About a dozen first-year UC Berkeley students gathered one afternoon last fall inside a classroom in Evans Hall, where math professor Zvezdelina Stankova held office hours for one of her calculus sections.<\/p>\n
The students came for calculus help but struggled to answer a middle-school level algebra problem: solving for x from the equation 7x \u2013 5 = 9.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told everyone to drop their pens and watch,\u201d Stankova said. \u201cWe had to go through it step by step.\u201d<\/p>\n
Across the University of California, math faculty say they are increasingly teaching first-year students who are unprepared for college-level math and unable to survive coursework for UC\u2019s rigorous science and math majors.<\/p>\n
Some faculty members are now calling on UC to reinstate standardized tests as an admissions requirement for freshman applicants in science, math, technology and engineering programs. More than 1,400 faculty \u2014 mostly from STEM programs \u2014\u00a0have signed an open letter making that demand.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the past five years, we have seen a widening divergence in mathematical preparation levels within the same classroom. This trend indicates that current admissions practices do not provide a sufficiently reliable check on mathematical readiness for STEM majors,\u201d faculty wrote in the letter.<\/p>\n
The open letter, crafted by Stankova and four other UC Berkeley professors, laid bare faculty\u2019s simmering tensions over students\u2019 math preparedness at one of the world\u2019s leading STEM universities, where prime parking spots are reserved for Nobel laureates.<\/p>\n
The timing of the letter\u2019s release comes as UC\u2019s Academic Senate is considering whether to recommend that the system bring back standardized testing as an admissions requirement. The full Senate will\u00a0meet Thursday\u00a0and is expected to hear from the chair of the Senate\u2019s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, which has been deliberating the issue.<\/p>\n
UC\u2019s Board of Regents would also need to eventually approve the change and reverse its own 2020 decision\u00a0to get rid of the SAT and ACT as a freshman admission requirement.<\/p>\n
A UC spokesperson said in a statement that system leaders are taking concerns about math preparation seriously. UC officials have \u201cbeen working with faculty leaders for several months to\u00a0identify\u00a0policies that will continue to ensure students arrive at UC academically prepared,\u201d the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n
If math faculty are successful in their push to reinstate the SAT, the fall 2028 admission cycle is the earliest it would take effect.<\/p>\n
A group of five UC Berkeley professors has taken it upon themselves to write an open letter calling for the return of a test requirement for freshman STEM applicants. As of Monday, 1,427 faculty had signed the letter, including seven of UC\u2019s nine math department chairs.<\/p>\n
Faculty argue that other key admissions criteria don\u2019t provide enough information about students\u2019 preparedness. Grade inflation makes it more difficult to put stock in a student\u2019s grade point average, and the proliferation of artificial intelligence means they can\u2019t trust that applicants are writing their own essays.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, with that, there is no objective measure for math readiness,\u201d Stankova said.<\/p>\n
Trying to create a narrative<\/p>\n
Others are not sure standardized testing is the solution.<\/p>\n
Test opponents point to a fall 2025 report authored by Saul Geiser, a senior researcher at UC Berkeley\u2019s Center for Studies in Higher Education.\u00a0The report\u00a0found that grades were a stronger predictor than test scores of first-year success at Ivy League and other elite colleges, and that ranking applicants by SAT scores disadvantages Black, Latino, low-income and first-generation students.<\/p>\n
Geiser\u2019s report also noted that UC has enrolled more Black, Latino and low-income students since the system stopped requiring the exams.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll it will do is keep students out of mathematics, and it may push some students, especially underrepresented students, out of the UC system,\u201d said Bjorn Birnir, a math professor and chair of the math department at UC Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n
Birnir was one of two UC math department chairs who opted not to sign the open letter. He discussed the issue with his department\u2019s undergraduate committee. A majority of faculty on the committee opposed signing the letter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think the problem needs to be addressed in high schools, and they need to make a real effort to make sure their students learn at least some mathematics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Some critics also question whether math preparation is as bad as the UC San Diego report claims.<\/p>\n
The report pointed out that, in 2024, the number of students placed in one of UC San Diego\u2019s lowest math courses \u2014 Math 2 and Math 3B \u2014 increased from 490 to 916 students. But that same year, the campus stopped allowing students to use calculators for their placement exams. Also that year, the campus changed the criteria for placing students into a higher level of math, meaning that \u201cmany of the students who previously would have been placed into Math 3C were instead placed into Math 3B,\u201d according to\u00a0UC San Diego\u2019s math department.<\/p>\n
Additionally, freshmen at the campus are still doing well enough that they aren\u2019t dropping out. UC San Diego\u2019s first-year retention rate for STEM majors was just over 95% last year, the same level as it was prior to elimination of the SAT.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt strikes me as being a little bit of a campaign here. I think they\u2019re trying to create a narrative,\u201d said Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest, an organization that opposes high-stakes standardized exams.<\/p>\n
Addressing math unpreparedness<\/p>\n
Even if the San Diego report overstated the problem, most educators and advocates agree that preparedness has declined in recent years, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
At Berkeley, a study found that, as of 2023, nearly one-third of first-semester calculus students displayed \u201csevere preparation deficits.\u201d At UC Davis, the number of students needing to start in a precalculus class has quadrupled over the past five years, Nachtergaele estimated. And at UC Santa Barbara, about 10% of incoming STEM majors are unprepared for calculus, Birnir said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been an issue for a long time, but it\u2019s definitely getting worse,\u201d Birnir added.<\/p>\n
When admitted STEM majors at UC Santa Barbara aren\u2019t ready for calculus, staff encourage them to take a precalculus course at Santa Barbara City College during the summer before their first term on campus.<\/p>\n
For most students, that solves the problem, Birnir said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About a dozen first-year UC Berkeley students gathered one afternoon last fall inside a classroom in Evans Hall,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7,15,181,100,180,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-356211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-california","tag-education","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-newsletter","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}