When the University of California eliminated the SAT requirement for admission in 2021, U.C.L.A. saw a significant jump in applications from high-achieving Black and Latino students, for whom the standardized tests had been a barrier. “We are enrolling one of the most academically accomplished and diverse classes in our history,” the admissions director wrote. Since then, applications have risen at all nine undergraduate campuses, the most prestigious have become increasingly selective, and the university retains and graduates students at record rates.
Yet just five years later, the University of California is embroiled again in a very public battle over whether to reinstate the SAT. Faculty, whose 2020 recommendation to retain the test was overruled, have led the charge. In a widely circulated letter and opinion piece (both edited with the help of artificial intelligence), a math professor who organized the campaign blamed the test-blind admissions policy for a troubling increase in undergraduates who lack basic skills.
Math literacy is a real issue, not only in California, and not only since the elimination of the SAT for admissions. The argument that reinstituting the standardized test will rectify the math crisis, however, obscures a more fundamental debate over the mission of this elite public university and the longstanding tension between its twin goals of excellence and access.
The University of California is an educational juggernaut that has helped propel the state to its status as the world’s fourth-largest economy. It has arguably made its most important contribution not in Nobel Prizes, patents and scientific breakthroughs but in the lives of those not born into privilege. At a time of obscene wealth and inequality, that role has never been more important. The SAT fight is a proxy for a far more complex challenge: the university’s responsibility to remain true to its founding mission, crucial if the Golden State is to maintain its reputation as a land of opportunity and dreams.
To reinstate the SAT is to follow the pack rather than to lead, to grasp at a dubious shortcut rather than tackle more intractable underlying issues, chief among them the reality that the best public university in the country relies on one of the weakest, most inequitable public school systems.
California prides itself on setting trends. Its university, founded on a commitment to upward mobility for the working class, admitted women in 1870, pledged admission to all who qualified as part of a guarantee of universal access to higher education in 1960 and established scholarships for undocumented students in 2011.
The university has depended on high schools since its earliest years, when it began to accredit secondary schools and credentialed their teachers. Debates over ensuring equal access soon surfaced, though access was defined largely in terms of geographic barriers in such a large state. That began to change by the 1960s, as California became the most populous state, and then one of the most diverse.
The physics Nobel laureate Owen Chamberlain was among the first to raise concerns in the 1960s about the overwhelmingly white student body at Berkeley; he started a program where math and science faculty volunteered in local middle and high schools to coach both teachers and low-income students, who were predominantly Black and Mexican American. The program’s success led to some of the first educational opportunity programs, which targeted promising students who lacked the requisite grades or courses for admittance.
In the following decades, California’s school-age population became increasingly Latino, while gaps between the rich and the poor widened. Fallout from the infamous Prop 13 initiative of 1978, which cut and capped property taxes, exacerbated inequities among school districts. Numerous task force reports warned of a crisis as alarmingly few Black and Latino students, concentrated in schools with the poorest academic achievement, qualified for admission to the University of California. As demand for its most prestigious campuses far outstripped spots, affirmative action programs were blamed for excluding better-qualified students and then banned in 1995 by the Regents, the university’s governing board.
That action prompted the university to make a significant investment in improving K-12 education, in a quest to fulfill its promise to enroll a student population that mirrored the demographics of the state. At its height, before budget crises sapped the initiative, the university spent more than $300 million annually on professional development programs and partnerships with dozens of middle and high schools to increase the percentage of underrepresented students who qualified for admission.
Karl Pister, an engineer who oversaw the outreach, lamented that among the university’s three missions — research, education and service — service was consistently given the least attention. As he wrote prophetically in 1998: “If we don’t improve our schools, our children and grandchildren will live in a world divided — an angry world of haves and have-nots, of those who can analyze and synthesize information to meet new challenges and those who cannot.”
That angry world today compels the University of California to define its responsibility to K-12 education with a long-term commitment that goes beyond harvesting the best and brightest in a troubled system. The university needs to conceptualize a master plan for the 21st century that evokes the spirit of Mr. Pister, re-emphasizes the service mission and applies the institution’s vast resources to grapple with the reality of public schools in a state where two-thirds of students enter high school without proficiency in grade-level math. Otherwise, the university will continue to rely on patchwork fixes to cope with the glaring disparities among high schools and corresponding inequities in the education available to different groups.
Arguments over the value of the SAT have been litigated and re-litigated since the Regents elevated its importance in admissions by a one-vote margin in 1977. Even its advocates point to studies that show the test has predictive value of success only largely for freshman year. Under the university’s unusual shared governance structure, a faculty committee will issue recommendations by June 2027; final action will be up to the Regents, who have already expanded the discussion to look broadly at college readiness.
What has made the University of California exceptional is its commitment to increase access without sacrificing excellence. In recent years, California has proudly defied a national trend: On average, about 40 percent of its students are the first in their families to attend a four-year college. More than half qualify for free tuition. The percentages of underrepresented students have crept up, through a variety of initiatives. The California Dream Act gave undocumented students access to financial aid, as well as in-state tuition. Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates.
These are perilous times for the very students for whom the University of California is a life-changing experience. Cuts in federal aid have reduced support programs, especially vital for first-generation students. ICE raids mean even citizens fear filling out financial aid forms that might jeopardize their undocumented relatives. International students face restrictions on visas.
The University of California needs to redouble its commitment to forge its own path, to remain a beacon of hope, albeit flickering. Now is not the moment to regress.
Miriam Pawel is the author of the forthcoming “California Dreams: The Making and Remaking of the University of California.”
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