Good Maths courses and careers for students with the Autistic Spectrum Disorder?

[HisMum4]

DS finished year 12 being quietly confident, expecting his AS results for Math, Further Maths, Physics and German AS. The plan is to drop German and continue with the STEM subjects to A2. Having attended a residential extension Maths course and read a few books, DS is now very enthusiastic about a Maths degree, although he considered Engineering or Computing in the past and learned to code. We are booking open days visits for September, but not quite sure what to look for and what criteria to set.

Naturally, we looked at the league tables. I‘ve read through a number of threads on the subject of choosing universities and degree courses. However the more I read, the more I became uncertain and confused in terms of how all this wisdom would apply to autistic DS. The dynamics and factors that work for “normal” people in a certain way might work very differently for student on the spectrum.

For example I came across a comment that due to their limited “worldliness” and social interactions skills, some students with solid Maths degrees remain unemployable :(

Another comment that worries me was that 40% of Maths graduates at good universities get 2:2 degrees, which as I understand are not degrees at all, as no decent employer would look at them, so what’s the point?

Self insight is really not DS’s strength so he tends just to repeat what his teachers are saying, which is nothing helpful so far. I haven’t been to a university in this country and have absolutely no idea how it all works, so I am seriously worried to not do more harm than good. So I would really appreciate some pointers, some empirical evidence or observations that could provide some reality check/factual point of reference for our search.

DS has a statement with full time 1:1 support, although it became very light touch and remote in 6 Form, to encourage his independence. He has a language disorder that makes essays very difficult. He had teething problems at the beginning of 6 Form and generally doesn’t adjust to change and new environment very easily. He seems to enjoy Decisions and Algebra modules most (the latter described by the teacher as Pure Maths). Due to his ASD, DS struggles socially and is not very “worldly” and streetwise for employment.

Here is what we established so far:

1 The main overriding concern is the future employment, graduating successfully with a job to go to. The employment should come on the back of the prestige and set up at the university – a strong industry connection is key. In which universities and courses would DS have greatest chances of getting the internships and job offers, in spite of his ASD?

2. The course structure and the assessment methods should be workable for DS, although I have limited idea what this means. I know that small groups, some 1:1 supervision (the more the better), some flexibility, modular assessments (i.e. not zero assessment for 9 months and then one final exam on all of the years material…) will be best. Telling DS “Here is the library, it is all up to you now, see you in 9 months…” is definitely a no-no. What course structure and assessment should we be looking for? I realise that Oxbridge is most suited if one can get into, but what if else?

3. Preferably small campus rather than a big city. As little social pressures and drinking as possible. This means possibility to opt in and out of social life at his own pace, without peer pressure penalising his studies and wellbeing. Preferably a single campus accommodation with ensuite, avoiding shared apartments as much as possible. Strong safeguards against bullying and abuse. Alternatively commute from zone 9 to London?

4. Structured possibilities to expand the horizon and learn about the industry and the real world via organised opportunities to mix with diverse students in diverse range of subjects (i.e. not via personal network) and to attend lectures/presentations from and visits to interesting companies, organised by the university.

5. Having various career options open. Some flexibility, possibility to readjust career aims depending on how it goes with the degree, to be balanced against the focus on being immediately employable. Being redirected to Engineering or Computing might be better than getting an unemployable 2:2 degree. Do Maths graduates with ASD get into the City or is Computing industry unavoidable?

What else should we consider and which weight to give to these factors?
What could be the best courses and pathways to employment for DS?
Many thanks.

Hmmm this is all a bit worrying for ds2 - he finds any kind of extended writing absolute torture. I'd assumed he'd be heading towards comp sci, or some kind of STEM career but if his lack of communication skills is going to hold him back what hope is there for him? (I think he would rather have his arm chewed off by crocodiles than stand up in front of people and speak ...)

Spinoa, absolutely, I agree that you could always site an individual example and I have no doubt at all that that there are scores of people anyone could site who are fantastic researchers and communicators, and there is no contradiction. Of course, nobody suggested that more Aspies means more innovation.

