Why we will still need math in the future of work

06/27/2024, 5:41 AM
fastcompany.com

Both the dreams of young people and the reality of jobs have changed dramatically over the last 30 years, moving math success from optional to a necessity. But the way we educate children hasn’t changed. We dash their dreams, often before they can fully form. We have to stop doing this.

Children and young adults have many of the same, evergreen, dream jobs: doctor, teacher, veterinarian, firefighter, dancer, pilot, police officer. But there are new dream jobs in the mix, too, such as working in information technology or being a social media influencer. In a 2018 survey of students in 41 countries, including the United States, one change noted globally was that nearly all the career aspirations of young people required postsecondary education and many required advanced degrees. We know that algebra completion in K through 12 is the most predictive activity of college admission and college completion. So, said another way, the dreams of kids around the world today knowingly or unknowingly presume math success.

Observing the marketplace reality, both in the present day and considering the future of work, one notable change is that the number of jobs that require secondary degrees, or technical knowledge, are increasing much faster than those that don’t. Examples include being a data scientist or an electrician. In 1980, about half of those employed were in jobs that required above-average preparation like college or technical certification, and half of those employed were in jobs that didn’t. That is no longer the case. Jobs requiring advanced preparation have increased faster than those that don’t. Today, the majority require advanced preparation. Further, among the top six skills employers are looking for in college graduates, half relate to mathematical thinking, including “critical thinking skills,” “the ability to analyze and interpret data,” and “the ability to demonstrate complex problem-solving skills.”

And yet, many of the most accomplished people I talk to still view math as a luxury rather than a necessity. A few years ago, I was telling an Ivy League professor about Zearn, and in my usual fashion, I talked about our key findings, that all kids can be math kids and that we adults need to do things differently to make that happen. She interrupted me: “But you do agree that children can have many passions—ballet or soccer? We want to make room for all of those students.”

Her interjection threw me off. I had been trying to explain how math can make room for everyone, and she was admonishing me for excluding some children. I was thrown off and flubbed my response. I opened my mouth to say something and then closed it without making a sound.

Afterward, I shared the story with a journalist friend, trying to understand what had gone wrong. She told me the professor and I had completely different assumptions about math: I viewed math as essential and presumed the professor did, too, but the professor saw it as a hobby or special interest—one option among many. Perhaps math was that, a long time ago. And it can still be a passion or a hobby; I know people who do long division in their heads to relax.

Personally, I never expected to be a STEM worker. I had complicated thoughts about science, technology, engineering, and math. Like many women, I stereotyped the space as a boring and uncreative grind. I thought the jobs were niche and esoteric. But I create every day, from helping to shape our software-based digital math lessons to working on our interactive professional learning for adults to exploring our data as we analyze how kids learn math. My work is not esoteric at all. For me, it’s part of the most vital work: educating our children. My childhood dreams were those of helping people; I thought that might be at the American Red Cross. Now my way of serving is as a STEM worker at Zearn.

Perhaps because I am an accidental, though delighted, STEM worker, stories of fields transforming to include STEM and new technologies capture me. For a long time, archaeology was a field in which the discoveries were both accidental and done by hand. After stumbling upon something special, archaeologists would work meticulously, with small brushes and chisels, for years. I remember hearing the story of a boy and a dog stumbling upon a vast network of caves with elaborate paintings in the Dordogne Valley of France—the famous Lascaux. There was hard work, of course, but also a lot of luck and fortune involved.

With the infusion of STEM workers and new technologies, the field of archaeology has transformed. Discoveries are now systematically accomplished. In 2022, archaeologists found a network of cities and 100 miles of road likely built between 1000 BCE and AD 150 by scanning vast swaths of impenetrable jungle in northern Guatemala and southern Mexico using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) technology. Many believe they have discovered the first “freeway system” and transformed our understanding of ancient Mayan civilization.

More people are pursuing STEM jobs than ever before. Others are finding themselves in them unexpectedly, as I did. The U.S. workforce is already STEM heavy at 23%, or roughly 36 million people. This is not defined by academic degree but rather by the actual work. There are only 2 million people with computer science degrees in the U.S. STEM jobs are lucrative and stable. The National Science Foundation finds that these workers tend to have both higher salaries and lower unemployment rates than their non-STEM counterparts. Median earnings for full-time, year-round workers ages 25 and older in STEM jobs are close to $80,000, nearly double the comparable median salary for non-STEM workers at just over $40,000.

