SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A report from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) released on Monday suggests a five-year decline in academic preparedness from first-year students, with some incoming students having below middle-school math levels.
Released by the UC San Diego Academic Senate, the report of Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions (SAWG) details a decline in writing/language skills but specifically in mathematics.
“The number of students whose math skills fall below middle-school level increased nearly thirtyfold, reaching roughly one in eight members of the entering cohort,” the report states.
The university is taking steps to address this report and meet student needs. UCSD Executive Vice Chancellor Elizabeth H. Simmons and San Diego Division Academic Senate Chair Rebecca Jo Plant shared a statement to FOX 5/KUSI News regarding the report.
“The need to bring students up to speed has placed our Math Department under extraordinary strain,” Jo Plant and Simmons stated. “The department responded quickly, introducing and refining courses covering high school and even elementary and middle school math topics that had not previously been taught at UC San Diego. Yet, high failure rates in introductory courses have left both professors and students feeling demoralized.”
A growing trend
Students strolling through the UC San Diego campus. (Salvador Rivera/Border Report)
University leaders attribute this decline to several factors, but specifically to the COVID-19 pandemic and its lasting impacts. The report also addresses the elimination of standardized testing, grade inflation and the expansion of admissions.
Throughout the pandemic, many students conducted remote classes or hybrid models, leading to what the SAWG states is a “well documented” decline in preparedness. According to the Department of Education assessment (CAASPP), language and math levels have not recovered since a decline in 2022.
“Since the pandemic, and especially in the past few years, departments with math-intensive majors have faced a rise in the proportion of students entering UC San Diego without the math skills necessary to succeed in their desired majors,” Jo Plant and Simmons said.
The SAWG believes the University of California Board of Regents’ elimination of standardized testing requirements also contributed to this decline. With no standardized testing to evaluate, heavier emphasis was given to high school grades, including inflated grades.
While larger-scale events like the pandemic impacted students, the report also details San Diego specific reasons. The university believes their math preparedness is worse than other UC schools.
“The math preparation problem at UC San Diego is significantly worse than at other UC campuses, based on local testing and placement, on what has been shared about the experience at other campuses through the survey, and on public data,” the report states.
“While there are UC San Diego-specific aspects to our conundrum, this is a problem more widely shared across the UC system and the nation as a whole,” Simmons and Jo Plant added.
According to the report, San Diego’s undergraduate population increased more than any other UC over the past 10 years. The report also suggests the university is aware of schools inflating their grades, which they plan to address.
“We should advise those schools that we see evidence of grade inflation in their grading practices but also note if there is evidence of low-quality math instruction or the lack of availability of advanced math classes,” the report states.
“Central to the problem is that the grades on high school transcripts too often bear little relationship to a student’s mastery of crucial skills: a student may have graduated with an A in calculus, yet lack the capacity to solve simple algebraic equations,” Simmons and Jo Plant added.
UC San Diego’s plan to address decline
The Geisel Library on the campus of UC San Diego.
The report provides several recommendations for how academics can address the decline in preparedness. One proposal, the Math Index, would move away from emphasizing overall GPA and focus on a math GPA for majors that require heavy math courses.
“The main guide to admission is still the Holistic Review Score, but the Math Index is used to evaluate the fit between the student’s chosen major and their math skills,” the report states.
SAWG believes more research is needed to evaluate language and English heavy studies.
“The new challenges posed by widespread use of artificial intelligence tools make this an important time to examine the state of our incoming students’ literacy preparation,” the report reads.
The university also hopes to address cross-unit communications across departments. Leadership states the university is still a well-respected and exceptional college.
“At a moment when so many of our public institutions are under exceptional budgetary pressures, it is critical to underscore that what we are accomplishing at UC San Diego is nothing less than extraordinary,” Simmons and Jo Plant said. “We are a top-tier research institution AND a public university that serves as a powerful engine of social mobility. Both are and will remain central to UC San Diego’s identity as faculty and administrators work together to solve this problem.”
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