Professors Plead with Universities to Reinstate SAT Requirements After Seeing Disturbing Trend Among Students
The text describes a debate over whether colleges should require standardized test scores (SAT/ACT) for admission-especially in the University of California (UC) system.
It says that after the “woke tide” peaked, some colleges-including UC-dropped long-standing SAT/ACT requirements. UC regent Jonathan “Jay” Sures is quoted describing the tests as racist, and the article notes that these requirements were later gradually reintroduced.
As examples, it points to Yale and Cornell requiring applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores. It then focuses on UC faculty and STEM professors who argue for restoring entrance exams, claiming many students are arriving without the math and science preparation needed for advanced coursework. A letter to UC regents is cited saying large preparation gaps force instructors to reteach foundational material (sometimes from middle-school math) and that UC has limited resources. Evidence mentioned includes a rise in students needing remedial math at UC San Diego and claims about the proportion of students lacking basic math skills despite having taken advanced math classes in high school.
The article concludes that these gaps could hurt graduation rates and reduce completion of STEM majors,negatively affecting California’s STEM workforce.
One of the nation’s largest public universities is grappling with the issue of whether it should require students to prove they know something in order to be admitted.
When the woke tide was at its highest, colleges dropped long-standing requirements that students submit scores from the SAT or ACT, the University of California being among them.
“I believe the test is a racist test,” Jonathan “Jay” Sures, a University of California regent, said in May 2020, according to the Daily Signal. “There’s no two ways about it.”
Since then, colleges have slowly restored the requirement to address the issues that, as the Daily Signal put it, “students were taking classes but not bothering to learn anything.”
Last week, Yale announced that applicants in its next admissions cycle must submit either an SAT or ACT score. Cornell also requires either the SAT or ACT for new applicants.
Math and science professors in the University of California system especially want entrance exams restored, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A two-page letter sent to the system’s regents last week said that too many students in math, science, engineering, and technology programs are unprepared. Nearly one-third of students in first-semester calculus at UC Berkeley “displayed severe preparation deficits,” the letter said.
“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 letter said. “UC has finite resources and can help only so many students.”
A University of California, San Diego, faculty report last year said the number of students requiring remedial elementary and middle-school math was at 8.5 percent in 2025, up from 0.5 percent in 2020.
The UC faculty letter said professors cannot prepare students for advanced STEM work without a foundation that too many students lack.
“We are already seeing the warning signs: longer pathways through prerequisite material, reduced readiness for advanced coursework, and growing pressure to dilute quantitative rigor,” the letter said.
“Left unaddressed, these trends will lead to declining graduation rates, longer time to degree, and reduced completion of STEM majors, with consequences for California’s highly skilled STEM workforce,” the letter continued.
“The widening spread between underprepared and well-prepared students creates polarized courses, weakening the foundation available to many students and making it harder to teach at the level required for advanced STEM work,” the letter added, per the Daily Signal.
“UC is increasingly unable to provide its students with the education needed to become leaders in California’s scientific, technological, and economic future,” the letter said.
The Daily Signal noted that at the University of California, San Diego, one out of every 12 students lacked even middle school math skills.
However, it noted that 42 percent of those students took precalculus or calculus in high school.
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