Diverging Paths: Exploring the Association Between Initial Math Pathways and College Students’ Subsequent Math Performance

Math pathways are an increasingly common policy reform where students choose a traditional math pathway (involving Algebra and/or Calculus) or an alternate math pathway more applicable to students' fields of study, namely Statistics or Liberal Arts Math with quantitative reasoning skills. We use data from all first-time-in-college students in the Florida College System to conduct an inverse-probability regression adjustment examining whether student's initial enrollment in different gateway math pathways influences subsequent math performance. We find the Liberal Arts pathways may increase the likelihood of students passing the first gateway course, but Algebra pathways tend to result in greater longer-term coursetaking success.