“I hate to use that term, but they’re so behind.” “It’s not just that they’re unprepared, they’re almost damaged,” said Brian Rider, Temple's math chair. “It was a striking moment of, like, wow - this is significant and deep.”īefore the pandemic, about 800 students per semester were placed into that class, the equivalent of ninth grade math. No two papers had the same answer, and none of them were correct,” she said. “I graded a whole bunch of papers in a row. The quiz, a softball at the start of the fall semester, asked students to subtract eight from negative six. “We’re talking about college-level pre-calculus and calculus classes, and students cannot even add one-half and one-third.”įor Jessica Babcock, a Temple University math professor, the magnitude of the problem hit home last year as she graded quizzes in her intermediate algebra class, the lowest option for STEM majors. “This is a huge issue,” said Maria Emelianenko, chair of George Mason’s math department. Students who fall behind often disengage, disappearing from class. Other studies find that recovery has been slow.Īt George Mason, fewer students are getting into calculus - the first college-level course for some majors - and more are failing. Reading scores on the national test known as NAEP plummeted, but math scores fell further, by margins not seen in decades of testing. More students are being placed into pre-college math, starting a semester or more behind for their majors, even if they get credit for the lower-level classes.Ĭolleges largely blame the disruptions of the pandemic, which had an outsize impact on math. At many universities, engineering and biology majors are struggling to grasp fractions and exponents. The northern Virginia school started Math Boot Camp because of alarming numbers of students arriving with gaps in their math skills.Ĭolleges across the country are grappling with the same problem as academic setbacks from the pandemic follow students to campus. “I really struggled when it came to higher-level algebra because I just didn’t know anything.”įonseca is among 100 students who opted to spend a week of summer break at George Mason University brushing up on math lessons that didn’t stick during pandemic schooling. “I didn’t have a hands-on, in-person class, and the information wasn’t really there,” said Fonseca, 19, of Ashburn, Virginia, a computer science major who hoped to get into calculus. He struggled to understand algebra, a subject he studied only during a year of remote learning in high school. His first three tries put him in pre-calculus, a blow for a student who aced honors physics and computer science in high school.įunctions and trigonometry came easily, but the basics gave him trouble. It was his final attempt at the math placement test for his first year of college. Diego Fonseca looked at the computer and took a breath.
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