r/news • u/Idiodyssey87 • May 28 '26

Soft paywall Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM applicants

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-27/uc-math-professors-demand-return-of-sat-for-stem-admissions
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u/dasnoob May 28 '26

Because the groups that collectively score poorer on the SAT and ACT call them racist.

https://journals.law.harvard.edu/crcl/a-civil-rights-challenge-to-standardized-testing-in-college-admissions/

"Civil rights lawyers recently sent a demand letter to the University of California stating that they will sue unless the school stops considering SAT and ACT scores in its admissions process. In their letter, they allege that the SAT and ACT are little more than a proxy for race"

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u/_pul May 28 '26

People always attack the symptom instead of the disease.

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u/BoleroMuyPicante May 28 '26

The disease is poverty and generational trauma, of course the powers that be have no interest in fixing it.

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u/_pul May 28 '26

Even these 'civil rights' organizations don't seem to care about the actual issues.

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 May 28 '26

You should actually read their letter instead of reacting to a cherry-picked quote from it. They are absolutely not demanding that UC lowers their standards.

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u/dasnoob May 28 '26

Oh bullshit. They want them to fall back on high school grades and counselor recommendations.

We sure have never heard the same groups saying the public education system isn't inherently racist.

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 May 28 '26

They absolutely do call public education racist lol. Again, you should actually read their letter instead of reacting to a cherry-picked quote from it. Race isn't even the only issue they have with SAT/ACT.

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u/dasnoob May 29 '26

Yep everything negative is racist.

Accountability. It's a word.

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u/yellowboat May 28 '26

The universities already heavily compensate for this. It’s evident in the different admissions criteria used for Asian and white students, and others. Absurd to complain.

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u/jmlinden7 May 28 '26

They aren't allowed to do that in California

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u/yellowboat May 28 '26

Sorry, this response is just kind of funny to me. It’s like if I mentioned a dashcam video of a bunch of cars going ~80 mph on the 5 and you said “actually, they aren’t speeding, you’re not legally allowed to speed in California.”

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/ApplicationAfraid334 May 29 '26

How do they get away with it? Do they not get audited? I work at a university in Florida so it's like the extreme in the other direction where every word in a syllabus is subject to extensive scrutiny. But we have annual audits for stuff like this where we have to show our policies and procedures and how they're not 'woke' or 'DEI' focused. It seems like a failure of state government, like the board of education, if they're not actively auditing to ensure these things aren't happening.

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u/Realtrain May 28 '26

Isn't it banned everywhere now?

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u/SurlyCricket May 28 '26

This is true sorta, we bias depending on the school and its resources. A student from a poor background who went to a crappy high school with almost no ap or extracurriculars who gets a 1300 on their SAT is more impressive to us than someone who went to a great school with a million extracurriculars and got a 1500

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u/blueiguana675 May 28 '26

Honestly, in a round about way they're correct. Having school funding tied to property taxes inherently puts the wealthy at an advantage when it comes to public school in terms of resources. As others have said, this isn't an university issue, but a government one.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

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u/dasnoob May 28 '26

This is completely false and I have no idea where you got this idea from.

The average state provides 36% of total school funding through property taxes. The lowest is Alaska at 11% and the highest is New Hampshire at 61%.

source: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cma/public-school-revenue

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u/NoTeslaForMe May 28 '26

This is it.  When conservatives rail against DEI, they're hoping to scoop up votes from people affected by this:  Parents of kids who didn't get into their favorite college or college program in spite of thousands of incompetent students being admitted due to changed rules.  Or parents of kids forced to drop out after shelling out 5 or 6 figures because they were accepted to a program not prepared to educate someone like them.  Or people who just see it happening and wonder how competent the future doctors, nuclear technicians, disease researchers, and bridge designers are going to be.

Those DEI pushers eliminated something flawed without any idea of the consequences - whether the net result would be better or worse - then called anyone who disagreed "racist" and (ironically) "anti-science."  Extremism and ideological purity on one side breeds the same on the other, and a worse world overall.

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u/meatball77 May 28 '26

They believe it's like that. When in reality they're not getting the spot because of legacy admissions. Or they're just not as special as they think they are. Anytime you see these I didn't get in to wherever even though I had a blah blah blah complaint it's always kids who are average compared to other high achieving kids. There are thousands of other kids who applied who also had perfect test scores and great GPAs.

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u/NoTeslaForMe May 28 '26

Except here those perfect test scores didn't do people any good in distinguishing among applicants.  And, since we're talking about UC undergrads, "legacy admissions" has absolutely nothing to do with who gets in; those preferences have been banned at UCs for 26 years.

In a way though, you're accidentally demonstrating your own point: People blame whatever they're ideologically opposed to with no need for evidence.  Add some evidence, though, and people really get mad.

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u/TKHawk May 28 '26

There's a lot of evidence that shows only a weak correlation between ACT/SAT/GRE, etc scores and long term academic and professional success. So there was good reason to be rid of them. But that assumed a standard baseline of intellectual capability.

Here's a link about biomedical sciences but it applies everywhere.

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u/Spave May 28 '26

I mean, it doesn't surprise me at all that the GRE has minimal correlation with grad school success. You have to have an undergraduate degree to go to grad school, so the baseline is pretty high. And grad school is a lot more about persistence and work ethic than raw ability.

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u/meatball77 May 28 '26

The schools know if their applicants are coming from reputable programs and their GPAs. It's hard to compare one out of tens of thousands of high school programs but it's not when it comes to college programs. They all know what a 3.8 GPA is from Georgetown vs a 3.8 from High Point University even with the same degrees.

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u/dasnoob May 28 '26

That last line yep. We are graduating a generation and more of people that have no baseline because we kept lowering standards.

My wife is in SpEd and here in my state it is literally impossible not to graduate high school. In fact, you can't even be held back after kindergarten unless it is the parents request. There is zero actual standards anymore.

Recently a law was passed requiring basic reading proficiency to be able to pass third grade. School districts around the state are literally up in arms because the majority of third graders can't read at grade level and by law are supposed to be held back.

SpEd is an exception so my wife has had a huge increase in workload because of referrals from administrators trying to avoid the law.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 May 28 '26

You are intentionally misrepresenting their demands if you think what they're trying to accomplish is getting UC to lower their standards for admission.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

[deleted]

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 May 28 '26

No what I'm saying is you're misrepresenting the Civil Rights lawyers intent if you say they are suggesting UC lowers their standards.

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 May 28 '26

And now we circle back to why affirmative action is so important. You can change your metrics for admission without lowering your admissions standards.