University of California launches testing review after faculty revolt
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The University of California (UC) announced Thursday that it is launching a comprehensive review of its standardized testing policy. The pivot follows a mass outcry by faculty members who warned incoming students at the university that they were being forced to re-teach secondary school math.
“The Board of Trustees and University leadership take the critical issue of college readiness very seriously, and the UC Academic Senate has proposed a comprehensive, data-driven review to support its recommendations to strengthen student preparation and success at UC,” said University of California President James B. Milliken. he said. he said in a statement. “There are few things more important on our agenda.”
The faculty-led Academic Senate review will focus on both preparation and admissions, including whether standardized testing should be reinstated as a requirement, Milliken said. The UC Board of Regents and Milliken are expected to receive a first update on the findings in July.
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The University of California announced Thursday that it is launching a sweeping review of its standardized testing policy, following a mass outcry from faculty members who warned they were being forced to reteach middle school math to incoming students. (iStock)
The sudden policy review comes just weeks after more than 1,400 faculty members across UC campuses signed an open letter demanding the reinstatement of SAT/ACT math requirements, particularly for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors. The petition garnered overwhelming institutional support, including the signatures of seven of UC’s nine mathematics department chairs.
According to faculty, eliminating standardized testing requirements distracted admissions officers from objective comparison and masked serious academic deficiencies in incoming courses.
“We are now observing that preparation gaps are so severe that educators are being forced to reteach middle school mathematics while also teaching the material students need for science, engineering, economics, and other computationally challenging fields,” the letter said.
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More than 1,400 faculty members across California campuses have signed a letter demanding UC regents and leaders reinstate academic standards for the 2027 admissions cycle; This found that eliminating standardized testing requirements forced professors to help students with “middle school” math. (getty)
Faculty’s concerns are supported by hard internal numbers. A report by UC San Diego’s Senate-Administration Admissions Working Group (SAWG) revealed a nearly thirty-fold explosion in underprepared students, finding that the number of freshmen whose math skills tested below high school level jumped from roughly 1 in 200 students in 2020 to nearly 1 in 8 students over a five-year period.
Even more worrying, 70% of underprepared students actually fell below secondary school proficiency; This corresponds to roughly 1 in 12 members of the entire entry group. The professors also warned that high school transcripts were becoming “virtually meaningless” due to high grade inflation, and application essays were being seriously compromised by the widespread use of generative artificial intelligence (AI).
Karajean Hyde, lecturer in education and co-director of the UC Irvine Mathematics Project, previously told Fox News Digital that objective measures are desperately needed to restore academic fundamentals.
“I would say we need some objective measures to get at the full picture,” Hyde said. “A student is not just a single number or a single letter; standardized testing can play an important role in providing a single level measure of where that stick is so that the stick doesn’t move.”
Although faculty members acknowledged UC’s history of helping under-resourced students succeed, they noted that the university system has limited resources. They argued that pushing underprepared students into challenging STEM fields without basic checks could ultimately backfire and harm the students the policy was intended to help.
“The SAT/ACT math requirement is not a barrier to equity; rather, it is a prerequisite for it,” the faculty letter said. “Failing to measure readiness gaps doesn’t eliminate barriers; it moves them into the classroom, where they become harder to overcome.”
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The UC Board of Regents has the final authority to formally change or reinstate admissions policies. (iTunes via Getty)
The UC system completely suspended the use of standardized testing in undergraduate admissions in May 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and later moved to a permanent, strict “test blind” policy following a legal settlement.
A spokesperson for the UC Office of the President and Board of Trustees told Fox News Digital that the UC Board of Trustees has the final authority to formally change or reinstate admissions policies. If the Academic Senate recommends a return, the fall 2028 admissions cycle would be the earliest the testing requirement would go into effect.
The re-evaluation of the UC system is in line with a broader national trend. A growing number of elite institutions, including MIT, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, and the University of Texas at Austin, have reversed their pandemic-era test-optional policies after concluding that standardized tests remain the most reliable indicator of college readiness, especially for low-income students who lack access to extracurricular resumes.
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