In China, students majoring in science and engineering (except mathematics, who study mathematical analysis) have difficulty in learning mathematics, which is often called "advanced mathematics" in textbooks; Students majoring in literature and history learn a little shallower mathematics, and their textbooks are often called "calculus". Different majors in science and engineering, literature and history have different degrees of depth.
Mathematics is an important subject, but it is also difficult. It requires meticulous logical thinking and accurate calculation ability. It is estimated that mathematics is a sub-item of many students. In fact, college mathematics courses are more difficult and the failure rate is higher. Therefore, if high school students have a weak foundation in mathematics and poor grades, they can consider filling in some majors that "don't study mathematics", such as mathematics, finance, communication engineering and statistics. Otherwise graduation will be a problem, not to mention employment and future development.
The quality of high school mathematics foundation affects the basic literacy of college mathematics learning.
There is a great difference between middle school education and university education. They are as difficult to connect as trucks and high-speed trains. Due to the limitation of my major, I only discuss what I know about mathematics education, and other subjects are inconvenient. Every year, millions of students enter universities and need to learn advanced mathematics, which is a headache for many people. Among them, tens of thousands of students entered the department of mathematics. It is necessary to systematically study dozens of specialized mathematics courses such as mathematical analysis, advanced algebra, analytic geometry, abstract algebra and ordinary differential equations. There is a significant difference between college mathematics and high school mathematics, which may be beyond the expectation of many freshmen, so that some students who have done well in high school (or college entrance examination) are also very uncomfortable.
From the teaching content, the middle school textbooks are modular and the knowledge points are scattered, covering almost all branches of mathematics. With breadth, you can't go deep naturally. Every knowledge point seems to be a little bit, so students who look intuitive and easy to understand may also be able to read. However, the lack of depth has led to a great shortcoming. "There is no logic in high school mathematics knowledge", that is, there is no connection between knowledge points, but some connections that should be far away.
College mathematics is much more systematic. Most chapters in middle school textbooks are a course or a research direction of college mathematics, even a major. Each course focuses on a branch of mathematics, which is strictly abstract and theoretical, and requires students to have strong logical reasoning ability. The course content is deep enough, self-contained and interrelated. Some people say that college students learn more mathematics in one week than high school students do in three years. It may be a bit exaggerated, but one semester should be uncontroversial. Therefore, the quality of high school mathematics foundation affects the basic literacy of college mathematics learning. If the most basic knowledge is not well laid, it will be difficult for colleges to learn advanced mathematics.