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.
As well as the capable and intelligent students who are not focused on useful fields like math and hard sciences. A few, many of whom qualify as Asperger's or high functioning autistic get through very well because their minds are totally focused on these these things. Other intelligent students are not so focused and get sucked into trendy and nonremunerative majors like Transwomen's Literature of the 1850s.
solution is NO government money to universities for anything at all including NO government loans. If USG needs the research done at Universities then the government should fund its own labs and hire the scientists but, outside of hard military needs, there is no valid reason for the government to be involved at all. The universities will then have to cut out all the frivolous and ideological courses and lower tuition drastically to something sane in order to not have to close down altogether.
Well, then...
IF high school diplomas, grades, and GPAs mean nothing
and SAT scores are the most important indicator for college admissions,
then why must students submit high school transcripts for college admission?
Why not admit students by their SAT scores alone?
Many homeschoolers would love that policy, instead of jumping through extra hoops because they never went to school, even if their SAT scores are high.
Everyone here should make a decision: Either the high school diploma counts for something... or not.
Sadly, they will be left paying the price.
So will we all as they enter a workforce becoming dumber because of their pass thru diplomas and crippling debt.
I guess it makes a kind of sense when you see some video of a college grad pulling coffee because the “can’t find a job”. Maybe it’s because they aren’t proficient in their field or hold a useless diploma...
Apparently (based on your post) you don’t even know why I post the “Grow up” message. Oh well.
I wonder how helpful your post will be in black Americans hopefully participating at FR.
When it comes to UC, and UCSD in particular, you’re correct.
White males need not apply. What’s important is the essay, which has to be a tear jerker description of your battle against the White male patriarchy.
That’s what the UC runs on.
No one should pay any attention to their “warnings “ about education. The people who get in are the people who look like the admissions committees: the rainbow coalition of morons.
"Dirty Harry."
Regards,
What’s just as bad is ditching aptitude tests for the trades... DOH.
College is just a post High School DEI Sports Camp Program for parents seeking Empty Nest Day Care.
They had DEI students with perfect straight A GPAs and phony baloney admissions paperwork from inner city high schools admitted who had problems with the most basic arithmetic and reading/writing skills. These students did not even belong in college, much less a top ranked university. It was a debacle
Personal bugaboo, we have lost the distinction between less and fewer.
No offense meant but we were discussing college entrance exams so...
True in High School as well.
I had a lifelong friend who has since passed away who was an engineering professor at a well-known state university. He started his career at small mid-western engineering college that has a well-respected reputation for its engineering graduates. He pointed out, however that much of the faculty there was not particularly highly credentialed. His point was that the college’s reputation for excellent graduated was not due to the teaching staff, it was due to its extremely high admission standards. It was good only because it chose good students, not because it had good instructors. I’m quite sure this holds true all across the university spectrum. The universities that chose crummy students will get crummy graduates.
The truth is not racist.
It is an unfair money-grab to admit students who will never graduate. Universities excel at such greed.
Schools got so bad that hardly anyone who “graduated” was eligible for college.....and Kalifornia schools led the way down into apathetic ignorance...
7+2=( )+6
The answer is 2, for large values of 2
Modern physics says the answer depends on how fast the parentheses is moving.
Lol.
Harvard had a year when the students did worse on the entrance exam at graduation.
And you’re pinging me on this…. why?
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