Unter Berufung auf „schwerwiegende“ Mathematikdefizite fordern die UC-Fakultäten eine Rückkehr zu SAT-Tests für MINT-Bewerber
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-27/uc-math-professors-demand-return-of-sat-for-stem-admissions
Unter Berufung auf „schwerwiegende“ Mathematikdefizite fordern die UC-Fakultäten eine Rückkehr zu SAT-Tests für MINT-Bewerber
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-27/uc-math-professors-demand-return-of-sat-for-stem-admissions
29 Kommentare
Part article:
>“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” they warned.
>Over three years — from fall 2021 to fall 2023 — the letter said, at least 20% of Berkeley first-semester calculus students who took a diagnostic exam showed deficits. “Basic mathematical fluency is analogous to literacy; without it, success in university-level STEM becomes structurally unattainable for students,” faculty wrote.
Nothing will get fixed until the education bills passed by Bush are repealed. Public schools should have never had their funding tied to how many students they graduate. We have got to get back to schools teaching to a basic standard and to allow schools to hold students back if they don’t meet that standard.
Work in higher education. Some of Gen Z can barely read. Not like a little under normal, I mean read at a middle school level at best.
And now we have AI on top of that.
Getting rid of SAT / ACT requirements was an obvious mistake
It also hurts lower income / minority candidates since rich kids can easily stack extracurriculars but they cant fake good test scores
I can understand not requiring SATs, but literally no placement exam is crazy. My twin cousins started college last year, and the university offered a free math placement exam on campus for students who didn’t take a standardized test but were accepted anyway. One was place in college algebra, and the other was placed in pre-calculus. If they saw me on discord, I was getting hit up for them to ask me questions. By the time they got to calculus they got the basics and finally figured out what office hours were.
Do they not do placement tests? When I attended a public university a decade ago, we had to sit for exams in math, chemistry, and a foreign language during our summer orientation to determine what classes we were allowed to start with in the fall. If you tested poorly, you had to start with a remedial math before going on to calculus, general chemistry before organic chemistry, and ie. Spanish I instead of II or III.
„.. *While calculators improved problem-solving and higher-order reasoning, studies show they can diminish students‘ mental arithmetic fluency and conceptual grasp if introduced before mastering basic numerical operations*“ [source: Research Gate]
*“The introduction of calculators led to a decline in mental arithmetic speed, weakened conceptual number sense, and created a dependency on technology. By outsourcing calculations to a machine, students often lost intuition for why and how mathematical rules work“* [source: Asian Technology Conference in Mathematic]
*Key negative impacts include:*
* ***Weakened Mental Math:*** *Reliance on technology reduced students‘ ability to perform simple, everyday calculations quickly in their heads.*
* ***Loss of Number Sense:*** *A lack of manual practice made it difficult for students to estimate answers or quickly gauge whether a final result was logical.*
* ***Conceptual Gaps:*** *Overuse turned learning into a mindless button-pushing exercise, leaving many students unable to grasp underlying algebraic processes and structural development.*
* ***Complacency in Checking Work:*** *Students frequently failed to „ballpark“ answers before calculating or review their work afterward to catch basic keystroke errors.*
* ***Reliance Crutch:*** *Premature introduction of calculators created a dependency that crippled manual computation skills, leaving students feeling unconfident without electronic assistance* [*source National Center for Biotechnology Information]*
***The introduction of calculators created distinct challenges for STEM UNDERGRADUATES,*** *primarily shifting focus from fundamental comprehension to procedural execution. The negative impacts on these students are well-documented:*
* ***Deteriorated Mental Arithmetic:*** *Heavy reliance eroded basic mental computation and approximation skills. Students often require calculators for basic sums, hindering their ability to perform quick, „ballpark“ checks.*
* ***Shallow Conceptual Understanding:*** *Students often use calculators as „magical“ boxes to bypass mathematical reasoning. They frequently plug in values to find the correct answer rather than understanding the underlying mathematical or physical principles.*
* ***Poor Geometric and Graphing Intuition:*** *Graphing calculators allow students to view functions and process limits without manual plotting. This diminishes their ability to intuitively visualize phenomena like sine waves or rates of change.*
* ***Heightened Vulnerability to Keystroke Errors:*** *Because calculators offload the cognitive burden of problem-solving, students are often less critical of the outputs. Simple keystroke mistakes can lead to wildly incorrect answers, which go unnoticed due to a lack of conceptual verification*
[source: Mathematics Educators]
And this is my last, EVIDENCE BASED, NOT pulled-out-of-my-arse, NOT anecdotal; NOT emotional, and NOT „hurt feefee’s“, word on the matter.
