ABSTRACT
A mathematics degree aims ‘to develop in students the capacity for learning and for clear logical thinking’ and ‘will develop [the students’] skills of abstract, logical thinking and reasoning’.
These quotations come from the publicly stated aims for mathematics degree courses from two universities which serve very different communities: the first takes students with very high qualifications and emphasises developing the next generation of researchers; the second takes students with much lower entry qualifications and has an emphasis on the development of employability skills. While degree programmes may have very different ‘inputs’ and aim for quite different ‘outputs’, an examination of the stated aims across the sector suggests some level of commonality: there appears to be a core of agreement that the aims of a mathematics degree involve developing certain types of analytic thinking skills.
