The calculus-readiness rate among University of California students entering introductory courses fell from 71% to 44% between the 2018-2020 cohort and 2023, with 17% of test-takers that year answering none of eight foundational diagnostic topics correctly. Zvezdelina Stankova, a mathematics professor at UC Berkeley, published those figures in a San Francisco Standard op-ed on Saturday, attributing the decline to the UC system's 2020 decision to drop SAT and ACT requirements from admissions.
The bottleneck sits one course below the headline subject. Stankova teaches sections that seat between 500 and 1,400 students, and she writes that by the second week of a semester she already knows who is failing. Some students arrive five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours meant for integrals become remediation sessions on fractions and linear equations.
The diagnostic numbers make the before-and-after concrete. Among roughly 2,200 Calculus I students tested between 2018 and 2020, 71% were ready or nearly ready, and just 0.14% tested below basic algebra. Among roughly 2,800 students tested between 2021 and 2023 on a separate diagnostic instrument, readiness dropped to 51%. By 2023 alone, it stood at 44%.
The equity argument reversed
Former UC president Janet Napolitano, who also served in the Obama administration, drove the test-optional shift in 2020 citing equity concerns. A June open letter from UC STEM faculty rejected that rationale directly: the SAT and ACT mathematics requirement is a prerequisite for equity, the letter stated, not an obstacle to it. Failing to measure preparation gaps does not remove barriers, the faculty wrote; it moves them into the classroom. Stankova and thousands of other instructors across the UC system's 10 campuses have signed open letters calling for reinstatement of standardized testing.
Institutional response and national reversal
UC President James B. Milliken said in June that the Board of Regents takes the preparedness issue seriously and that the Academic Senate had proposed a data-driven review to support recommendations on student readiness. He called it among the most important items on the university's agenda.
Outside California, the policy direction is already moving. Columbia University announced in June it would reinstate standardized testing requirements for undergraduate applicants starting next year, joining seven other Ivy League institutions that have walked back test-optional policies, according to HigherEdDive. Stankova's 2023 data, where 17% of entering Calculus I students could not answer a single foundational question correctly, supplies the sharpest empirical floor that reversal has yet produced.