The question really is what does it mean for the big picture, how really creative and innovative the resulting organisation is. I doubt there is any large empirical evidence or any research being done to prove it either way.

Each field has its Mozarts and Salieris and I would submit that Salieri was a better fit for the job description of the court composer and was financially more successful. The boy band market looks quite oversubscribed at the moment and I am certain by setting criteria in a job add one could fish very commercially successful bands, but not necessarily new original artists like Beatles, or Jimmy Hendrix. Because creating top of the charts acts now became a mature technology.

Before you rightly point out that research is peer reviewed and its value is noting like the boy band, my point is this:

I theorise that the trend sustained over time of systematically filtering the population of scientists and innovators through the sift of superior communication and people skills (“to have the best of both”) will result is purging this population from more introspective intuitive thinkers and make it overrepresented with extroverted influencer types and the profile of innovation produced as result will change, likely becoming more incremental and commercially oriented and less likely to produce disruptive innovations like the of Origin of Species or the Theory of Relativity.

It is a question of biodiversity.

Applying this filter at the entry to undergraduate STEM degrees may result is boy band factories.

I would welcome evidence to support or refute this either way.

The story of the marketing man is unusual as it is rare to find people who would readily analyse and articulate their strengths and weaknesses in this way. On paper and in person he looked like the best of both worlds, a better innovator than the next guy/girl, up to a time when his limits were revealed. But such revelation doesn’t have to come early in the career.

A researcher or engineer with stronger communication profile is more likely to network and draw on ideas from others (in addition of his own) and will be more successful at competing for resources and selling himself, resulting in obtaining a more interesting research project, and hence a stronger CV.

In fact this example was in the Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence that started the communication skill selection craze.

The uncertainty in assessing two research candidates is that you would never know the opportunity cost of not retaining the weaker communicator.

Is Andre Geim, the Nobel Prize winner, a good communicator? Who was more likely to be selected if he was competing for a PhD position with Brian Cox?

The best of both worlds’ profile is essentially a science Manager. Communication, influencing, politicking and people management skills are required in equal if not higher measure than the technical innovation skills, rightly so as long as it is recognised for what it is. The quality of research produced by the organisation will reflect the underlying pool of talent as well as the decisions taken in prioritising and marshalling those talents and ideas.

Edison is a great example of an inventor and innovation manager who was good at monetising his inventions, better than others, who worked on similar ideas at the same time. However as manager he dismissed as impractical and ridiculed Tesla, who worked for him early on and pioneered our modern alternate current power systems and communications technology, but didn’t have the skills to bring his ideas to market.

As organisations mature, the further the Manager and the decisions are removed from the original inventor, the least likely a truly innovative idea will break through.

Take the example of Microsoft, when Bill Gates stepped down as CEO to give way to Steve Ballmer. He is a jovial personable man, a better communicator and people manager than Gates. His priority amongst other things was to unleash the creative people potential at Microsoft. He had a track record of developing “.Net”, which was probably was seen as “big” by Microsoft. Under his management the company became more financially successful than ever. Yet it stumbled from being a paradigm shifting leader to being a distant follower in the mobile device market and is at risk of being displaced as the operating system standard with the decline of PC’s.

Perhaps innovation organisations go through unavoidable stages of the life cycle and different skill sets are more suited for different phases.

“Biodiversity” in STEM careers is worth preserving.

People with ASD traits, whether diagnosed or not, are not from a different planet, they are present in STEM research and innovation, in all other walks of life. They were here since the Neanderthal and contributed to civilisation. They tend to self select and gravitate towards STEM, dealing with figures, facts, things and ideas rather than people and perform best away from pressures of competing for funding and marketing themselves. They are an integral part of the existing knowledge and talent pool. What is new now is that the selection on communication skills and psychometric profiling is being applied. De-selecting them from STEM careers is essentially purging humanity from their contribution, reducing the “biodiversity” of talent, for the lack of better word.

