Why UC Berkeley Had to Pause Calculus and Re‑Teach Elementary Multiplication

In spring 2020 the University of California Board halted the use of SAT and ACT scores in admissions, arguing that standardized tests were unfair.

Earlier that year a faculty‑led task force had spent a year evaluating the policy and voted 51‑0 to keep the tests, noting that they helped students from disadvantaged backgrounds demonstrate ability when transcripts were weak.

Despite the unanimous recommendation, Chancellor Janet Napolitano ordered the removal of the requirement, launching an admission experiment that proceeded against faculty opposition.

Six years on, the loss of a uniform quantitative metric has pushed UC schools to rely on high‑school grades and personal statements, which are increasingly inflated or generated by AI tools, making the admission process less transparent and more prone to bias.

At UC San Diego, the proportion of freshmen whose math skills fall below high‑school standards has risen nearly 30‑fold, roughly one in twelve students now lacks even middle‑school algebra.

At UC Berkeley, 20‑30% of students in prerequisite calculus courses have shown severe knowledge gaps for three consecutive years.

The article likens mathematics to a building: without a solid algebraic foundation, students cannot safely study limits, derivatives, or integrals, forcing instructors to pause calculus and re‑teach the distributive law (a+b)c=ac+bc.

This policy backfires on the very groups it intended to help—first‑generation, low‑income, and minority students—by moving the preparation gap from admission to the classroom, where remediation is far harder and strong students lose engagement as class pace slows.

UC’s 2025 STEM‑fairness report suggests adding tutoring, bridge courses, or summer prep, but the scale of the problem makes such measures insufficient; Professor Mina Aganagic warns that lowering standards will dilute the value of a UC degree.

In response, more than 2,100 STEM faculty and over 800 non‑STEM faculty have signed open letters demanding the reinstatement of standardized tests, indicating a rare level of faculty urgency.

Meanwhile, elite institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Yale, and Columbia are restoring or planning to restore test requirements, threatening to draw top STEM talent away from UC.

UC now proposes a 12‑month evaluation to revisit the SAT/ACT policy, which critics say merely repeats the 2020 study without new data, serving as a procedural delay.

The author concludes that the UC Board has both the ability and responsibility to halt this costly experiment and reverse the 2020 decision, a move that would protect the reputation of UC and the future of California’s public higher‑education system.