Completing math courses is a predictor of academic and career success, and not completing them is a predictor of failure—students who don’t pass algebra have only a 20% chance of completing high school. Yes, four out of five children who fail algebra drop out and don’t complete high school. Young adults who complete college or other selective career training dramatically boost their earning potential. One recent study found that high school graduates on average earn $30,000 a year while college graduates earn $52,000 a year, or more than 40% higher salaries.

We can even see the impact of completing specific math courses on future job earnings. As far back as 2001, when professors Heather Rose and Julian R. Betts published a study titled “Math Matters,” we knew a link existed between courses completed and income. For instance, they found that even 10 years after people finished high school, those who had completed a calculus class made 65% more in income than other men and women who did not go beyond taking a vocational math class. This was true regardless of ethnicity, gender, and other differentiating demographics.

The pandemic has had a negative impact on K through 12 math preparation and achievement. In the wake of school disruptions, NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) saw its biggest drops in math scores, ever. The NAEP had shown that math scores improved a bit over the last few decades, meaning only 40% of fourth graders and 34% of eighth graders score proficiently. Post-pandemic, eighth-grade math scores fell by 8 points, bringing student performance to a level not seen since 2000. The share of students deemed proficient in eighth grade dropped from 34% to 26%, meaning that one-third of our eighth graders used to be proficient and now it is one-fourth. Fourth-grade math scores fell by 5 points, similar to 2003 levels. The pandemic wiped out 20 years of math learning progress.

Looking at how we are preparing students, through the postsecondary lens, Peg Tyre in The Atlantic shared that from 2003 to 2009, nearly 50% of students who pursued a STEM degree dropped out because they found they didn’t have the quantitative background they needed to succeed. As a result, those who do persist in math and related STEM disciplines in the United States often come from abroad. More than half of computer science PhD students come from outside the country, and temporary visa holders represented close to 40% of doctoral degree earners in science and engineering in 2019.

There is a huge mismatch. Educational achievement, particularly in mathematics, is not improving as fast as our young peoples’ ambitions are growing. Math achievement is also not improving as fast as today’s job market requires, let alone what the future of work needs. We could change that. While there are many levers for building the workforce of the future, including improving social and emotional skills, one necessary lever is to ensure that all kids are successful in K through 12 math. But this point is still considered frustratingly controversial. Math is still for math kids rather than for everyone.

Today, math is the language of the world around us. Some can speak it and some can’t. Those without numeracy are cut off from crucial understanding of life and society, and from vital opportunities. Success in math predicts many positive outcomes. We should not pretend otherwise. But in math education, we are collectively pretending; this is otherwise known as a delusion. We are missing two sets of information: the facts on how numeracy is required for a good job and how numeracy connects to your day-to-day life and allows you to navigate it successfully.

Perhaps you know an adult who can’t balance his checkbook or figure out the tip on a restaurant bill. Maybe you struggle with filing your taxes or creating a savings plan. Perhaps you find your insurance bills perplexing or can’t understand the implications of new financial laws and regulations.

We live in a world where financial literacy is far more relevant than it was in the past. Gone are the days when most people retire with pensions—learning how to save for retirement requires some serious math forecasting skills. Living on a budget, too, is much more of a challenge than it used to be, given much shorter job longevity and a larger percentage of people working for themselves in the gig economy (and not receiving a regular paycheck). People are also investing online rather than putting money in savings accounts or using a broker. More math knowledge is needed to discern a good investment from someone trying to fleece you.

Consider the 2007-08 financial crisis, also known as the Great Recession and the Global Financial Crisis. There’s a reason this event has been given such dramatic names. Between 2007 and 2010, the median net worth of families fell precipitously from $126,400 to $77,300. This set American households back to 1992 levels. One major source of fuel to the crisis was widespread default on home loans that had adjustable rates instead of fixed rates. In America, home buyers have access to a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. Typically, the buyer would put 20% down, borrow 80% from the bank, and then pay interest and principal to the bank each month. If a person bought a $200,000 home, they’d put down $40,000 and borrow $160,000. If the 30-year fixed rate was 5%, they would pay $859 per month, allowing a family to own a home even if they didn’t have $200,000 in cash.

