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 cast the Wednesday discussions as the opening of a months-long process to evaluate testing and student preparation.
“UC’s current test-free policy followed years of faculty review, regents’ deliberation, legal developments and pandemic-related access concerns,” a UC spokesperson said Wednesday, adding that the review now underway is “expedited” and “evidence-based.”
UC’s admissions board — a part of the faculty-led Academic Senate — plans to deliver recommendations in a report on testing in February to the senate. The senate plans to send its recommendation to regents by June.
Board Chair Maria Anguiano emphasized that it was still early in the process, and told regents to approach the work “with open minds and without assuming a particular outcome until we hear more in the research.”
Public input sought
The regents also opened a public phase of the effort. This week, the board launched a college readiness section of its website, set up an email address for feedback — [email protected] — and announced a statewide listening tour. It begins next month at education conferences in Palm Springs, Chula Vista and San Diego.
Wednesday’s presentations added more voices from inside UC leadership to a debate that so far has been led by math and science faculty pressing for the exams’ return. One regent signaled he is rethinking his own vote.
“I have to say that last time around, I voted to get rid of the SAT, and I’m starting to believe I might have made a mistake,” Regent Jay Sures said to the board.
Sures cited research from Brown and Harvard universities that he said found test scores predict college success better than high school grades. On admissions, he said tests “should be part of the process, not a determinant factor.”
Admissions officers and researchers who spoke to the board appeared skeptical of reinstating testing.
Emily Engelschall, associate vice chancellor for enrollment services at UC Riverside, said the college found no observable academic harm from removing the requirement once pandemic-related disruptions were isolated, and that the difference in first-year retention was “negligible” at her campus. “In fact, it’s close to 0%,” she said.
Gary Clark, UCLA’s associate vice chancellor for enrollment management, said first-year retention at UCLA has risen since 2019 and now stands at 97%, and the four-year graduation rate has grown from 85% to 88%.
Clark said the figures left him wondering, “would a reintroduction of standardized testing solve concerns over academic preparation, or are there broader forces at play in K-12 education and AI, for example, that will persist” whether UC uses the SAT or not.
In a written report to regents, the UC Office of the President said first-year retention has reached a record 93% and the four-year graduation rate a record 74%.
Pamela Brown, UC vice president for institutional research and academic planning, told regents that first-year grade-point averages rose from 3.1 to 3.3 over the decade, and that four-year graduation rates for intended majors in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) climbed almost six points, to 73.4%.
Jonathan Glater, a UC Berkeley law professor who helped write UC’s 2020 faculty task force report on standardized testing, also addressed regents. That report recommended keeping the SAT and ACT in place until UC could develop its own admissions test, an idea UC later concluded was too difficult and costly.
“I’m not in favor of bringing back the SAT,” Glater said. “The more heavily admissions weigh standardized test scores, the more admissions favor students who have had more advantages already.”
Glater said the task force had proposed UC build its own exam, but that the idea “was determined to be too difficult, too expensive to do.” He said he is not backing a replacement test now.
Pro-testing professors have dominated public comment at earlier regents meetings, pointing to all eight Ivy League campuses, Caltech and Stanford, which reintroduced testing after dropping it around the pandemic over test access and equity concerns.
The issue has also become political.
Three Republican state senators wrote to regents last month urging them to reinstate the tests “as soon as possible.” The senators, Roger Niello of Fair Oaks, Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh of Yucaipa and Steve Choi of Irvine, cited a UC San Diego faculty work group paper from last fall that found about 1 in 12 incoming freshmen tested below high school math standards.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, an ex officio regent who appoints 18 of the 26 board members, has not taken a position.
Faculty opposed to the exams say the tests track race and wealth, do not measure California academic standards, and would shrink the applicant pool.
“Reinstating the SAT will not solve preparation gaps in California nor change performance in the classroom,” said Christiane Spitzmueller, UC Merced’s vice provost for academic affairs and strategy and a professor of psychology, in an interview. Only 26% of California’s high school class of 2025 took the SAT, according to the College Board.
Regents also repeatedly turned to the role of high schools in preparing students. Along with its review of standardized testing, UC’s admissions board is embarking on an evaluation of the A-G requirement, the 15 yearlong courses UC requires students to take in high school to be eligible for admission. The review will weigh whether the required course list adequately prepares students for UC.
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