Posted on 12/13/2025 9:04:48 PM PST by SeekAndFind
In early 2020, the University of California set the tone for the rest of the country when its regents voted to drop SAT and ACT admissions requirements through 2024. That decision, initially framed as a pandemic necessity, quickly reshaped admissions nationwide. By late 2022, roughly 1,750 schools, or about 80 percent of U.S. universities, had adopted test-optional policies, according to Forbes.
“It’s a sea change in terms of how admissions decisions are being made,” Robert Schaeffer, of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, told NBC News.
“The pandemic created a natural experiment.”
Five years later, the results of this “natural experiment” are in. A report released by UC San Diego in November tells the story.
“Over the past five years, UC San Diego has experienced a steep decline in the academic preparation of its entering first-year students—particularly in mathematics, but also in writing and language skills,” a new university report reads.
“This trend poses serious challenges both to student success and to the university’s instructional mission.”
Those words might sound ominous, but they don’t do justice to just how bad the slide has been.
Roughly 1 in 8 UCSD freshmen are working with math skills that don’t clear the high school bar - a 30-fold jump since 2020.
It gets worse, however.
The report concluded that 70 percent of those students fall below middle school levels.
To give you an idea of what we’re talking about, a full quarter of students failed to solve the following equation: 7 + 2 = [ ] + 6.
This means that my 9-year-old son, who tests high in math, is likely more equipped mathematically than many of these college students. I say this not as a point of pride, but to emphasize the disservice done to students thrust into (very pricey) college courses.
It’s not just math, however.
The report found that 40 percent of students deficient in arithmetic also couldn’t write (or, in the euphemistic language of the report, “required remedial writing instruction”).
The report was unflinching in its assessment.
“Admitting large numbers of students who are profoundly underprepared [for college] risks harming the very students we hope to support, by setting them up for failure,” it declares.
UC San Diego should be commended for coming forward to report a phenomenon that is undoubtedly true at universities across the country.
Many at the time warned that ditching standardized tests was a bad idea. Research shows that high school GPAs don’t tell you much about how students perform once they get to campus. Standardized test results, however, do.
So, why did universities engage in this “natural experiment”?
There is no single answer, but politics, ideology, and crass incentives all played a role.
Let’s start with politics.
As David Leonhardt pointed out in the New York Times, universities are run by progressives, and “standardized tests have become especially unpopular among political progressives.”
Some progressives say standardized tests cause too much stress.
Others say they’re biased to explain why men score higher, on average, than women and why some racial groups perform better than others.
Ideology, a kissing cousin of politics, also plays a role. The fact that universities ditched standardized testing during the peak of the DEI craze is not a coincidence. As Leonhardt noted in the New York Times, the hostility to standardized tests is based largely “on the theory that they hurt diversity.”
This is a kooky claim for various reasons, not least because it is rooted in bigotry. But there was also a method to the madness. Abandoning standardized tests, which are rooted in objectivity, gave universities the ability to admit students on their terms. By making admission more subjective, universities were giving themselves cover for their own unlawful admissions policies.
Finally, there’s the financial incentive.
It’s no secret that demand for higher education is plummeting. (This trend is partly driven by pure demographics, but high tuition and the diminishing value of college degrees also play a role.)
As a result, universities are confronting an “enrollment cliff.” While declining numbers of new students would have posed a challenge regardless, the problem was worsened by pandemic-era learning losses caused by widespread high school closures. Removing standardized tests was a (kind of) solution to this problem. If not enough students are qualified to attend university, remove the qualifications.
In the end, ditching standardized tests will be remembered as a chapter in the broader story of the decline of U.S. universities. The decision didn’t cause the fall, but it accelerated a trend toward lower academic standards—one that harmed not just the reputation of universities, but also students who were admitted for all the wrong reasons.
Sadly, they will be left paying the price.
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Good news, kids. Everybody gets an A.
Yay.
I still don’t want to fly on a plane where the pilot says to the co-pilot: “I have a secret. I cheated all the way and can’t really land. Take over.”
Copilot: “That’s what I was going to tell you about myself.”
Pilot: “See if a passenger is over Macho Grande and can fly this thing.”
In a related story water is wet.
“So, why did universities engage in this “natural experiment”?”
MONEY! A bunch more “students” on guaranteed student loans.
DEI requires abandonment of all standards except the standard of victimhood.
"Nope, never had a lesson."
A family member is in the college application process, and, man, thing were a lot simpler when I was a kid. So much gamesmanship is involved now. Some places, like California’s public universities, won’t accept the SATs/ACTs even if you wanted to submit them. A few top-tier private colleges still require them. The vast majority of colleges and universities in the middle are “test optional.” Which presents a dilemma for a kid with a good but not spectacular score. What if your SAT is likely *above average* for the particular college but might be *below average* for the applicants submitting a score because most of the applicants scoring lower than you opt not to submit a score, so your “good score” might be among the lowest of the applicant pool and you look bad by comparison? See the problem? Things were simpler when every damned college required the SAT/ACT and that was that.
THE SAT IS RACIS’!!!
So let’s dumb America down to whatever low intellect is necessary to ensure blakkk participation in edjumication at whatever percentage blakkks occupy in our teevee ads. 50%? 60%? 80%? Whatever!
No need to qualify to participate in the academy! Your color is your admission badge.
What could possibly go wrong??!? Because colonialism and hunnerd-fifty year old (fixed!) slavery DEMAND it of fragile white America.
(Note to Fury: I’m informing you of this racis’ post so you can stutter back “Grow Up”. M’kay? Because facts and statistics are a foreign language to you.)
>> See the problem? Things were simpler when every damned college required the SAT/ACT and that was that.
Oh yes, I see the problem. That in a nutshell is the WHOLE REASON that standardized testing came into being!
Woke college can be replaced by a deck of flash cards?
In all seriousness these kid were brilliant but not really pharmacists yet. They had immense knowledge but without exposure to what really happens in hospital pharmacy on the floor they did not know how to use their great knowledge. THAT WAS MY JOB! I trained them and enjoyed it.
Any college applicant that can’t solve 7 + 2 = [ ] + 6 needs to be given a city bus ticket off campus and a kick in the azz.
The bus ticket is optional.
>> Woke college can be replaced by a deck of flash cards?
In the American academy, yes.
Sadly, in the global talent marketplace, no, it’s not that simple...
Bad News, is that oriental kid next to you with a family that is normal gets your job or even me a white boy but old, old, old. I am amused.
No one will hire the dopes. And then the colleges get a bad reputation, then less people go there, then the college loses funding, and less people go there, etc...
The public colleges are way overfunded. Shouldn’t waste resources on stupid students. Cut the funding, teach the top students.
>> I trained them and enjoyed it.
Good for you! And thank you for persevering. I think ‘woke’ will collapse upon itself, eventually, for just the reasons you expose in your testimony.
FRegards and Blessings!
I cant remember, but did the previous tests have anything similar on it like to pattern recognition, like childhood tests. Childhood IQ and competency tests used to reward and praise children for pattern recognition.
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Ah, the fruit of public education.
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