The professors’ argument in the open letter rests largely on what they’ve experienced in the classroom.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | yenwen/iStock/Getty Images
More than 800 professors in the University of California system, including seven of nine math department chairs, are calling on system leaders to reinstate SAT/ACT testing requirements for applicants to STEM majors, citing a “widening divergence in mathematical preparation levels within the same classroom.”
In an open letter, the faculty members pointed to a November report from the University of California San Diego Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions, which revealed that the number of first-year students with math skills below a middle school level increased nearly 30-fold since 2020, when the system first suspended its standardized testing requirements.
“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the professors wrote. “UC has been a national leader in supporting under-resourced students to do well in mathematics. However, UC has finite resources and can help only so many students, and only when the preparation deficits they need to overcome are within reach.”
