Cretins are two-a-penny since the debasement of education started in the early 90s.

[sasguru]

To an extent I do. But it's not much the quality of grads - it's the lack of them.

Eh? There are far more grads now than there were in the 80s.
Very few can think clearly though, as was noted in our earlier discussion

[northernladuk]

Eh? There are far more grads now than there were in the 80s.

Agreed but when some of them hold BSc (Hons) International Spa Management it doesn't actually say alot.. I mean..How the **** is that a degree course.

[d000hg]

In other words an A-level in Maths today is not worth the same as one in the 80s.
You can check the evidence for that by looking at the papers online.

They do teach things that didn't use to be covered too of course. There is a rather bewildering selection of modules one can do these days but I would concede you probably need to do maths and further maths these days if you want to study physics or maths at university.

[sasguru]

They do teach things that didn't use to be covered too of course. .

Like what?

[TheFaQQer]

Not really. There is hard evidence:

1. Talk to any long time professor of maths and every single one will tell you of falling standards.
2. Buy any standard university maths books that's been through several editions. The later editions will invariably have supplementary material that would have been mastered at A-level pre-90s.
Some are obliged to have O-level material.
3. many of the best unis have been forced to change from 3-year to 4-year degrees in tough subjects.
4. My rates are sky high because new grads of the requisite quality are just not coming through.

So it's all to do with maths?

[d000hg]

Like what?

It's hard for me to say since I didn't do the older papers, but I don't believe all the stats stuff would have been covered... there are enough stats modules to fill a whole A-level these days. Also decision maths, and probably a few bits and pieces of different integral techniques since you can pick & choose from so many different ones!

I seem to recall GCSEs also started covering matrix math as a new thing but it was some years ago. I definitely recall my A-level teacher (who had been teaching for decades) saying it was not ALL one-way traffic.

There are something like 16 maths modules one can do these days, and an A-level is 4. Ergo, there must be more stuff than there was in total, because even falling standards would not cover the syllabus shrinking 75%

[AtW]

Some people are just plain thick and won't understand the material however long they take.

Soviet methods can deal with this also.

[mudskipper]

I did O level maths in 1984.
My son is doing GCSE maths course now - he's covering stuff like calculus and integration that wasn't done till A Level when I was at school.

[northernladuk]

I did O level maths in 1984.
My son is doing GCSE maths course now - he's covering stuff like calculus and integration that wasn't done till A Level when I was at school.

Hmm, that's odd. I did the last year of O levels and I am sure we did integration and differentiation at some level. Can't remember calculus though...

[proggy]

Hmm, that's odd. I did the last year of O levels and I am sure we did integration and differentiation at some level. Can't remember calculus though...

Integration and Differentiation ARE Calculus, it's the first thing you are taught usually single variable then multi then differential equations etc