College math on the rebound?

There's nothing a math professor likes more than a pie-in-the-sky chalk talk with bright graduate students about matrix theory or the Riemann Hypothesis.

But mathematicians at the University of Rochester found out the hard way that soaring into the intellectual ether is no good for job security if undergraduate math students are left languishing.

Just six years ago, Naomi Jochnowitz, a Rochester math professor, watched in horror as the financially strapped school unveiled plans to chop its entire graduate math program. It quickly became a national cause célèbre, drawing protests from at least 12 Nobel laureates. If math was expendable, what next? English?

Today, Rochester's math bust has turned to boom. The graduate program was saved. And, strange as it may sound, math is hip on the western New York campus, where more than 5 percent of undergrads major in it.

That's about triple the national average, though, which means most math departments are still scrambling to attract students. Indeed, Rochester's success highlights the fact that there aren't nearly enough turnaround stories like it.

A study released last month by the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (CBMS) shows that bachelor's degrees granted in mathematics fell 19 percent between 1990 and 2000, even though overall undergraduate enrollment rose 9 percent. The CBMS has been collecting such data every five years for decades.

Math mavens are not exactly panicking, but there is a growing sense of urgency about declines in math literacy undercutting the nation's technology-based economy.

In response, efforts to turn the tide in undergraduate math have focused on problems ranging from poor preparation of students in high school to math's reputation as nerdy or too demanding.

Simply not driving students away has been a key focus of "calculus reform," the set of fixes applied to make the traditional gateway college math course more accessible. That approach, widely adopted over the past decade, focuses more on math concepts than on number crunching.

Some say the number of math majors would have been far lower without calculus reform. But it has not been a silver bullet.

"The new survey shows there is still cause for concern, even though the picture is not unrelieved gloom," says Harriet Pollatsek, a math professor at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., who chairs the undergraduate math committee at the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). The MAA plans to unveil an overhaul of its model college math curriculum early next year.

"It's still the case," Ms. Pollatsek says, "that employers don't find college graduates who are sufficiently well educated in math."

Still, some say, the decline in "pure math" degrees may be a misleading indicator of interest in college math, since other options like computer science have siphoned off many students who might otherwise have pursued math full time.

The past five years have seen "a rebound" in math enrollments, says David Lutzer, co-author of the new study and a math professor at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. But the numbers are only back up to where they were in 1990.

He points to one hopeful sign, though: higher enrollments in Calculus I, II, and III courses – an indicator that the number of math degrees might increase in coming years. Another bright spot is a growing number of math-education degrees and statistics course enrollments – a response to higher demand for math teachers and more math literacy in many disciplines.

"The world has become so quantified that students who once would have been mathematics majors can now use their talents and interests in mathematics while majoring in almost any other field," says Ann Watkins, president of the MAA and a math professor at California State University, Northridge. Because of that, she's not alarmed that the number of math majors dropped during the past decade.

It's not just that math is stagnating as an undergraduate field, says Pollatsek; the number of US citizens who go on to do graduate work in the field is at best flat after a period of decline. Only about half of people who earn advanced math degrees in the United States are Americans. "We're not reproducing the professoriate," she says.

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