So, yes, I it could be that proportionally fewer Aspies in STEM careers than there have historically been might result in less innovation.

Perhaps research is needed to understand the broader implication of displacing people on the spectrum from jobs. I don’t even know whether ASD is really is a disability or just defined to be that by the majority. Being a woman was viewed as disability IYSWIM.

I'm not quite answering your OP but here are a few thoughts...
We found a huge difference between maths departments - I'm sure once you visit some more unis you and your son will get a better idea. I didn't attend any talks but got to chat with a lot of lecturers, faculty staff and current students while hanging around for my DC.

How does your son deal with stress? Has he considered a slightly lower ranked uni where the pace might be a little easier. Would a first from a slightly less prestigious uni be a idea.
Some maths depts are huge and I wonder (but have NO idea) if they might be easy departments to increase in size with the removal of student caps???
It sounds as though your DS is a very strong student. Is it worth looking at a couple of unis that have unconditional offer schemes. Your son could then have the possibility of knowing exactly where he was going before his A2 exams - it would make the whole process a lot less stressful and would allow him to concentrate on his A2's without any additional worries.
Another advantage with going for a slightly less prestigious uni would be the availability of bursaries.
Also, The satisfaction rates at some of the maths departments at some of the
slightly less prestigious unis are very impressive (for what they are worth).

My DCs have all looked closely into how different unis handle group work. It seems to vary quite a bit from place to place - eg the way marks are allocated and the way the group is decided.

My comments are just those of a parent of four DC, three are at uni doing stem subject and the last one is hopefully going next September to study maths.

I also found that we got some really helpful advice from some knowledgable MN'ers who work in the field. (Including some that have posted on this thread )

Is Andre Geim, the Nobel Prize winner, a good communicator? Who was more likely to be selected if he was competing for a PhD position with Brian Cox?

Geim would have been selected.

In general one is not looking for hyper-strong outreach skills in selecting PhD students - one is looking for driven, enthusiastic students with very strong academic records and decent writing and communication skills. Geim would have ticked all the boxes.

There's also not such a shortage of PhD positions that Cox and Geim wouldn't have both gotten good positions.

The uncertainty in assessing two research candidates is that you would never know the opportunity cost of not retaining the weaker communicator.

I actually don't agree with this either. It is often very clear from the start of the PhD who the best researchers are. Looking back 15-20 years over my career there have been very few surprises.

First I would like to stress that I don’t criticise anyone personally, any individual decisions taken in individual circumstances. Nor do I mean to pick up a fight with the admission tutors at the unis where DS might want to apply :). My comment relates to the practice in general and its cumulative effect over time.

It is often very clear from the start of the PhD who the best researchers are.

Once they started the PhD, I suppose it should be clear, if the professors are not the marketing types themselves, preferring more moneytiseable ideas in the short term, castigatising students for lack of focus and poor commercial acumen. (Not suggesting it happens in places where posters on this thread are from).

However if you put the filter early on, especially at the entry to the undergraduate degrees, you won't have sufficient diversity amongst the PhD applicants. Over time you would really shift the profile of innovation being produced.

With the hindsight, many universities would claim how they would foresee the great potential of people like Geim. I am sure the Dutch university where he was unhappy in the research position now wishes they could revert the time.

The reality is we have no way of knowing how individuals like Geim would have faired in UK education system. Maybe he would have made it to the top degree/PhD programmes, or maybe he would have failed his GCSEs, wouldn’t have gotten good A levels. Einstein famously struggled with maths at school. Even in his country, I understand Geim could not get through selection into the degree course of his choice and had to skip a year to apply to a different university. I don’t think he ever had to face standardised externally moderated exams.

If you have an education and selection system that right from GCSEs favours extraverted thinkers, who are better at communication and perform better under time pressure, you would put higher barriers for introverted intuitive thinkers to access the quality STEM education, where they are most likely to be of value. Over time, you would end up with more incremental, short term and commercially oriented innovation while a fair few potential creative types would be jobbing electricians on tax credits.

