Nope. I believe UCSD probably accepted plenty of those students. Some probably enrolled, while some didn’t.
Again, we are talking about switching out 12% of the class (the proportion that need remedial math.) Taking yield into account that’s a lot of students. And doesn’t count those who need remedial writing/english/reading instruction.
I would argue that it is for us to decide. For efforts to increase diversity to succeed in the long run, there must be public support. There won’t be public support if there is evidence that these polices are leading to woefully under prepared kids winding up at the most selective of college. The data being released by UCSD supports the argument being made by the the elite private colleges that test scores can be useful in identifying lower income kids who have the skills, or potential, to be more successful than their peers with lower test scores but perhaps higher classroom grades.
Of course, Arizona State University does offer lower level math courses like MAT 110, despite “four years of high school math” being an admission requirement.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t use test scores in admissions. That’s for the public system leaders to decide.
Note there are plenty of students at test required state unis who need remedial courses. UT Austin. TAMU. UTK. UGA. All schools that have made investments in remedial courses. Because those states have many underperforming and under resourced high schools. And it is part of their mission to serve students from the vast majority of public HSs.
Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below middle-school level increased nearly thirtyfold, reaching roughly one in eight members of the entering cohort.
Looking at the opening of the report, this sounds like a dramatic change. In addition to possible changes in curriculum during that time, it seems reasonable to consider what else happened in that timeframe, virtual instruction over an extended period.
The most significant change in that period was the UCs going test blind.
Consider that there may not be just one thing. Before going test blind, UCs had a reputation for weighing grades much more heavily in admission than test scores. Going test blind during and following a long period of virtual instruction, which may have been longer than a year in some places (if I’m remembering correctly? I’m not in CA) could mask changes in achievement. Maybe some CA posters could tell us whether any other standardized testing was happening in the state over the past five years that might have caught a widespread decline in skills following virtual instruction.
So, just spitballing here, my guess is that the cause may be multi-factorial: (1) changes in math instruction methods and middle school math track, (2) virtual learning, and (3) test blind hiding the problem.
I don’t get it? We aren’t taking about homelessness or hunger or families. We are talking about programs that bring kids up to speed in math. How is that not “the mission?”
“In the 2025 fall cohort, one in eight students placed into math below a middle school level, despite having a solid math GPA.”
Fair enough, but the broader (educational) questions are two fold:
should the UC’s be responsible for remediating middle school math, much less high school math? (I guess that Gentleperson’s ‘B’ obtained in Low Performing HS in AlgII is not all it’s cracked up to be.)
Are we doing those students (with middle school-level math ability) any favors by admitting them and paying for them to attend a highly selective R1? (Ditto for those with only a middle-school Reading comprehension and Compositon ability)
How does this even make (educational) sense?
You are asking the wrong person. I have no problem with public colleges educating their students where they are at. But whether or not a school chooses to do that that is not up to me to decide.
I asked this above, but does anyone have an example of a flagship, or any public 4 year for that matter, that does not provide remedial classes for students who may need them?
I think the truly shocking aspect of this report is not that some kids need “remedial” math, but that the college has had to add a course covering elementary and middle school math concepts. Or how few students had mastered basic algebra despite being given high grades in much higher levels of high school math.
That is a good question. Since we were discussing Michigan above, here are UM’s lowest course offerings. It looks like Math 105 is their lowest offering, one step below Precalculus. It is described as “a course on data analysis, functions, and graphs with an emphasis on problem solving, concepts, and interpretations.” It is the course that is recommended for students who need more preparation before taking Precalculus. High school trigonometry is a prerequisite. It does not seem to be exceedingly remedial along the lines of UCSD’s offerings.
https://lsa.umich.edu/math/undergraduates/undergraduate-math-courses/100-level-math-courses.html
Depends on the definition of “remedial”. If “remedial” means lower level than precalculus in preparation for precalculus, then there are a few whose lowest level math is precalculus (e.g. UCLA, Colorado School of Mines).
But if “remedial” is anything lower level than calculus in preparation for calculus, there do not appear to be any.
(Also, do you count lower level “math for general education” courses as “remedial”?)
Folks, college students (whether at 2 or 4 year colleges) needing remedial classes is not a new phenomena.
From a 2016 report called “Remedial Coursetaking at U.S. Public 2- and 4-Year Institutions: Scope, Experience, and Outcomes” (one of the landmark studies in this area)
In 2011−12, about one-third of all first- and second-year bachelor’s degree students—29 percent of those at public 4-year institutions and 41 percent of those at public 2-year institutions—reported having ever taken remedial courses (Skomsvold 2014). Remedial coursetaking rates could be higher if estimates were based on transcript data (Radford and Horn 2012) or if colleges made remedial education mandatory for all students assessed as academically underprepared for college-level work (Bailey and Cho 2010).
Remedial coursetaking was widespread among students who began their postsecondary education in 2003−04: about 68 percent of those who started at public 2-year institutions and 40 percent of those who started at public 4-year institutions took at least one remedial course during their postsecondary enrollment between 2003 and 2009 (table 1). Math remediation was more common than English/reading remediation: 59 percent of students entering public 2-year institutions and 33 percent of students entering public 4-year institutions took a remedial math course, whereas enrollment rates in remedial English/reading courses were 28 and 11 percent at public 2- and 4-year institutions, respectively.
