Graduates’ views on the undergraduate mathematics curriculum

In Winter 2011 we surveyed the views of 428 mathematics graduates from the 2008/9 graduating cohort. Each graduate was asked to reflect on the knowledge/skills they believed that they developed during their mathematical study, and to assess how useful these skills have been during their career to date. We were also able to benchmark these data against an earlier survey of incoming undergraduates’ expectations. Our overall goal was to determine whether the higher education mathematics syllabus adequately prepares students for the workplace. We found a mixed picture: • An overwhelming majority of graduates believed that they successfully developed generic cognitive skills during their studies (e.g. logical reasoning, critical thinking and problem solving). Furthermore, there was widespread agreement that these skills are useful in the workplace. • However, fewer students believed that their studies had developed generic non-cognitive skills such as making presentations, oral and written communication, team working or computer literacy. All these skills were considered to be useful in the workplace, but are apparently not well developed by studying undergraduate mathematics. Furthermore, we found that incoming undergraduates expected to develop these non-cognitive generic skills during their mathematical study, suggesting that there is a mismatch between students’ expectations and outcomes. • When asked to select what skill graduates wished they had had the opportunity to develop more during their mathematical studies, the most commonly selected was “applying mathematics to the real world”. Over 90% of incoming undergraduates expected to develop this skill, whereas only around 60% of graduates believed that they had. This report raises two issues to consider. First, whether the mathematical community is (or should be) satisfied with the range of skills that graduates perceive the current higher education curriculum to develop. And second, if the community is satisfied by the current situation, how the apparent mismatch we observed between incoming students’ expectations and graduates’ perceived outcomes can be addressed.