Colleges across the country are grappling with the same problem as academic setbacks from the pandemic follow students to campus. At many universities, engineering and biology majors are struggling to grasp fractions and exponents. 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.
Colleges largely blame the disruptions of the pandemic, which had an outsize impact on math. Reading scores on the national test known as NAEP plummeted, but math scores fell further, by margins not seen in decades of testing. Other studies find that recovery has been slow.
I tutored math for a number of people. One of my pupils was a real problem case. He was attending a kind of specialized high school equivalent in my country, basically a vocational training plus ability to attend university later with a subject close to his training. This guy wanted to go into chemistry. If there is one area in STEM where you need fractions day in and day out, it’s chemistry. And this guy had serious problems grasping the very concept of it. Having problems with fractions + chemistry is a dangerous and possible explosive mix. Luckily for humanity, he later went into a different branch of jobs.
It’s literally just division. Like, even if you add variables, it’s still just division.