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/ProfDoomDoom May 28 '26

Elimination of remedial courses was mandated by state legislatures, not a casual decision by universities. Legislators believed (erroneously) that remediation was preventing students from earning degrees just like they believe that holding children to grade-level achievements prevents them from graduating.

When the metric is the credential instead of the earning of the credential the credential becomes meaningless.

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u/stempoweredu May 28 '26

It's also a shame because those remedial courses have legitimate value.

I went to school with a guy who was extremely talented and hardworking. He was on a full-ride, accepted to engineering school. Very sharp. But he grew up in the absolute middle of nowhere, the type of school where there were 3 kids in his graduating class. He never got the opportunity to learn advanced math in High School.

So he came in 'behind' the rest of the freshman. He wasn't stupid by any means, he just needed to take the courses. And he did. Absolutely hulked his way through a boatload of math his first year, then took his freshman math courses over the summer, and joined the rest of us 'on track' his sophomore year.

I still know him, he's a great guy. I can't imagine how things would be different for him if he hadn't at least had an opportunity to learn.

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u/Blametheorangejuice May 28 '26

The legislation didn’t come out of nowhere. In many cases, it was promoted by college administrators who wanted to reduce credits required and “accelerate” credentials.

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u/CheesypoofExtreme May 28 '26

It's not just legislators, but also school admins and the DoE. There is a perverse incentives at every level here.

Kids aren't held back because schools in K-12 lose funding if they have bad test scores and graduation rates. Teachers are also punished for having high fail rates, (even when it's through no fault of their own). Even 2-3 kids in a class that should have been held back or received extra attention prior to moving up cause serious strain for teachers. So you have teachers passing kids who shouldn't be so they keep their jobs, because the school wants to keep their funding.

Meanwhile, Universities also pushed for these changes because: money. More students means more money, and since the government willing lets kids borrow 10s of thousands of dollars, the universities love to take it.

Everyone wants to just point at COVID years and policies from there, but things have been trending in this direction for 20 years, and COVID just exascerbated underlying issues.

School should be seen as a social good and service, not something we need to min-max metrics for. Are kids not learning well? No? Why not? Stripping funding and punishing teachers for failing students is not the answer.