I'm a biologist. I know that lack of mathematical skill among undergraduate biology students (including majors) has been a serious concern for a while now. I attended a conference on biology education a couple years ago and was in a mathematics session. Most of the people in my group taught mathematics, and they said that part of the problem stems from the biology teachers not knowing a lot of math and/or not incorporating it into their classes.
Biology students may wonder if the math they are required to take will be useful to them in the future or if it just a hurdle they need to jump over. I wonder why pre-meds (who make up a decent fraction of biology majors) are expected to take calculus (and if they come in with AP calculus credit, multivariable calculus) in college, when very few medical students or doctors use calculus. The standard college calculus courses may be better suited to engineering and physics majors. To address this, Harvard recently created a one-semester course on differential equations for biologists with textbook "Modeling Differential Equations in Biology". But even a course designed for biology majors presupposes a certain math level on their part.