But during the lead-up to the Great Recession, lenders experimented with new loan structures that the public, regulators, and likely the lenders themselves did not have the mathematical intuition to properly evaluate. (Remember that 22% of U.S. eighth-grade students score proficient on the NAEP exam.) Banks offered deals on adjustable rate mortgages or ARMS, with a very low teaser introductory rate. So you might have a loan that was 1% for the first year, 2% for years two and three, and then the rate would jump to 10% per year. That would mean your payments on that same $160,000 loan for your $200,000 house would be $515 a month in the first year, then $591 a month, and then, one morning, $1,404. That’s the morning you would default.

Some 6 million American households lost their homes to foreclosure during the Global Financial Crisis. Many had not calculated that they were in homes they could not afford. Further, when 6 million homeowners default, bringing the whole financial system down with them, there are catastrophic math-understanding issues from top to bottom.

When I shared some statistics with a business executive about the poor job we are doing teaching math to kids, he responded, “This is why people are getting cheated out of their money.” He was referring to people being scammed by investment fraud and other schemers, and he was right. With broad-based numeracy, we can build a society of people who are capable of protecting one another. Financial literacy lessons are shown to help as well, when they are additive to widespread numeracy, not a substitute for it. For example, lessons on how insurance or a mortgage works requires a strong working knowledge of rates and percentages—ideas that should be mastered in seventh and eighth grade.

A range of problems that might seem disconnected are the result of undereducating our kids, specifically in the world of mathematics. Conversely, a lot of problems will be solved when we build a numerate generation. The greater the numeracy, the more likely that we’ll produce a population capable of solving environmental, technological, health, and other societal problems. Unlocking everyone’s potential wouldn’t just increase the proportion of engineers coming up with answers to our most pressing problems—it would break down the wall between STEM and other fields of expertise, and produce a society where everyone has the ability and power to engage with the technological and quantitative questions around them, so that different domains of knowledge can work together.

There is no question that a great deal of technology innovation is superficial, and misleadingly labeled innovation at all. But technical and scientific breakthroughs are necessary to solve our hardest problems. For example, one of the primary barriers to scaling renewable energy sources such as wind and solar is called the Green Premium. Basically, in many cases it costs more to use green energy sources than fossil fuels. As Bill Gates shares in his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, “The main culprits are our demand for reliability, and the curse of intermittency.”

The sun does not shine nor does the wind blow twenty-four hours a day, but we consume electricity 24 hours a day. So the hardest nut to crack in moving renewable energy forward in an efficient and effective way is what to do when the sun or wind are not powering our grid. One solution could be cheap, large batteries. If we can solve the technological challenges to have large, cheap batteries or other means to store excess solar and wind energy, we could start to tip the scales to where renewable energy will be cheaper than fossil fuels.

If we had an army of young people with the mathematical and technical skills to explore and tinker with this renewable energy problem, we would answer it sooner. Many of the climate and energy concerns are problems of innovation. We simply need more humans with the preparation in mathematics working to find new answers. Just like batteries, treating cancer, reducing income inequality, and getting clean drinking water to every human, each goal has innovation and technical challenges that need to be solved.

Though I am a math evangelist, and I spend more time than you would even guess thinking about and solving K through 8 math problems, I know that math is not a panacea. But math success is now a critical ingredient for our success. Math offers knowledge and skills that are especially relevant to a time when we require more critical thinking and problem-solving than ever before.

I used to dream that I would hear leaders and politicians wax enthusiastic about math education. Like the dogs that don’t bark, I have often lamented the absence. But things are starting to change.

After working in the world of math education for more than a decade, in the winter of 2022, I observed a shift. Here’s a sample, amalgamated like a restaurant review, of what leaders are saying on math education:

“Giving every child access to a quality education— regardless of their race or income—is the civil rights issue of our day”; “it made us the best-educated, best-prepared nation in the world, but the world has caught up”; “although there are many factors that affect a student’s trajectory, the evidence shows that it’s extremely important for them to succeed in math”; “to help improve achievement, we are proposing new investments in high-quality math curricula and training to ensure that our educators have the support they need to help all our students thrive”; “a student that has notable gaps in primary grades mathematics proficiency . . . will not be successful in algebra . . . we are dependent upon our kids today learning . . . not to mention the moral obligation we have to each of the five and a half million souls in our system to give them our absolute best.”

This enthusiasm is necessary, and we need more. It must be channeled into effective efforts to build the broad-based numeracy that will enrich everyone’s lives and will build a healthy, successful, math-informed society. The need for numeracy is now.