About 17 years ago I attended a top 10 UK university to study for a degree in Computer Science.
Mathematics had never been a particularly strong point for me. However I (just) had the required A-Level qualification to be accepted for the course without any issue.
After two terms I dropped out and switched to another top 10 UK University to study for an Information Technology degree. The reasons I dropped out from the former were simply because I found the Mathematical lectures unbelievably difficult. The university did not (in my opinion) provide good support to people who weren't strong in this area. However I also never understood why this level of mathematics was being taught in the first place.
I recently looked at some lecture notes provided on the former universities website for the current year. And sure enough, the level of complexity seems the same.
When I switched to doing an Information Technology degree part of my logic was that the outcome would be a more practical/useful set of skills to actually develop software, along with the logical thinking required (which in my view requires little mathematical knowledge). For me this has worked well as I've had a good career as a software developer since graduating. I've never found any of my work requires much maths, beyond that of a GCSE/A-level level of complexity.
Interestingly, looking on LinkedIn, a huge number of people at the former university went on to be software engineers or similar roles. The salaries at the organisations these people work seem commensurate to the role I am currently in.
Given this, I'm wondering what the end-goal and purpose of teaching that complex maths is on CS degrees? I understand some people will go into roles working with hardware, or even producing software where there are complex mathematical elements. But this seems to be in the minority - by a very big margin - in terms of what people actually end up doing. I have also spoken to people about careers they've gone into as opposed to just looking on LinkedIn etc.
It seems to me that CS courses are teaching skills which - whilst relevant - are not as relevant as they might once have been.
My experience of this is based on two top 10 UK universities but having looked at some others (in the UK and USA) this seems to be a general case.
If people are going into roles which require that level of mathematical knowledge, what are those roles? Because I can't see a lot of evidence of this actually happening after people have graduated.