This ACT report cites a 2023 Dept of ED study that “In the class of 2020, 31.4% of students in four-year colleges took at least one remedial or developmental course”. (I can’t find the original source) https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED673783.pdf
I’m sure there’s more but that’s all the time I have to pull some sources.
Yes. No argument here that K-12 education is broken. And there are no large scale fixes in sight. Meaning it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Talk to middle school teachers and school admin to see what things are like out there.
This is what All-Ice posted-
“Sigh - I appreciate your true effort here at a solution. But you make the mistaken assumption that going to CC is ‘free’ –exactly where do these students live? What do they eat while they are at CC? Their admission to UT Austin (if they are a low resource student) likely includes a meal plan and dorm. We have a major CC in my area -there is no food plan or dorms. And not everyone’s parents are willing or able to house and feed an 18 year old kid.
I really do love a lot about CC -but it reeks of privilege. I have a number of students who work 20-30 hours a week because their parents won’t provide any support and who also won’t fill out a FAFSA or CSS. And they aren’t kids who have been ‘kicked out’ –they just come from families who don’t provide support for ‘adults’. These kids have nearly free or free tuition based on their grades. But they have to work so they have a place to live and food to eat.
Your plan basically says, “Congrats - you got in - but hey you can’t actually COME here until you magically find a way to take classes and feed yourself for a year!””
And my point is that I don’t believe it’s sustainable to have the flagship universities in every state take on the problems of 18 year olds who have no place to live or food to eat. That’s a BIG problem- I’m not minimizing it– but accepting them into the flagship so they can live in a dorm and have a meal plan seems off-mission to me, if they are there just because their local community college has no food plan or dorm. Because that 18 year old taking remedial classes because they aren’t ready for university level work, becomes a 23 year old who has exhausted their Pell grant with no degree. They used up a year of eligibility taking high school classes on a college campus (that’s what remedial work IS). They aren’t entering with 30 AP credits- those are the suburban middle class kids.
Right, but all these numbers are across all four-year colleges, not top flagships like UCSD.
The UCSD faculty have identified an academic preparation problem for their particular school which has high expectations of incoming students (not just “college readiness”).
If people don’t want to have flagships which cherry-pick the best in-state students, that’s a different discussion. But if we assume the existing admissions-based-on-academic-achievement system, the UCSD faculty seem to think that bringing back standardized test scores will reduce the number of students needing remedial classes and that that is an appropriate goal for their school. I happen to agree.
Even if an AP course in Calculus is not available in all high schools, do you think they can ask for AP Precalculus as a requirement for admissions to STEM degrees?
Likely that such applicants take math to at least precalculus anyway. But it seems that there is a problem with course quality and grade inflation in high schools if students completing precalculus or higher in high school can only place into lower-than-precalculus math when they get to college.
Thanks for your reply. I based my idea on the needs I see at the school district where I have worked as the leader of the health clinic (the district meets official criteria as a full service Community School.) Essentially all students qualify for free lunch. 4% of graduating seniors meet state math proficiency standards (which is 8th grade level math.) Zero percent of students are deemed “college ready.” Back when students still took the ACT, the average score was ~16. Now the score has gone up to 20, because the school no longer encourages anyone except the very top handful of students to take the test. Many of the students are unhoused (e.g. living in homeless shelters, couch hopping, sleeping at their places of employment or living in their cars.) Many of the “housed” ones are barely so, living temporarily w relatives. Gang shootings happen at the convenience store across the street. A couple years ago there were riots after a police officer shot and killed a pulled-over motorist while he talked to his mom on the phone (she said it was a mistake.) And no, this isn’t the community I grew up in, but I did grow up with teen parents and attended college thanks to Pell grants and loans and working year round. So maybe you can save the sighing when you talk to me?
Anyway, I’m a big cheerleader for the kind of smart hardworking kid who finishes at the top of their class..and still isn’t ready for college. And living at home (or in the homes of relatives, or coach surfing, or sleeping at their place of employment or car etc) while they work full time and also take some remedial night classes at the locally CC (or remotely) is what these students do. They sometimes succeed in getting a 4 year degrees, but more often they settle for a shorter degree (Dental Assistant etc) and that degree slingshots them into the middle class and into a suburb with better school for their own kids. Sending them to our flagship in the academic state they come out of high school in? That would be a major problem for the students from my district, even the top 5%
I don’t read @ali-ice’s post as advocating admissions of students “so they can live in a dorm and have a meal plan.”
Part of UC’s mission is to ‘teach math and reading’ (to paraphrase your anecdote) to students from every community and every school in an extremely diverse state, where the students will necessarily have drastically different starting points. This is a strength of the system, not a weakness.
I’m not interested in my tax dollars only subsidizing the higher education of suburban kids who were lucky enough take 30 AP credits in a quality academic setting.
On a broader point, and one not necessarily directed at you, it is disappointing to see this seems to be yet another thread complaining about how we need to keep the low SES, non-suburban kids out of the UCs so that we can admit a few more kids with all the privileges.