Sucks, quite frankly. I've said it, and I have friends who say the exact same thing. And my friends are and large engineering majors with A and B averages. You do the math (ok, ok, I know, that one was bad... ;)). To illustrate my point, let me give you my history with said department.

My first class was MTH 111, or College Algebra. The easy stuff. Linear equations, exponential equations, and the like. Well hell, I had just done this in HS, not to mention I had a pretty good teacher and an at least decent TA. I ended up getting like a B in the course.

Second class: MTH 241, Calculus for Management, Social Sciences, and Life. Or some other title like that. Business calculus, more or less. Taught by the worst teacher I have ever come in contact with. She was utterly inept at trying to get people to understand a damn thing, let alone calculus. Half the time her explanations to questions left the class more confused than when she started. I frankly don't remember anything about my TA. I ended up trying to learn it by myself, didn't go to class, and after encountering a couple of the Tests From Hell(tm), got a D- in the class and ended up on academic probation from the College of Business.

Third class: MTH 245, Math for Management, Social Sciences, and Life. Or something. Taught by the same loser teacher as before. This time, though, going to recitation was NOT required. So I skipped it. And I skipped class, and tried to learn it on my own (sometimes). I withdrew from the course halfway through.

Fourth class (current): MTH 241 again. New teacher. He's actually pretty good, as teachers go. I have less confidence in my TA, however. She tries, but doesn't quite do it. It's obvious that there's still a lot she doesn't know. And part of the problem, I think, is that A, the teacher is new, and B, he's trying to adapt from the material written by (yup) the heinous teacher from last year.

Which brings us to my main problem. The tests. They are hard. Sometimes, I think, unreasonably hard. Using tonight's test as an example, one problem got outright tossed after multitudes of errors were found in it. After being assured that there might be one optimization problem period on the test, I was faced with no less than three, each being harder than anything I remember from the book. The rest of the test was largely massively complicated derivatives of exponential/logarithmic equations, playing with e, and some other fun stuff. All of it far harder than I remembered from the book, INCLUDING the recommended review problems.

And from my friends, I hear tales of alternately heinous profs that make everything too hard to imagine, or profs that are so easy you can ditch class the whole term and still get an A. I take some issue with that, considering that my entire future with the College of Business hinges upon my passing two classes.

Now let's compare to say, the Department of History, from whom I have taken 5 classes from 4 different professors. In each of them, the objectives were clearly presented to me, and I knew PRECISELY the questions that would be on the tests. In fact, I knew what I had to write my papers on weeks before I even had to do them. The professors were largely of high quality, and made things very clear and easy to understand. When I was tested, there was almost no variation. 4 of the profs used or use slight variations on a "write a paragraph on 3 out of 4 people/places/things and then write a single long essay on some topic like the Fall of Rome." One prof has used the format of a few multiple choice questions, and a massive take home paper. I will state again that it was made excruciatingly clear as to what would be on these tests. No surprises period. As opposed to my math tests, with the infamous optimization problems.

And on a final note, remember that heinous math teacher that did 241/245? Well, here's an interesting bit of info I picked up: She's the wife of the head of the department. I'll let you draw your own conclusions there.