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I remember two or three years ago, a friend of mine (then working on her physics PhD) was having to TA the intro physics sequence for majors at a highly prestigious undergraduate program. But the freshmen were wildly unprepared, struggling even with simple calculus. She and her fellow TAs brought it up with the professor: the team wanted to simply fail them. But that was impossible, because various administrators decided that teaching physics (again, to would-be physics majors) with calculus was too harsh and cruel to be allowed. So they had to dumb down the problem sets and class, and even solve upcoming exam problems for students who came to office hours.
Any class can be dumbed down if you try hard enough.
The sad thing about that is that failing the class would have ultimately been doing the students a favor. Having to retake a class in college shouldn’t be the end of the world and the ones who did it a second time would have left well prepared.
I agree somewhat, but that is too optimistic. The reason the intro sequence for physics majors was fast and rigorous is that later courses all built on it. If someone only completed the intro sequence their second year, it wouldn't be impossible to finish all the major requirements in four years, but it'd be much more difficult, leave no room for later error, and electives would be minimal.
I also somewhat doubt that the ~1/3 of people having the most trouble would have a good grasp of it after taking it a second time, though here I'm less sure. If it was purely because high schools failed at preparing students because of COVID etc., I can see how a retake could be successful.
We do need to get more comfortable at telling students "you don't have the aptitude for it, we encourage you to do something else you have better aptitude for."
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I wonder exactly how it was dumbed down, because I recall algebra-based physics being much harder than calculus-based. Algebra-based was a bunch of strange, disparate formulas that had to be memorized, whereas calculus-based had big concepts that were easier to understand and a few formulas that flowed from the concepts (for intro stuff, anyway; obviously the math in statics and dynamics got much hairier).
Memorization is trivialized by formula sheets, and is also a weaker skill that can be employed. My college, in ancient times now, wouldnt accept my perfect AP score on the non-calculus physics AP exam as credit. This was even more incredulous given my also perfect AP score on the calculus exam.
But the idea does sort of make sense. There is a reason that (at least in my day) companies would require splits on GPA between major-qualifying classes and overall GPA. If you have a 3.5 GPA, but a 3.0 in engineering related classes, you are pretty mediocre at engineering. If you have a 3.5 and a 3.5 in engineering related classes, you are a guy who is very talented, but cant be bothered to give a crap about the mandatory liberal arts classes every school imposes (it is odd, from a certain point of view, that there are no mandatory math classes for the LA people, but we all know why). These are old numbers that probably date me, even in engineering most crappy students now have a GPA similar to our old top 10%. Which just shows the problem with the current system.
My college would only accept AP scores to bypass entry-level courses, but they wouldn't count as credits or towards requirements. Having a perfect AP history score as I did (the only one my high school offered) meant I could skip the entry-level history courses, but I still had to take a mandatory history course to meet that requirement and get the credits.
Last I checked, it's borderline impossible at my undergrad to finish an engineering degree in 4 years thanks to all the LA requirements. It was already hard enough 25 years ago since getting out in 4 years meant every semester would have 12-15 credits of math/science/engineering and one or two 1-credit labs (which always had a ridiculous amount of work for 1 credit), and then 6 LA courses needed over 8 semesters. With 6, at least they could be spread out, or pushed to senior year when the in-major course requirements got a little easier (one LA course had to be upper level, which meant getting in the pre-req first, so it could take some planning).
Now it's up to 8 LA courses, so one per semester the whole time to create a "well-rounded" person. The sophomore year semesters give me heartburn to read them (they gave me heartburn 25 years ago, too, so nothing new). Why yes, let me sign up for Calc 3, OChem + lab, Statics, Physics 2, a mandatory programming class, and a LA course. 19 credits, no big deal.
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You can also make exams open book or allow cheat sheets. It might be hard to believe but there are cases of open book exams where the questions were previously solved in class or recitation.
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If you are dumb enough, memorizing the combinatorial explosion of something is much easier than mastering the small number of concepts that give rise to it. Hence why most adults know their times tables but cannot for the life of them perform the multiplication algorithm. Humans are inherently good at memorization; it's the reason kids can easily learn languages, or all 151 Pokemon.
But the problem with memorization without understanding is that, if you vary the problem even slightly, it comes crashing down. Ask those same adults what 13 x 14 is and they will be lost; that's not on the table.
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IIRC the dumbing down wasn't so much in removing calculus entirely, but setting aside time to review concepts like derivatives and integrals and generally setting a much slower pace for the class, with gratuitous handholding.
Comparatively, I took the same freshman physics sequence at the same university decades ago, and it included Hamiltonian mechanics the first quarter. When I mentioned this to her, she laughed: the students would absolutely not be reaching that same level.
The most troubling thing is that, in theory, the students all had passed the prereqs (a year of high school calculus, high school physics). But she had no idea how a solid third of them had managed to satisfy those prereqs.
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