National Measure CONTINUED
have math SAT scores in the 700s. This makes them think twice
about whether they’re really good enough.” While Gebhardtsbauer said students with lower SAT scores can be good actuarial
students, “they have to work really hard.” He also noted that
he’s had students with very high math SATs who didn’t know
how to work hard on real-world applications, so they weren’t
successful either.
Another professor, at a small private university in the North-
east, who wished to remain anonymous because he didn’t want
his comments to reflect poorly on his students agreed that to-
day’s college students’ math skills aren’t up to snuff. “Math
aptitudes [among all students] are very poor and have gotten
much worse,” he said. “With actuarial students, it’s not as acute.
No one is going to major in actuarial science unless they’re good
at math; there’s some self-selection going on. But I’d still say
about half my students aren’t as prepared as they should be.”
But the reason for this decrease in preparedness might have
less to do with math education and more to do, paradoxically,
with the growing popularity of the actuarial profession.
Warren Luckner, who directed the actuarial program at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 2003 until last May and
has been teaching actuarial students for two decades, said that
ever since the mid-1990s, when “actuary” started showing up
in rankings as “the best job in America,” more students have
been enrolling in actuarial science programs. With the recent
recession and because the actuarial profession fared relatively
well compared with other careers, it might simply be that stu-
dent bodies are larger now and have more diverse educational
backgrounds. “I think we’re seeing a wider range of skills,” said
Luckner. “We could be getting students who aren’t a good fit
[with actuarial science].” He added, however, that “even the
brighter ones seem rusty when it comes to their algebraic skills.”
Whether this means those entering the actuarial profession
today are less skilled than those who became actuaries in ear-
lier generations is open to debate. Lenny Shteyman, an actuary
at AXA Equitable who runs his company’s summer internship
program, doesn’t see any drop in quality. In fact, he finds the
opposite to be true. “I’ve been in the field for 10 years, and the
people coming in today know a lot more about the field than
those who started 10 years ago,” Shteyman said. “The graduates
who come work for us are as smart as ever.”
Shteyman thinks that the nation’s poor performance on in-
ternational math tests isn’t representative of the kind of students
who are pursuing degrees in actuarial science. “People who are
interested in this profession tend to be outliers in terms of their
performance in math,” he said. “We are the far extreme of that
measurement. The fact that we have a poor education system
doesn’t mean the quality of actuaries is any less. America might
have an obesity epidemic, but that doesn’t impact our ability to
create great athletes.”
Yet even the country’s brightest high school math students
don’t measure up to many of their international peers. Fifty-five
percent of 15-year-olds in Shanghai scored at the highest levels
of the PISA math test, while only 9 percent of U.S. students did.
The Why Behind the What
Regardless of whether the U.S. economy or the actuarial profession will suffer because of unprepared students, the resilience
of low test scores prompts the question: why?
Some argue that the diversity of the U.S. population—
including large numbers of immigrants who are tested in
English regardless of their language proficiency—contributes to
the lower test scores. “You can remove all sorts of disadvantaged
groups, and our students fare much better,” said Redman. “We
test everyone and primarily only in English. That’s something
you don’t see in other countries. Some of those other countries
have specific education and career tracks and will only test stu-
dents in certain schools.”
Yet according to a 2010 Harvard study, only 10 percent of U.S.
students with at least one parent who graduated from college
are performing at the advanced level. At the same time, students
of all backgrounds, regardless of their parents’ educations, in
16 countries do better than this advantaged segment of the U.S.
population.
Others blame the country’s math phobia. “Math is the great
mental bogeyman of an unconfident America,” wrote Miles
Kimball and Noah Smith in a recent article for The Atlantic
called “The Myth of ‘I’m Bad at Math.’” They point out that
American fourth and eighth graders score quite well on interna-
tional math tests—beating countries like Germany, the U.K., and
Sweden. But U.S. high school students fall significantly behind
those countries. “This suggests that Americans’ native ability
is just as good as anyone’s but that we fail to capitalize on that
ability through hard work.”
The New York Times, which is devoting an editorial series
to the topic of American students’ failing math and science
scores, reported that only 17 percent of U.S. students take cal-
culus—demonstrating that the harder the math gets, the fewer
the students who pursue it.
Lack of quality teaching is another frequently cited reason
for the poor math scores. Although 78 percent of U.S. teachers
are math certified, that still leaves 3 million math students being
taught by uncertified teachers.
“We don’t have a good way of selecting math teachers who
are trained in math, especially at the lower grades,” said Red-
man. “It’s critical to engage students as early as possible and
keep them interested at a young age. We need to do more think-
ing about what should be in the curriculum and making sure
those who teach math are good at it and, hopefully, love it.”
Gebhardtsbauer agreed. “Some high school teachers may not
