Are European students sufficiently prepared in mathematics? – Questionnaire results.

Are European students well prepared to meet the challenges of the use of mathematics in their studies at university level? University teachers often have the impression that students are not familiar with the mathematics they need and that there is even a trend that students perform more badly. Is this only a subjective perception? Are there significant differences from country to country? In the framework of the European Socrates project "Diffusion and improvement of mathematical knowledge in Europe" coordinated by Professor M. Manaresi of the Department of Mathematics of the University of Bologna and in which participated the universities of Bochum (responsible Prof. H. Flenner), Cyprus (responsiblen Prof. A. Vidras), Durham (responsible Prof. B. Straughan), Paris 7 (responsible Prof. S. Ofman), we conducted a multiple choice test in order to try to answer the questions above. Here we shall report on the results of the test which was given to 3441 first-year students (whose curricula required at least one compulsory mathematics course) in September and October 2003 during the first week of university.