The Course for the Underprepared Student: Which of the Two is Really More Underprepared?

Vic Montemayor; Department of Physics and Astronomy; Middle Tennessee State University; Murfreesboro, TN

The preparation of students coming into the introductory physics sequences is a problem that seems to be getting bigger with time. This seems to be not only because students getting out of high school who decide to pursue a science major don't really have the background necessary to do so (they didn't take all of the science electives in high school that they should have), but also because of the increasing number of non-traditional students returning to school after years of absence from academics. This brief talk will discuss what our "solutions" seem to be, and why they tend not to work.