demand for calculus

Overview 

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Calculus is a beautiful subject with uses across many different fields – one of many subjects within the mathematical sciences that can make that claim.  During the Cold War, calculus became the singular focus of much of the mathematics education system in the United States. But how many students actually need calculus for their degree? IPEDS data gives an answer: about 34% of all bachelors degree recipients had a major that required calculus (with 24% requiring STEM calculus). Providing mathematical rich and relevant experiences to all students requires knowing what kind of mathematics aligns with which students. In presenting these data, we hope to inform conversations among policymakers and mathematics education leaders.

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Institutions are grouped by state in one visualization and by Carnegie Classification in the other. Within each state, schools with engineering programs tend to score higher in terms of the need for calculus. Across the country, R1 and R2 institutions and Liberal Arts colleges showed higher rates compared with other institutions. 

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Methodology 

This analysis is based on IPEDS data submitted by institutions detailing  bachelor’s degree recipients between 2020 and 2023. Data on first and second majors at all bachelor’s granting institutions were downloaded. Dashboards show institutions’ average percent of bachelors recipients requiring calculus, estimated  by totalling the number of students with majors that typically require calculus. 

Which majors require calculus? The analysis relied on state-level work that details math requirements across a diverse range of institutions. Reasonable assumptions were made where uniformity across institutions was lacking. For Business Calculus, a small sample suggested that type of institution (as measured by Carnegie Classification) was associated with requirements to take the course, more so than the type of business degree (e.g. finance versus marketing). All business majors at R1, R2,  Small Master’s Colleges & Universities, and Liberal Arts Colleges were assumed to require calculus; no business majors at institutions in other categories were assumed to require calculus. 

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The percentages given represent the sum of the number of students earning a major in a field that probably required calculus (as identified above), compared with the total number of bachelors degrees awarded. Any student earning majors in two fields that both required calculus (e.g. math and physics) would be counted twice in the numerator, but only once in the denominator, artificially inflating the statistic. This error is larger at tech-heavy schools. At the most tech-centric schools, the calculation gives a percentage greater than 100%, an obvious error. Those data points were adjusted to 100% in the visualizations. The magnitude of this double-major error is smaller at schools without a strong STEM focus. At one state flagship, where the actual percentage was privately available, this error inflated the percentage of students requiring calculus by about 10% (roughly 7 percentage points.) At schools with a smaller number of STEM majors, the error is likely significantly smaller.