Btw, I’ve deleted my previous posts because THIS is the one that matters.
For those who disagree with the points made, take it up with the source(s). 😉
I’m still astounded how easy my daughters school is, major us public high school, 2000 students. Every single class she has, every year, the quizzes/tests/homework are 100% online and they let her make up every single one if she misses them. If she doesn’t like her score she can make them up also. All her friends that don’t have parents who are dialed in use AI and google to do all of it. Its nuts.
Don’t they do placement exams?
Community college should be the place for redemption and relearning not university which is for students to refine their skills and prepare for advanced post grad studies
Our education system sucks and moves kids forward just to receive funding. Add ChatGPT and other cheating methods that are routinely used and we end up with ever increasing morons
Sorry, merit has no place in filling limited STEM seats.
Provide the remedial mathematics education necessary and pray to God that admin doesn’t take action against you for insinuating mandatory baseline knowledge is necessary for successfully completing the course of study!
Never should have gotten rid of ACT/SAT requirements. High school GPAs are ridiculously inflated.
Oh wow, who could have possibly predicted such an outcome?!
Why? Just ask AI to do the math for you /s
Idk if the loophole is still open, but I was able to take classes in college for credit that overlapped AP classes I’d taken in high school and gotten college credits for based on AP exam scores. Already knew the material so just cruised the classes and padded my GPA.
Definitely need to bring back high standards. This is one of those instances when „all-inclusiveness“ went in the wrong direction
Gen Z is he first generation as a whole to have lower IQs than previous generations since testing began. Technology is ruining our brains as a species.
When I was in my STEM undergrad, I always made the joke that people who failed the mathematics 100 series would be made to take ‘remedial math 050’, an uncredited 4 hour math course designed to bring you up to a minimum standard to take college-level mathematics. By the time I graduated, I must have been overheard by someone with sway over the curriculum and failure rates of entry-level mathematics must have been high enough; my university had actually implemented Remedial Mathematics 050 as a course.
This reminds me of that.
I think this discussion misses the point. UC schools are required to take the top percentage of students from all California high schools. Kids that make to the top UC schools are literally the top of their class. If they are not prepared for college, this is an indictment of the California high schools. SATs will not fix this problem. It tests at a much lower level than what is required for success in STEM fields.
Yeah, it’s super duper surprising that competency exams are a direct indicator of student success in STEM fields, no matter how much some people would like to ignore this reality!
/s
I went to a UC college for undergrad. My class, starting in 2020, was the last class who were required to submit standardized test scores.
I switched career paths a year into college, and I was in a lot of classes with students younger than myself. A lot of them were very entitled – in a rich kid manner. My organic chemistry professor, who I got along with, quit teaching organic chemistry the quarter after I took his class and now exclusively teaches high-level chemistry courses. He cited the entitled pre-med students as the reason why (unofficially, ofc).
So many of my classmates expected to walk into their classes and get an A, no matter what. You could tell there was a difference between my class and the younger classes, it felt like there were far fewer absurdly-impressive out-of-state students and students from working families.
Yes, the ACT and SAT can be cheesed with expensive prep courses, but they do provide a way for truly-exceptional students to shine. Not all high schools are created equal, either, so cutting out the ACT/SAT doesn’t actually solve the problem. It just made it even easier for rich kids with padded applications to get in
Well no fucking shit. Literally anyone who isn’t huffing neweducationonium could have told you that.
Then what have these universities been basing admissions decisions on? Good vibes?
NCLB in its fruition. We should never have adopted the new math teaching protocols. Parents can’t help, classes don’t have enough adults who understand how to explain it either.
No one was able to figure out just how bad the maths deficits were tho 🤔🤔🤔
Kind of ironic seeing this, my wife is presenting to TEA right now on this subject and how to combat this issue.
Did not realize that SAT was a thing of the past. Is the same with GRE too ?