Posted on 08/16/2026 2:37:28 PM PDT by DFG
A well known University of California-Berkeley mathematics professor has slammed admissions standards at the top-flight university — where she says huge portions of her students are failing to keep up with college calculus and she’s forced to teach middle-school algebra and fractions students.
“Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school,” wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard.
Stankova — who rose through the mathematics world to earn a PhD from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria — described the admissions process as “less like careful evaluation and more like chance.”
Stankov has long been an evangelist for teaching math and founded the Berkeley Math Circle as well as a local math olympiad for high school kids — but she says the standards for students at the country’s most elite public university have made its student a laughing stock.
She is one of thousands of faculty members who signed open letters earlier this year calling for the restoration of the SAT and ACT in admissions to ensure the best students are getting in.
Standardized testing was phased out by UC Berkeley in 2020 after then-college president Janet Napolitano — who was Homeland Security Secretary for President Barack Obama — overruled a task force that had called for the entrance exams to be kept.
Citing COVID pandemic disruptions and concerns over equity, testing was made optional later in 2020, with a court ruling subsequently requiring UC to become test-blind through 2025.
And that policy has had a deleterious effect on standards at UC Berkeley, Stankova said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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That's not proper English. The professional writer who wrote this and the editor need to go back to school too.
Dude, like, math is HARD Dude!
So, students can't read or write and are MORONS but they feel VERY, VERY good about themselves.
Do you think things have changed much?
Same kids that show up at DSA rallies.
They don’t care as long as they are paying customers. For many of the students, you and I are on the hook.
I blame the metric system. “Perfesser, how many millimeters is 5/32 of an inch?” “I dunno, kid, just keep trying sockets until one of them fits.” Well, that is the right answer...
” concerns over equity,”... problem solved, they’re all equally ignorant of basic math. Equity achieved commies.
Integrals are one of those things you have to do a bunch of to get the hang of it. Math might have been easy for you up until then but understanding math past this point is real work!
This math stuff is just too hard! Become a DEMONCRAT politician.
I was wondering how the H*ll they got in school, then I saw the SAT and ACT are gone there...
I was wondering how the H*ll they got in school, then I saw the SAT and ACT are gone there...
“with a court ruling subsequently requiring UC to become test-blind through 2025”
WTF?
Another example of 1) the democRATs dumbing down children to their level, and 2) democRATS rewarding other democRATs
The reward?
As the president of the University of California (2013–2020), Janet Napolitano received an annual base salary of $570,000. Her compensation package also included a relocation allowance of $142,500, a university-leased residence, an annual automobile allowance of $8,916, standard health and retirement benefits.
Math is hard.
“An Alameda County Superior Court preliminary injunction in fall 2020 barred the University of California from using SAT/ACT scores. This led to a May 2021 settlement that officially locked in a test-blind policy through spring 2025”
Not even a state judge. No appeal.
UC system at least complicit, if not their idea to begin with.
Berkley used to be a top notch school. Then they lowered their admissions standards and admitted Chelsea “Harpo” Clinton and the downward slide began to where the school is now known as Bazerkley.
3.96875 . Because it is so close to 4 mm that usually works. Jimmy Carter was President when there was a program to convert America to metric in ten years so I learned it at the time. It was useful knowledge for science since most science had long since had gone metric.
integral calculus was not bad and fun at times. diff calculus and beyond were harder for me.
I work with kids in a pharmacy who don’t know the alphabet and can’t do basic math.
Most days I wanna scream after cleaning up their messes and laziness. I don’t get paid enough to do the work of three technicians in a day, and one of my managers doesn’t seem to care to, A.) Actually be present at the store; and, B.) Discipline anyone (save me, apparently).
I make any mistakes or call out sick and I earn a strike, but someone who rwcially castigates coworkers and orders wine to pick up on the way home using the store phone skates by due to her race (guess which one?).
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