More UC students are failing intro math courses as regents weigh reinstating SAT

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Set us as preferred The UC regents opened their first sustained public discussion Wednesday about whether to reinstate the SAT test requirement in admissions, as math grades continue to slide, dueling opinions surfaced, and one regent who voted to eliminate the exam said he was starting to think his decision may have been “a mistake.”Regents heard that math performance is the exception to otherwise strong academic results among first-year students.Average grades in preparatory math, precalculus and calculus across UC continue their five-year decline, while D and F grades, no-pass marks and withdrawals in those courses have gone up.But most UC freshmen never take the courses.

Among students who entered in fall 2023, 31% took preparatory math, precalculus or first-year calculus in their first two years, while 41% started in a more advanced course, according to data presented by the UC Office of the President.Together the introductory courses make up about 5% of the classes freshmen take, ranging from 2% at UC Irvine to 12% at UC Merced.Yet earlier in the day, UCLA and UC Riverside admissions officials told the 26-member board they have found no evidence that students admitted without test scores are less likely to stay in school or graduate.Regent Lark Park said the data, overall, settle little.

“Some of the data lead me to think we do have a math problem, but I don’t exactly know what it is,” she said.Pressure on the regents to quickly decide on the future of the SAT has grown since early this summer.More than 3,000 UC faculty members at all nine undergraduate campuses have signed two letters demanding the SAT’s return.

They said first-year students are at times arriving in classrooms lacking basic math and reasoning skills and they have often resorted to teaching remedial middle-school math concepts.The regents...