Sideways
Helluva Engineer
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As an outsider sidewalk fan looking in, I can't help but guess that the calc requirement for every major not only hurts recruiting, but -- really, does it really add value for all majors? Serious question. I can't help but believe that an "optional core" requirement, e.g., of an introductory probability and stats course and an "introduction to reasoning" course (e.g., Toulmin's model, and some Aristotelian logic) would be more useful than calculus for many of the majors not among the hard sciences. And hey, if such happened to make things a wee bit easier for recruiting in a society with a considerable degree of mathaphobia, that would be a nice bonus. Has calculus always been a core requirement at Tech?
Coach Dodd himself complained in his biography that calculus was the worst thing that ever happened to a school. He would go to a recruit's house and see a calculus book and groan to himself "Georgia has been here." The Georgia coaches would get a calculus book hand it to a recruit that was considering Tech and say: "Think you can pass this?" That said, the purists will raise hell if God forbid, the calculus requirement was to be lifted. Fair enough, but you can be sure it has in the past and will continue to be a major impediment to our football recruiting efforts. How much, is up for debate. Personally, I would keep it and give the players a watered down version with a gazillion TAs paid to keep them on track to pass the damn thing.