Selecting on extraversion is really driven by business, because those individuals are indeed more successful in companies and generate more profit in the short term. Transposing this selection principle to all works of life does not necessarily leads to better outcomes. The societal role of education and academia is really to generate and explore the broadest and most outwardly range of ideas just out of curiosity. It cannot be achieved if the individuals who make it through selection are the extraverted influencers, who’s learning style and modus operandi is in narrowing down, prioritising ideas based on maximum perceived utility in the short term. In some occupations you need people able to generate and willing to invest time and resources in exploring far fetched, outrageous, impractical and risky ideas.

It is not a point about ASD, most non ASD introverted intuitive thinkers will fair less well in the system designed to promote extraverted types.

Out of curiosity, why Andre Geim is in Manchester and not in Oxford? You would think UK flagship institutions would kill to have him…

My son has just finished the first year of his mech eng degree and I agree with the poster who said there are essays to do, reports to write up and group practicals where you have to work together and allocate tasks within the group and present stuff.
All the engineers in my family have ended up working in a management role and managing people as well as doing the techy stuff.
Would going down the physics route be better?

Hismum Sorry - just seen your question for me.

I wouldn't describe Cambridge maths as macho. It was fairly male dominated (75:25 I'd say) but not macho - most of the lads were too geeky to be macho!

Having looked at unistats and based on all the very helpful advice here, I short listed a number of unis for open days.

My list includes Cambridge, Bath and Warwick and a few less prestigious courses. I didn’t consider Scottish universities because of distance and deselected Bristol, Exeter and Durham based on their student satisfaction scores on support, assessment, personal development (confidence and communication) being not better than Bath and Warwick. I also dropped Birmingham, having a feeling that at least on paper it looks like a stressful place.

Am I making a mistake of not considering Birmingham, Durham, St Andrews?

Any opinions or experiences about students on the spectrum thriving there?

Any other places we must see?

You will have a better idea next week when his results are out..It is normal for people sucessfully applying to Cambridge Maths to be taking at least 4 subjects at A2 (check out the average points score I think it's about 670) .I think they will wonder about his ability to cope with a large workload if he is doing just maths , fM and physics.

Has he tried any STEP papers yet?

DS doesn't have any choice in dropping German as the school does not timetable 4 subjects at A2, his German would conflict with the STEM subjects. We can't tutor it and I don't think it is a good idea to learn an MFL in isolation at home. He would be better off doing some more units in FM and some extra curricular STEM projects.
He is preparing STEP papers.

Any insights or experiences about Birmingham and Lancaster for Aspies? Any comments?

I just realised that Birmingham stumbled in ranking since a few years ago when we first looked at universities, so it is not an appealing option at all..

Thank you everyone for your advice so far.

As we are weighing which universities to visit, the aspirational options are quite obvious, but it is very difficult to find a basis to shortlist 3-2 out of a half dozen reasonable fall back options.

How far one should spread the bets between the first and the fifths choice in terms of grades for Maths courses? What is the strategy for the bottom 3 choices?

Could anyone, but could anyone discuss the pros and cons of Maths courses at Lancaster, Surrey, Southampton, Kent, Leister, Loughborough?

Lancaster, Surrey, Southampton, Kent, Leister (sic), Loughborough

They are quite disparate places.Will ease of coming home for a few days, if things get too much, be a factor?

Coming home in case of crisis, and more importantly me jumping in the car and being there within hours is a factor. But the career prospects resulting from the reputation are really more important.

The common thing between those unis is that they offer MMaths with possibility of sandwich year in industry, their student satisfaction and support is ranked reasonably for DS's needs and employment prospects are reasonable.

I thought of Lancaster and Southampton as a middle and insurance options, but employment prospects there are dire compared to the Sussex and the unis closer to London. Question is whether that is due to their reputation and career cervices or due to parents residing in Surrey and Kent...

