(Maybe I'm a little cynical in this response. Oh, well.)
It depends on what you mean by reasonable. In my opinion, you're average college freshman doesn't have a reasonable understanding of math. If you're lucky, they can do arithmetic without a calculator, or they can solve math problem that they're given. But they can't apply what they know. Science is word problems which contain both implicit and explicit information. You have to be able to figure out all the numbers you need to solve that problem. Then you have to find the right equation and put the numbers in the right places. Most students don't understand an equation in pure symbolic form, and they don't know where to put the numbers into the equations. And it's like putting together DIY furniture: they have a symbol left over, and they don't know what to do with it. (This is the implicit value that they should know or find on their own.) And then they hate science because of these math problems they couldn't do.
This applies to both in-classroom and online students.

Maybe I'm only thinking of the below-average students. Maybe this isn't covered well in high school algebra (but it's a pre-requisite, so it should be). Maybe their brains just aren't wired that way. Maybe I'm biased because I've been up to my eyeballs in this stuff for darn near a decade. But simple algebra problems are done in everyday life (as the word problems I said above, even), and I don't see how anyone can function without knowing how long a trip will take or what their gas mileage is, among other examples.

Paul, I apologize if I'm pulling this thread off-course here, but I think it has some application to your topic.