UC-Berkeley math prof says she has to teach fractions to calculus students because standards have fallen so far

A well known University of California-Berkeley mathematics professor has slammed admissions standards at the top-flight university — where she says huge portions of her students are failing to keep up with college calculus and she’s forced to teach middle-school algebra and fractions students.“Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics.Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school,” wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard.Stankova — who rose through the mathematics world to earn a PhD from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria — described the admissions process as “less like careful evaluation and more like chance.”Stankov has long been an evangelist for teaching math and founded the Berkeley Math Circle as well as a local math olympiad for high school kids — but she says the standards for students at the country’s most elite public university have made its student a laughing stock.She is one of thousands of faculty members who signed open letters earlier this year calling for the restoration of the SAT and ACT in admissions to ensure the best students are getting in.Standardized testing was phased out by UC Berkeley in 2020 after then-college president Janet Napolitano — who was Homeland Security Secretary for President Barack Obama — overruled a task force that had called for the entrance exams to be kept.Citing COVID pandemic disruptions and concerns over equity, testing was made optional later in 2020, with a court ruling subsequently requiring UC to become test-blind through 2025.And that policy has had a deleterious effect on standards at UC Berkeley, Stankova said.

Berkley has one of the lowest acceptance rates of any public university in the country — admitting just 10.5% of applicants.Stankova cited a diagnostic exam administe...