Admission in undergraduate programmes in Maths is expected to decline by 20-30% this year even in top colleges in Tamil Nadu. Some institutions have already begun cancelling the evening shifts in Maths courses. One reason attributed to this is the craze for professional courses, particularly AI-based Engineering programmes. But one wonders how Maths can lose its lustre despite analytics, logic, and statistics being the basis of AI programmes.
Job opportunities
While not everyone likes teaching, there is a persistent feeling that one who specialises in Maths has no other alternative except to be a teacher. This is a myth that needs to be laid to rest. According to a list put out by Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, the U.S., there are 42 job titles for those who major in Maths; beginning with Accountant and ending with Urban Planner.
Maths is a sought-after subject and Indians are making sizeable contributions in this area internationally. For instance, K. E. Srivatsava, who hails from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, was the 2022 Founder Medallist at Vanderbilt University. Last month, Indian-American C.R. Rao won the 2023 International Prize in Statistics, considered to be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, at the age of 102.
Maths has been crucial to the development of human culture. Since Pythagoras discovered numerical connotations in musical harmony, Maths has evolved as a permanent bridge between the Natural Sciences and the Humanities. Our predecessors put Maths on an equal footing with languages by comparing the two to the two eyes of humans. Apart from contributing to personal and professional lives, Maths enriches many other areas too.
“Maths, being logic, helps the economist formulate his problems more unambiguously than a common language (like English), lay down axioms, develop lemmas. and use them to finally reach clear conclusions,” says Sudharshan K Mishra, an eminent Economics professor. Mechanical design engineer Jeremy McKinley wrote, “Using Maths, in 2006, NASA was able to predict the exact path that the New Horizon space probe would need to take in order to do a flyby of Jupiter in 2007, Pluto in 2015, and then Ultima Thule in 2019.”
In fact, mathematical formulation, feasibility and stability studies and methods of solution are the foundations of problem-solving in many areas. Maths enables one to achieve analytical skills that help one visualise problems with clarity, discard falsehood from reality and be sensitive to the world around you.
Therefore, the declining demand for Maths at the UG level is a cause for worry. This could lead to the admission of students who are not academically competent. In turn, this could cause a lowering of the standard of instruction and dilution of the exam rigour (to produce a high pass percentage). If these students later pursue PG and Ph.D. programmes or become teachers in schools and colleges, the cascading effect will produce a generation of low achievers.
What can be done
One way to counter this is to highlight the charm and potential of Maths to students while at school. Not everyone may want to pursue Maths but we must identify those students who have potential and see that their talents are nurtured. Special attention must be paid to the quality of teaching the subject. Teachers must be trained to use logical inductive procedures rather than deductive ones such as applying formulae without explaining the logic behind them. We must also work towards erasing the myth of Maths being a difficult subject. We should also celebrate the works of stalwarts such as Srinivasa Ramanujan and Euler so that students are aware of who they are and the contributions they have made. What’s more, establishing a ‘Ramanujan University of Mathematical Sciences’, will not only be a tribute to him, but also a reminder to our students of the glory and value of Maths.
The writer is Former Professor and Head, Entrance Exams and Admission, Anna University, Chennai
