> Sadly, here in the US it's common to have people graduating with a 
> bachelor's degree in engineering who've forgotten most of calculus

Yeh see I don't think that could happen here.  My course was 4 years (as are 
most Engineering degrees in the UK now), in the 1st year they *really* 
quickly skipped over all A level maths (which was the foundations of 
calculus) and then jumped on to fourier transforms (and friends), vector 
calculus and stuff.  The reason for this was clear, all the other lecturers 
were obviously waiting for the maths course to be done so they could start 
using the "real" maths in their courses.

> any math course). So perhaps the industry in the US has somewhat shifted 
> not to expect them to know it, and thus most don't hire them for jobs that 
> require it.

I don't think many jobs here explicitly require it, but it is kind of 
expected that if you have an Engineering degree you will at least know how 
to perform basic calculus by hand, and of course know the concepts.

I guess it's similar to whether you know how to write Excel macros or not - 
hardly any job is going to ask for it, yet if you know how to do it it's 
going to make life quite a lot easier in many situations that arise (and 
make your boss think you are clever!).

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