UC Faculty Warn Test-Optional Policies Are Failing STEM Students and Hurting Real ‘Equity’
“The SAT/ACT mathematics requirement is not an obstacle to equity; rather, it is a prerequisite for it. Failing to measure preparation gaps does not remove barriers; it moves them into the classroom, where they become harder to overcome.”
Back in the fall, I reported that a report by the Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions (SAWG) at the University of San Diego showed students were accepted without being competent in basic math skills.
This committee included faculty, administrators, and staff tasked with analyzing admissions practices, student math and writing preparation, and making recommendations for improvement. The findings were upsetting, given how critical mathematics and science is to our society.
Mathematics serves as the backbone of modern technology and the global economy by enabling precise computation, data analysis, and problem-solving, all essential to innovation in fields such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, finance, and engineering. We desperately need Americans with those skills; the American education system seems incapable of producing young people educated with this essential skill.
Many freshmen arrive on campus completely unprepared for even high-school-level math. In recent years, UCSD has seen a significant increase in enrollment in Math 2 (remedial math) and Math 3B, which now cover skills from elementary through Algebra II. Alarmingly, some students have knowledge gaps in concepts taught as early as grades 1-8.
Admittedly, the University of California system stands as one of the most formidable academic forces in science and technology anywhere in the world. Spanning ten campuses, five medical centers, and three affiliated national laboratories (Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, and Los Alamos), the UC system has produced an unparalleled concentration of scientific achievement.
However, it cannot rest on its laurels forever. And if it can’t produce competent students who are able to do sophisticated scientific research or make critical technical advances, that prestige will evaporate.
The UC STEM professors are clearly smart, and not so steeped in diversity, equity, and inclusion that they can ignore the consequences of focusing on wokeness over merit. Over 600 of these academics signed an open letter calling for the reinstatement of Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) requirements for UC admissions.
Essentially, this is a faculty-led campaign to bring back standardized testing for STEM program admissions, as they are the ones dealing with the policies that led to the rejection of SAT score usage for admissions. The initiative highlights their concerns about UC undergraduate students lacking fundamental calculus skills and criticizes what the faculty view as inadequate preparation for STEM programs under the current test-optional admissions policy.
“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle school mathematics.”
“The current admissions metric, based primarily on GPA & essays, can no longer reliably distinguish readiness for university-level STEM majors in an era of severe grade inflation & AI assisted application essays.”
University of California STEM professors want standardized tests back due to severe math deficiencies among students:
“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle school mathematics”
“The current admissions metric, based primarily on GPA &… pic.twitter.com/naXkrd5M96
— Neetu Arnold (@neetu_arnold) May 26, 2026
The full letter can be found here and here. Of particular note is the description of the consequences of jettisoning the SAT from admissions consideration in 2020.
The widening abilities gap followed the 2020 elimination of the SAT/ACT, a temporary measure that has now become a permanent vulnerability. This outcome was explicitly predicted by the Academic Senate’s 2020 Standardized Testing Task Force (STTF) report, which warned that removing these tests would eliminate a vital predictor of college success and obscure the impact of severe high-school grade inflation.
Unfortunately, the outcomes cautioned against in that report have now materialized in the data across our campuses. All other leading STEM institutions, including the UC’s primary peers, have resumed using SAT/ACT in their admissions to ensure foundational fluency. For the University of California to remain a global leader in STEM, it is essential to restore these objective benchmarks.
Rather than measuring advanced mathematical ability, the SAT/ACT tests provide a critical baseline: a common external check that students have the core mathematical fluency required for university-level STEM coursework. SAT/ACT scores can also identify high-potential students in under-resourced schools whose talent might otherwise go unrecognized because of limited access to advanced coursework.
The SAT/ACT mathematics requirement is not an obstacle to equity; rather, it is a prerequisite for it. Failing to measure preparation gaps does not remove barriers; it moves them into the classroom, where they become harder to overcome. An admissions process that ignores foundational readiness does a disservice to the most vulnerable students. True access requires an honest assessment of the support students need and where, within California’s public higher-education system, they can best receive it.
UC professors forced to teach 'middle school math' after SAT ban https://t.co/EHUeO8iT2a pic.twitter.com/8jUgcfMHTv
— New York Post (@nypost) May 27, 2026
This clash over SAT requirements is not about “equity” versus “exclusion,” but about whether the University of California will honor its core mission or sacrifice its well-earned reputation by following a toxic ideology.
When STEM faculty are forced to reteach middle-school math and beg administrators to restore the most basic, objective measures of readiness, it is a flashing red warning light that something is fundamentally broken in the admissions regime.
If UC leaders truly care about both excellence and access, they will listen to the people in the classrooms and laboratories, acknowledge that the grand “test-optional” experiment has failed, and restore the tools that genuinely help identify and cultivate talent — wherever it is found and whoever possesses it.
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Comments
Anyone who babbles about equity in a STEM discipline needs to be fired as too stupid to walk and chew gum at the same time. Equity is impossible. People are not the same and you can not mandate that they are the same. The best you can do is give everyone an equal opportunity and select those that at the top most likely and most prepared to succeed.
They absolutely need standardized tests to help choose which students to accept. Despite babblings by the equity crowd such tests are not racist or biased given that all applicants (ignoring foreigners for the moment) have exposure to the same culture.
Math transcends culture and so should standardized math tests. The same can be said for standardized science tests. Only a standardized English or Literature test is possibly subject to cultural bias, Get used to it. Life is unfair.
“They absolutely need standardized tests to help choose which students to accept. Despite babblings by the equity crowd such tests are not racist or biased given that all applicants (ignoring foreigners for the moment) have exposure to the same culture.”
I don’t disagree with your general assertion, but there is a macroculture and many microcultures. Consider the emphasis placed on academics in the average Asian household versus the average African American household. Consider the educational opportunities available to the children of wealthy parent versus those of poor parents. Joe Biden may have been correct: “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
I recall an elementary principal saying to a group of preschoolers’ parents, “Read to your children now, or in a few years I will know who didn’t.”
doesnt matter
while they despise blks they know that the agenda can be best served by keeping them satiated with the continued attack against jews>>wht people and asians just b/c asians fall into the upper category when it comes to education
Being a family of Scientist and Engineers, there is no way an individual can succeed in STEM without well developed math skills
Being a family of Scientist and Engineers, there is no way an individual can succeed in STEM without well developed math skills.
We are lying to students and teachers when we ignore FACTS – they matter.
The lying by omission, that is giving high marks, not demanding and communicating honest results, cheats the student, the teacher who accepted unsatisfactory work but gave a too high grade, the parents and guardians and the eventual employers who think ( even naively) that they are getting more than they get.
Most nations do not let under talented students in tough programs and will remove them if they cannot cut it. Being nice through lying is bad all around.
This brings up in my memory Bill Cosby’s Pound Cake speech (NAACP event, 2004) in which he touches upon standards, of language, of culture, of decency.
Distilled, if you ain’t got standards, you got nothin’.
We have known this since the apple hit Newton in the head:
Physics doesn’t care about feelings or fairness.
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