Blog

College admissions requirements have a complex relationship with high school opportunity: On the one hand, colleges’ course-taking requirements can be a lever for improving the availability of rigorous high school courses. Since high school offerings tend to migrate over time in the direction of college admissions requirements, those requirements can be a way to raise the bar for all students.

When California State University faculty first proposed requiring applicants to complete a math or quantitative reasoning course in their senior year of high school, they specifically recommended that the system “investigate the impact these requirements may have on the success of all students, particularly those from historically underserved populations.”

“Why should anyone care about mathematics if it doesn’t connect deeply to some human desire: to play, seek truth, pursue beauty, fight for justice?” wondered Francis Su, former president of the Mathematical Association of America, in his 2017 address entitled “Mathematics for Human Flourishing.”

Algebra 2 course-taking in high school has long been viewed as a key predictor of future college enrollment. However, that link stems primarily from higher education policies that traditionally required Algebra 2 for admission and college algebra for graduation, not necessarily from direct benefits of algebra learning.

“A century ago it was Greek and Latin. Today, it’s the quadratic formula.” That’s what Opportunity Institute founder Christopher Edley, Jr. told the PBS NewsHour about how mathematics requirements can serve as arbitrary educational filters that disproportionately hurt kids who have less access to advanced instruction.