This project set out to answer one question: do the University of California's most selective seats go to the students who have demonstrably earned them? Measured against California's one common achievement yardstick — the SBAC test every public-school student already takes — the answer is no. UC's offers track school poverty, not measured achievement, and the grades of the students it admits are compressed so tightly near the 4.0 ceiling that they cannot tell a rigorous school from a weak one.
Remove the only measure comparable across every school, and admission comes uncoupled from demonstrated readiness. That is not a costless accounting problem. What reads as a question of allocation on paper shows up as a question of readiness in the lecture hall — and UC's own faculty, in STEM and the humanities alike, are now documenting exactly that harm.
The remedy they converge on is the one our method implies: restore a common, objective standard. Not as the sole gate, and not as a test of advanced ability — as a baseline external check that inflated grades and AI-assisted essays can no longer provide. This page lays out the evidence: what our data shows, and what the people teaching UC's classrooms are seeing.
The common thread is the missing yardstick. With no standardized test in the file and grades that no longer separate schools, admissions readers are left with measures that correlate with a family's circumstances more than a student's demonstrated preparation. The seats still get filled — but the signal that they are filled by the best-prepared students is gone.
Math faculty report a widening gap in preparation inside the same classroom. A UC San Diego Senate–Administration workgroup found that, in five years, the number of entering students whose math skills fall below high-school level rose nearly thirtyfold; 70% of those students test below middle-school level — about 1 in 12 of the incoming class. At UC Berkeley, for three years running, 20–30% of first-semester calculus students who took a diagnostic showed severe preparation deficits.
The consequence, they write, is instructors re-teaching middle-school mathematics alongside university material, polarized courses, and early warning signs — longer paths through prerequisites, diluted rigor, and the prospect of falling graduation rates. Basic math fluency, they argue, is like literacy:
"without it, success in university-level STEM becomes structurally unattainable."
They tie the gap to the 2020 elimination of the SAT/ACT — an outcome the Academic Senate's own 2020 Standardized Testing Task Force had explicitly predicted — and note that UC's peer STEM institutions have since resumed using the tests. Their ask: restore the SAT/ACT math requirement for STEM majors (2027 cycle), with faculty oversight of readiness standards and accountability that tests admissions criteria against actual outcomes.
Non-STEM faculty endorse their colleagues and extend the case to the SAT/ACT reading-and-writing component. Citing the Senate task force's own report (Table 6), they note that test scores predict college grades and graduation across fields — including the social sciences and humanities — even after controlling for high-school GPA. In an era of grade inflation and AI-written application essays, they argue, GPA and personal statements can no longer reliably diagnose who is ready.
On equity, their point is blunt:
"no admissions criterion is uncorrelated with social background."
Essay style and extracurricular counts, they observe, track social class too — while a common test can surface talented students from under-resourced schools whose potential is hidden elsewhere in the file. They also flag the timeline: test-blind admissions are already locked in through Fall 2027, and every year without a reversal locks in another class. Their ask: return both the math and verbal components of the SAT/ACT to undergraduate admissions.
This was not a decision UC's faculty asked for. When UCOP requested the Academic Senate study the role of testing, its Standardized Testing Task Force examined the evidence and recommended continued use of the SAT/ACT. The systemwide Assembly of the Academic Senate endorsed that recommendation in a unanimous 51-to-0 vote. A month later, the Regents considered the same research and voted the other way — discontinuing the tests and moving UC to test-blind admissions. Six years on, the faculty who teach the resulting classes are asking the University to reconsider, under the same principle of shared governance that produced the original recommendation.
In June 2026 The Economist gave this exact problem a leader — "Don't dumb down." Its argument: English-speaking universities, America's above all, have let standards slide by dropping reasoning tests and inflating grades — and the damage falls hardest on the least advantaged. Its subhead put it plainly: "University-for-all harms poor students the most."
The figures it reports are stark. On OECD testing, about one in seven students at American colleges scores no better on a literacy test than a typical ten-year-old — and for numeracy, nearly one in five. Maths professors, it notes, increasingly route freshmen into remedial courses before real learning can begin.
On grades it points to a data point that lands this page's argument directly: in May 2026, Harvard agreed to cap the share of A's awarded per course — after A grades there climbed from 24% in 2005 to 60% last year. When the country's most selective university can no longer separate its students by grade, no admissions office can.
The remedy it endorses is the one argued here — restore high standards, including mandatory tests for all applicants, and rein in grade inflation. It frames the stakes without hedging: lifting students up the tiers without the skills to succeed is, in its words, "a cowardice that lets everybody down."
A UC degree is worth what it is because it certifies demonstrated readiness. Decouple admission from any measure comparable across schools and three things follow — and all three are now visible. Students land in coursework they were not prepared for, the mismatch the faculty describe firsthand. Courses split into the prepared and the unprepared, and rigor bends toward the middle. And the credential itself — the thing that made a UC seat worth competing for — loses the signal that earned it its value.
None of this is an argument against widening opportunity. It is an argument for measuring honestly who needs what support, and where in California's three-tier system they can best receive it. The SAT/ACT is not a magic number and not the sole criterion; reasonable people can debate its weight. But it is the baseline external check that grades — inflated and graded school-by-school — and essays — increasingly written by AI — can no longer supply. Removing every common standard did not remove the barriers underprepared students face. It moved those barriers into the classroom, where they are far harder to overcome. Restoring an objective yardstick protects the very students the policy was meant to help — and the institution they are trying to join.
Both open letters, the FAQ, and the signatory lists are hosted by UC Student Success. If you are UC faculty, they include sign-on forms.
STEM faculty letter › Social sciences & humanities letter ›