Universities Have Seller’s Remorse

National Review Online

Monday, June 01, 2026

 

In May of 2020, the University of California school system, with its over 300,000 students and ten separate campuses, announced it would be phasing out and then ultimately eliminating standardized testing requirements for all applicants. The California State University system (a separate albeit equally public one within the state, with around 470,000 students spread across 23 campuses) followed soon afterwards, meaning that since 2022 the two largest public university systems in America have banned the use of the SAT or ACT in admissions decisions.

 

The California school systems’ decision to phase out standardized testing was made under direct pressure from a series of lawsuits filed in 2019 and marked the fulfillment of a long-standing progressive goal: removing even the optional use of the SAT/ACT in college applications, described as a so-called “racist metric,” merely a method of “illegal wealth and race discrimination.” (Both of these characterizations came directly from the plaintiffs’ attorneys.) The act marked perhaps the single largest and most deeply consequential policy victory for the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” movement in its (then) short-lived history.

 

Six years later, the results have definitively come in, and they are uniformly catastrophic. Last November, the University of California San Diego’s Senate Workgroup on Admissions published a devastating report charting the near-instantaneous collapse in student preparedness and ability at its campus over the last half-decade: a thirtyfold increase in freshmen who cannot handle even basic high school math, and a shocking 12 percent of the class members requiring middle school-level remedial placement. (Perhaps the biggest scandal of all was that the vast majority of these students had near-perfect high school transcripts, revealing the deepening rot of grade inflation throughout the educational system.)

 

Last week, more than 600 STEM professors and faculty members from across the entire California state system published an open letter, wherein they pleaded with the UC Board of Regents and Academic Senate to restore standardized testing to college admissions beginning with the 2027 admissions cycle. They make their case eloquently and with unimpeachable logical force:

 

Basic mathematical fluency is analogous to literacy; without it, success in university-level STEM becomes structurally unattainable for students. We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields. UC has been a national leader in supporting under-resourced students to do well in mathematics. However, UC has finite resources and can help only so many students, and only when the preparation deficits they need to overcome are within reach.

 

Furthermore, the widening spread between underprepared and well-prepared students creates polarized courses, weakening the foundation available to many students and making it harder to teach at the level required for advanced STEM work. UC is increasingly unable to provide its students with the education needed to become leaders in California’s scientific, technological, and economic future. We are already seeing the warning signs: longer pathways through prerequisite material, reduced readiness for advanced coursework, and growing pressure to dilute quantitative rigor. Left unaddressed, these trends will lead to declining graduation rates, longer time to degree, and reduced completion of STEM majors, with consequences for California’s highly skilled STEM workforce.

 

Nothing about this depressing turn of events should be even remotely surprising. We have railed against the lowering of standards in academia for decades, in large part because we have never forgotten that the underlying impulse behind progressives’ mad rush to eliminate testing is at its heart racist: a belief that standards must be lowered or discarded, else too many of the “wrong” kinds of people (Asians, Jews, etc.) will glut the schools. Three years ago, when Columbia University announced it would be discarding its SAT/ACT requirement, we strenuously opposed it.

 

It so happens that Columbia is now the only remaining Ivy League school persisting in a test-optional policy. (Others, like Cornell and Dartmouth, repented of their decision more quickly.) As a private institution, that is their right. But the University of California school system’s collapse in standards is of an entirely different order: It is the violation of a public trust. As the STEM professors themselves explain, they are charged with educating future generations of mathematicians, engineers, and research scientists — ensuring our high-tech economy remains dynamic and competitive by training its workforce. They will never be able to do that successfully if they have to remediate them as well.