More than 500 University of California professors signed an open letter Wednesday demanding the Board of Regents reinstate standardized testing requirements, citing a 30-fold surge in incoming students who cannot perform middle school level arithmetic.
The letter, circulated Sunday and co-authored by five UC Berkeley faculty members, warned of “preparation gaps so severe that instructors must re-teach middle school mathematics” while simultaneously attempting to teach calculus, engineering principles, and economics.
“Furthermore, 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 professors wrote.
The letter was jointly authored by UC Berkeley math professors Zvezdelina Stankova, Svetlana Jitomirskaya, John W. Lott, and Mina Aganagic, along with law professor Chris Jay Hoofnagle.
The surge in unprepared students traces directly to a May 2020 vote by the UC Board of Regents to eliminate SAT and ACT score requirements. Lawyers representing low-income students had argued the tests were “racist” and unfairly advantaged wealthier applicants with access to test prep.
Starting in fall 2021, UC applicants were no longer required to submit standardized test scores, though voluntary submission remained allowed.
UC Board of Regents Chair John A. Perez celebrated the 2020 decision as “an incredible step in the right direction toward aligning our admissions policy with the broad-based values of the University.”
The consequences since have been documented in university reports. A UC San Diego Senate-Administration Working Group found a 30-fold increase in students lacking basic math skills between 2020 and 2025. Just 30 incoming freshmen at UC San Diego tested below grade level in 2020. By 2025, that figure had climbed to 900.
One in 12 UC San Diego freshmen could not perform middle school math as of 2025, according to the report.
The open letter challenged the framing that dropping test requirements helped underserved students. “The SAT/ACT mathematics requirement is not an obstacle to equity; rather, it is a prerequisite for it,” the professors wrote.
They called on the Board of Regents to resume standardized testing as a “common measure of basic readiness.” “UC is increasingly unable to provide students with the education needed to become leaders in California’s scientific, technological and economic future,” the letter read.
