You are talking about the University of California system which is still quite good. Don’t let that corner case delude you into thinking that this is the case everywhere.

Did anyone else find this funny for a Faculty of Sciences that includes nursing, midwifery, and psychology? By the way, is it the Australian norm to have these in such a Faculty?

A clarification of my earlier posting: Many science and engineering students who can’t hack the maths here in Asia seem to end up in Australia, but many are increasingly waking up to the fact that (save for a few who make into the Go8), employers here don’t think much of them.

Fair enough. But in that case, why not start the cull with the humanities, social “sciences”, etc.? Even a dozen brilliant ones in some of those fields produce zero value for humanity. Once we are done with them, we can get to maths. The cuts to maths will only make USQ less of a serious university, and it is already in trouble on that front.

I am also not conivinced, from everthing I have read about the USQ case, that the financial situation is that dire. So it would not surprise me if USQ suddenly managed to find some extra money elsewhere. Don’t ask why they did not look in the first place.

Lastly, to USQ: Keep in mind that there is a research assessment coming, and universities such as UQS already don’t look too hot in that regard. What group would do better? The 10 maths lecturers or the 30 or whatever nursing lecturers and their zillion students? Regardless of that, it seems to me that competent university administrators ought to take long-term views and not just a 2 or 3-yr budget plan.

That aside, a major problem with maths is Australian universities is the dumbing down of related areas in which maths should play a role. In my uni, all of physics, chemistry, engineering disciplines, and computing have all seen maths courses either cut out completely (computing) or reduced to levels that are a joke; apparently anything too hard for unprepared students who are unwilling to learn had to go. Computing in Australia has particularly suffered: During the dot-com boom, many unis, mine included, introduced some soft-headed mash they called “information technology”, which produced graduates who should never be let anywhere near a computer. (I, sadly, “taught” and still “teach” many of them.) Fortunately, with these sorts now on the unemployment line, as employers want serious people, computer science seems to be reviving.

What is particularly sorry about the USQ affair is not the threatened cuts but that they come at a time when even the Federal government is going on and on about maths and sciences in Australia. It seems that university managers are simply not listening. Ironic too that in many of the universities outside the Go8, mathematicians and physical scientists are among the very groups that actually do any serious work. I would encourage people to look at the backgrounds of some of these managers—their academic qualifiations, their research record, publications, etc. I suspect you will find many surprises and flakes who actually have very little idea of what scholarship means. Start with USQ.

There are disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, statistics, mathematics, and today, computer science, which are indispensible to other disciplines, even if they do not attract large numbers of students, whose primary interest are in these disciplines.

As a consequence, the student enrolment patterns in these subjects are strongly pyramidal, and “managers” use this as an excuse to undermine these disciplines, which are also the ones students find hard. “Managers” often propose the view that it is not necessary to have experts in a subject teach service courses: they know too much. The fallacy of such a view is easily exposed by the question: “Would you be happy to have your twelve-year-old child taught English by someone whose grasp of English is that of a twelve-year-old-child?”

Even a cursory look at history teaches that progress in the applied sciences and engineering has always been through application of new developments in the “basic” sciences or through new applications of the “basic” sciences. This is why engineers need experts in statistics, not engineers, to teach them statistics.

Most importantly, an expert knows what can be safely omitted in a first course without misleading students, without making things harder for them later. You present the crucial ideas, omitting purely technical problems until they become unavoidanble. Such economy of exposition is not available to non-experts.

The situation with teachers is even more dramatic. It has been argued by university “managers”, that school teachers of mathematics and science have no need for a degree in the disciplines, just enough “units” to meet the minimum required by State Education Ministries. This attitude poses a grave threat to society at large, for the current minimum requirements have been reduced from previous ones as an emergency measure to legalise the filling of vacancies in properly qualified science and mathematics teachers by underqualified ones. Aiming for the bare minimum is a guarantee of declining standards.

Even worse is the effect on school pupils. Very few recently trained high school mathematics teachers could read an overview article on mathematics, at least in Australia. Dieudonne’s “A Panorama of Pure Mathematics” appeared in English in 1982, and few “mathematics education” graduates have even a vague inkling of the meaning of the chapter titles.

It is simply impossible for anyone who does not have even a vague overview of the state of mathematics 25 years ago, to generate interest in the subject, not to mention inspiring students. When students ask, as they so often do, where mathematics is heading, where is it used, such teachers have no access to a reasonable answer.

It has recently been argued that since what is taught in mathematics at high schoools was already know 200 years ago, there is no need for teachers to learn more recent mathematics. I cannot conceive of any other subject, other than pre-French Revolutionary history, where it would be seriously proposed that there is no need for teachers in the 21st century to know nothing that was not known at the end of the 18th century.

The vicious circle needs to be broken. Only universities can do this, by ensuring that intending teachers are exposed to current developments in their disciplines. That is impossible without a degree in that discipline. At a typical continental university, intending high school teachers do the same courses as intending researchers in mathematics, physics, chemistry. It is the intending engineers, etc. who do less. Even they do more than school teachers do in Australia. Look, for example, at the degree programme of agriculture students in Switzerland:

http://www.agrl.ethz.ch/docs/WL_AGW_E.pdf

Why are maths teachers in Australia not required to know as much mathematics as agriculture students in Switzerland?

Perhaps I’ll stay here in Singapore where they have already set up a High School of Mathematics and Science (which is affiliated with one of the universities here) and they are in the process of setting up a new School of Science and Technology which has applied mathematics at its core (I am on the mathematics advisory committee for this school).

Could all this contribute to Singapore’s pre-eminent position in mathematics? I certainly think so.

Killing the Australian math goose is not a good idea.

All the best with your campaign.