Liberal Arts Math … College Algebra … ??

Once upon a time, colleges and universities wanted a math course for students in non-science fields.  The initial math for liberal arts course was designed for this purpose … a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and light on formality.

Once upon a time, colleges and universities wanted a math course for students who might or might not need calculus.  Since the content focused on ‘algebra’ and it was not remedial, the resulting course was called college algebra.

We might be better off if both titles were banned from the collegiate landscape.

In a way, both courses have a ‘this is not the other math’ type of implication.  We should be able to articulate a positive statement (and title) for what the courses are about.  This is not to say that all courses with these titles are ‘bad’ in some way (though some are bad in some ways).  I know of a few liberal arts math courses which are contemporary in design, with a focus on reasoning and some formality.  Some college algebra courses are actually high quality pre-calculus courses.

Back in the day, there actually were many programs that were not scientific.  Even fields like biology were considered non-quantitative, as were social sciences.  This landscape has changed in fundamental ways over the past 30 years; the fields that require no quantitative background are small in number.  Instead of ‘liberal arts’ math, we should use variations on the more modern ‘quantitative reasoning’ title.

College algebra is a mess.  It’s defined by what it is not (not remedial), and the title is used for 3 basic types of courses (general education, pre-calculus, and prep for pre-calculus).  If we need a general education course, we have better alternatives available now than we did 30 years ago (think quantitative reasoning and intro statistics).  Using college algebra for general education ensures that the course will primarily be a barrier to students completing a degree, and likely makes the course very challenging for faculty to teach.  It’s not unusual, of course; a major university close to me uses college algebra as their primary gen ed requirement.

If a college algebra course is meant to be pre-calculus, then we use the better title — pre-calculus.  Calling it ‘college algebra’ when it is meant to get students ready for calculus implies that the primary factor in calculus success is algebra beyond the remedial level.  I hope that this is not the case!

And, if college algebra is meant to be preparation for pre-calculus, there are larger questions.  Is the course non-remedial?  Are we adding a course to the sequence to have more classes to teach and fewer students completing?  If there is a valid reason for having both college algebra and pre-calculus, I have never seen it … and would appreciate seeing such a reason elaborated.

No, I don’t think we need either title anymore.  They once served a purpose, but Liberal Arts Math and College Algebra are obsolete.  The sooner we stop using them, the better we serve our students.

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