>>11147803It's the same algebra you learn in middle school if you're European or Asian.
They teach it to middle schoolers here too, but since everything caters to the lowest common denominator, they repeat it in high school in case they didn't learn it in elementary and middle school, then they repeat it again in college in case you didn't learn it in high school.
It's a prerequisite course for harder physics and math classes, and a requirement for many degrees, even non-math ones, but lately some places have been giving students in the arts or humanities a way around that.
>>11147905It is material that literal 12-year-olds can grasp, but it's also not safe to assume that any given college student actually had adequate exposure to it as a teenager.
