but instead funnels students into classes they are unprepared to succeed in. This, in turn, increases the fail rates of higher-level math classes since students lack fundamental knowledge.
Additionally, students enrolled in Baruch can be waived from taking a mathematics placement exam that determines if they can skip certain math courses offered by the college.
This is determined by their high school and college records and applies to those to be placed into intermediate or college algebra.
The current placement exam covers a range of math subjects in Algebra 1 and 2, including arithmetic, trigonometry, quadratics and factoring.
However, waiving the exam defeats the purpose of accurately placing students into an appropriate math class because many students can skip the exam entirely.
In any case, the placement exam alone is unable to measure students’ capabilities. Students should face additional analysis that would gauge their mathematical capabilities.
Baruch should hold courses that help students lacking fundamental knowledge to acquire the skills necessary to pass college algebra and precalculus over the semester before enrollment.
In addition to more accurately measuring the students’ capabilities, the college should run recitation sections for math courses where students struggle to keep up with the course material, giving them additional opportunities to review and grasp the material.
The Student Academic Consulting Center currently offers a similar system called Peer-Led Team Learning, where SACC tutors take students from college math courses and provide them with practice problems to solve, giving them necessary extra time.
Adopting this in a recitation session can help students achieve higher grades as opposed to funneling them to advanced courses unprepared.
The lowered minimum passing grade exemplifies a growing trend in declining math proficiency, and Baruch must do something to reverse this trend.
