High-level mathematical skills are indispensable in engineering education in order to understand various simple and also complex engineering problems and find solutions to them, as well as to promote innovation in the engineering science. Mathematics can be safely called the alphabet of the engineering language. It provides the analytical and problem-solving tools needed by engineers to design, analyze, and optimize systems, ensuring they meet safety, efficiency, and performance requirements. In order for future engineers to have such skills, it is necessary to have stable foundation in this field. The lack of strong knowledge of the most important topics, such as equation with fractions, properties of exponents and logarithms, recognition of elementary graphs and the study of functions, will not allow to fully master the topics of higher mathematics. More than 50% of students do not have this knowledge or are at a very low level when starting their studies. In order not to encounter problems of this nature, there are continuous reforms and changes both in the education system of Latvia and elsewhere in the world. These processes and their impact on growth of youth are the subject of discussions, even to protests. One of the most widely discussed blocks of learning subjects is exact sciences, their necessity, quality and intensity of teaching (from various aspects) [1]. Since it is currently possible to study mathematics at three different levels in secondary schools, it could be assumed that only young people who have mastered Mathematics II (the highest level) should study engineering. But this situation is not so unambiguous. A sufficiently large number of schools do not offer to study the subject Mathematics II at all, in most cases this is due to a lack of education specialists. Students have to make choice to study only Math I or also Math II already at the beginning of the 10th grade, not to mention the situation in vocational schools. So, the situation when a future engineering student is a person who has graduated from any of the 3 models is unequivocally correct. In order to more thoroughly study the current situation, in January 2024, the survey of first to fourth year students of RTU Smart Electronics, Telecommunications and Telematics was organized. In the survey the author of the work tried to find out the assessment of the learning process and content in mathematics from the point of view of students, compare it with the results of student work during studies and growth. Although the audience for the study is only engineering students as aspiring specialists, there was a clear tendency for too little teaching in secondary educational institutions on topics such as exponential functions, logarithms, graphs, and the properties of various functions, but especially trigonometry. On the other hand, in the study of university mathematics courses, it would be desirable to give these courses more credit points, or to create a new course on certain more complex topics that are closely related to the specifics to be studied, such as Complex Variable functions, Fourier transforms, and others.