DS visited Kent university in the past and liked it very much.

My friends daughter is going to university in September to study genetics. She is HFA and a perfect of example of having a fabulously supportive family, and the system working.

She just got the results of a Diploma she did at college and she gained 2 A * distinctions plus an A which I believe is the equivalent of the same in A levels. She studied forensic science.

As for what they future holds for her employment wise - who knows? Her autism in not something that can ever be hidden from and employer given the support she has in place which for uni even includes a machine to record her lectures as well as a support worker. But its like my friend says - the employment situation will be taken care of in time because right now she has uni to have a bash at first.

And for what its worth she is going to a local to her Uni which is mentioned in the previous post although she also had the choice of two others.

Thank you for your post, Weebirdie. It is reassuring to know that other DC on the spectrum are going to universities.

Please do share your stories, as it is difficult to extrapolate all the advice to the DC with ASD who have needs significant enough to have a statement.

You would think this is a good time for DS to become independent and not to choose the university based on proximity to home. Perhaps he needs to take the plunge, to take full responsibility for himself. Being independent would enhance his prospects, and all that. However, if a few months into his degree he would be totally drained and derailed by his practical and social life to the point of failing the course, it would be very hard and expensive to remedy the situation. The question is to judge when he is ready, and I don't know right now.

It is indeed difficult to hide from employers DS's condition. So far he couldn't get a work experience placement other than with his dad, not at all because he expected it to be brought to him on a plate.

I think your list is not at all disparate, other than geographically! You clearly want a campus university. Why not visit each, and find out about accommodation allocation, and ask what sort of work placement they could find for him considering his Asd. They should have good relationships with the employers they use so they should know which would suit him.

Hismum, my friends daughter is going to be staying at home because the uni is local to her and I think finances are also playing a part in things, but that said, I believe there are plans in place for her to go into student accommodation further down the line. Its very much a case of slowly but surely for her.

I actually met my friend on an autism forum, she was giving up ciggies and was wondering what to do with the money and I said - come and visit me. So she did. When I met her and her daughter at the airport it was the first time we'd met .

My son has a diagnosis of Classic Kanners Autism and Tourettes, he requires round the clock care so uni was never on the card for him but he does well and we still have him at home with us albeit it with full times carers.

If you like I would be willing to put you in touch with my friend.

Honestly I think you should worry less about prestige and more about whether the specific course will work for your DS. Getting a first rather than a two two, which is the kind of difference easily caused by engaging better or worse with the course, will swamp the prestige issue in the band of places you're looking at.

IME the key thing is: will your DS actually go to the events in the course? Sadly, a thing I see is students who don't go to the optional help sessions, then stop attending tutorials, and go on to drop out or fail. Offering, for example, a weekly 1-1 for a student with ASD, can be very helpful, but only if the student turns up. If they don't, email will be sent and maybe a phone call made, but nobody's going to go and get the student from their flat. I often think that if I were choosing a department for a student with ASD I'd prefer a very small department where people know one another and someone might just say "hey, where were you?" before it's too late.

I'd also take the student rankings of courses with a large pinch of salt, though. They are affected by all sorts of factors that aren't what you're interested in, e.g. what country do the students come from and so how does what they're getting compare with their schoolfriends' experiences (yes, many good departments have a proportion of non-British students that might surprise you, and it's generally a good thing). Ask factual questions in the department, rather.

RE Birmingham, they are way up there with their ASD courses so one would think they'd put it all into practice and make the uni experience a good one for someone on the spectrum.

Sweeping generalisation here, but Maths students are often of a type. Not unusual to be ASD or borderline. What is more this can equally apply to Maths tutors and academics.

What ScottishProf says is significant nobody's going to go and get the student from their flat. All the careers opportunities in the world are no good unless the student engages. You won't be able to do that for him whether he is 50 miles away or 300.

This is why I agree that you should concentrate much more on finding a course and campus that he will flourish in rather than focussing on prestigious careers which are several years away.