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The recent debate over California State University’s well-intended proposal to require an additional quantitative reasoning (QR) course for admission highlights the challenges of efforts to bolster mathematics preparation. And the CSU trustees’ recent decision to first conduct more extensive analyses bodes well for advancing equitable math opportunity.

Why does high school calculus, generally AP Calculus, play such an outsize role in the access to competitive colleges? And should it? Clearly the reason for the dominance of Calculus is not that all students who take AP Calculus in high school go on to major in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields that actually require them to know calculus.

The purpose of math is not to make students miserable. It is not to instill fear in them. And it is definitely not to create a pecking order among students. The purpose of math education is to help students “expand professional opportunity; understand and critique the world; and experience joy, wonder, and beauty,” to quote the National Council of Teacher of Mathematics.

College admissions requirements have a complex relationship with high school opportunity: On the one hand, colleges’ course-taking requirements can be a lever for improving the availability of rigorous high school courses. Since high school offerings tend to migrate over time in the direction of college admissions requirements, those requirements can be a way to raise the bar for all students.

When California State University faculty first proposed requiring applicants to complete a math or quantitative reasoning course in their senior year of high school, they specifically recommended that the system “investigate the impact these requirements may have on the success of all students, particularly those from historically underserved populations.”