High schools failing college-bound students, study finds
Janice Tibbetts
The Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
More than one-third of first-year college students are bombing in math and it's putting them at risk of failing to graduate in fields that are short of workers, says a new study
The report showed that 34 per cent of 10,000 math students at six Ontario colleges were in "academic trouble," earning grades of D or F after their first semester.
The College Mathematics Project, compiled by York University and Seneca College in Toronto, blames a lingering snobbery toward colleges, which a research team concluded is causing high schools to produce ill-prepared students who took wrong turns as early as Grade 9 by steering away from academic-stream math.
"Secondary-school teachers and potentially guidance counsellors might not be that familiar with the program standards," said Laurel Schollen, one of the study's authors and dean of the applied science and engineering technology faculty at Seneca College.
"It's probably a lack of information or understanding because teachers are products of the university system. They understand what it means to go to university, but colleges are an unknown."
The report is more blunt, warning that high schools must "take care not to treat colleges as second-class citizens or students who go to college as second-class students."
The researchers studied students enrolled at six community colleges in the Toronto area in 2006. Four out of 10 students who took applied math in high school -- the usual route for college preparation -- ran into academic trouble and were "at risk" of not earning a diploma, said the report.
"This represents a loss not only to the students themselves, but also to the economy, the college system and the taxpayer," said the study.
Most students (72 per cent) who followed the academic path earned acceptable or good grades in college math.
Students who elected not to take Grade 12 math also derail in college math, said the study.
More than half of the 470 programs offered at the six colleges require a passing grade in math. As a result, the math-tutor business on college campuses is booming, according to the report.
The researchers concluded that school math courses have to be more relevant to college programs and that information about college requirements needs to start in junior high.
The study singled out technology students who took applied math in high school as the ones who faced the greatest difficulties in college.
"For many college programs, particularly science and technology, mathematics is the underpinning," said Ms. Schollen. "So students drop out, switch programs, or what have you, and society loses one more technologist or technician."