UC is reconsidering the return of the SAT after faculty complaints about math skills

The debate over whether the University of California should reinstate the SAT in admissions, which is expected to come up next week before the regents, is emerging as one of its most closely watched and consequential issues as leaders examine how the nation’s top state university decides who gets the coveted seat.

There are early signs that attitudes may have changed in the six years since the governing board voted unanimously to end the SAT and ACT requirements. Also of note: Former UC President Janet Napolitano, who ran UC at the time, says a serious reassessment is needed after faculty outcry that students are severely lacking in math skills.

A standardized test score “shouldn’t be the only factor” in determining admission to UC, Napolitano said, but a reexamination of admissions may conclude that it should be a “factor.”

He and others spoke highly of the decision amid a heightened political climate in which the Trump administration has opened multiple investigations into UC admissions practices over alleged racial discrimination.

“It’s been six years of testing, and now it has to be looked at again,” Napolitano said in an interview with The Times. The former president, who successfully pushed to end the requirement in 2020, said the concept of racial and class equality that drove the decision deserves a second look. “It’s not like the SAT erases that inequality, but it’s not like the SAT adds to that inequality.”

UC leaders have shown a distinct willingness to take on the issue amid changes at the university’s highest level of decision-making starting in 2020. UC’s new president, James Milliken, took office last year. The Board of Regents has changed a lot, as there are now many new appointees. Five of UC’s nine campuses have new chancellors.

The debate comes as UC grows increasingly outspoken in its refusal to consider SAT and ACT scores. A growing number of prestigious universities — including Stanford, Harvard and Yale — and public university systems in Tennessee, Georgia and Texas have reinstated voluntary testing during the violence. Others, including USC and the California State University program, remain untested or untested.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons, at his central campus math department, declined to predict where a deal would be reached, but spoke of work still to be done.

“Is the SAT or ACT or standardized test a silver bullet for improving admissions? No, no one is suggesting that it is,” he said. The real challenge, he said, is “making sure that people can write like we need them to write to get a degree here, and be able to do the kind of math that will get them into math, if what they want to do involves math.”

UC announced June 11 that it would revise the SAT after about 1,400 faculty members in science, technology, engineering and math fields signed an open letter saying first-year students come to UC classrooms unprepared and many need to learn math concepts in middle school. Another 1,600, including those in the humanities, social sciences and arts, later joined to argue that speaking and writing skills were also lacking.

If the test is returned, the policy will not be effective until the fall application period of 2028 at the earliest. The Faculty says it is too long.

Although the agenda for the July 14-15 meeting of the regents does not explicitly mention the SAT discussion, the topic is sure to come up for public comment. Faculty activists are pushing UC to hold formal talks and speed up the timeline.

The political climate is to blame

When UC rejected the SAT, leaders argued that the test tested students of color who often lacked test preparation resources and that scores were more correlated with race and family wealth than readiness.

The Regents defeated an academic panel, which found that the tests predict college success for all demographics and recommended keeping them. UC also settled a lawsuit filed by students who argued that pandemic conditions made testing nearly impossible for applicants with disabilities and that testing had discriminatory effects on those who were not white. That agreement expired in 2025.

Napolitano cautioned that the SAT is not a panacea for explaining the readiness gap. The test, he said, “is just a snapshot; it doesn’t tell what the student actually learned.”

Students gather on the grass near the Janss Steps on the UCLA campus on April 8.

(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

The Trump administration has opposed university diversity, equity and inclusion programs and raised test scores as the primary admissions criteria as they accuse top universities, including UC, of ​​violating the law by giving advantages to black and Latino applicants. UC has denied the charges.

“The groups that oppose DEI now feel they have a bigger voice than ever,” said Kim Wilcox, who resigned as chancellor of UC Riverside last year and supports re-testing.

The lawyers of the unemployed students did not prevent the repetition of the cases when the exams come back.

Public Advocate Mark Rosenbaum, who represented the students in the previous case, sees a connection between federal pressure and UC’s reconsideration.

“The UC program may be under Trump,” he said.

The government is really watching: Multiple UC faculty who shared comments about the SAT debate on X say Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s top civil rights attorney, liked their post.

UC officials say they are treading carefully, knowing that their debate about the test could backfire on the university.

They point out that UC’s settlement nearly a year ago with Jewish faculty and students suing UCLA’s pro-Palestinian camp was cited by the Justice Department to accuse the university of allegedly tolerating anti-Semitism. In addition, the Trump administration cited a UCLA report on antisemitism as evidence of campus discrimination.

Shaun Harper, an education professor at USC, warned that reinstating the tests would give the White House a new weapon to expose UC as an illegal affirmative action. “Too many institutions have become targets of the Trump administration, and this will only exacerbate that,” he said.

Drawing on his experience as a former US Homeland Security secretary and governor of Arizona, Napolitano agreed.

Former UC president Janet Napolitano speaks at the UC Board of Regents meeting at UCLA on September 18, 2019.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

“The danger is that the Trump administration will arm SAT scores,” Napolitano said, evaluating “university admissions solely on the basis of, ‘Did you admit the students who got the highest scores, regardless of anything else?’ … and make allegations based on that.” But, he noted, California law has prevented UC from considering race for nearly two decades.

UC officials reject the idea that Washington is driving the review.

David Volz, chairman of the UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools and a professor at UC Riverside, said the pressure from the White House was “unprecedented,” and that student concerns were “rampant” before Trump took office.

Two task forces will lead the review. A person will be assessed whether they want the SAT, ACT or Smart Balanced test that California offers to public school students. One will also review the high school course requirements for admission to UC. The Regents will approve or reject any recommended changes.

Ahmet Palazoglu, chairman of the UC Academic Senate and professor of chemical engineering at UC Davis, said “the review will surpass previous work on this topic because a lot has changed in the entire academic area since the UC Board of Regents adopted its undergraduate admissions policy.”

Classes have been changed

Because UC has largely stopped collecting scores after 2020, faculty do not have a data system that links the classroom readiness of admitted students to assess their performance. Many argue by heart, remembering their students’ abilities before the test is over. UC San Diego and UC Berkeley faculty released data on the weak math skills of first-year students based on classroom assessments. Pro-SAT professors say UC is in danger of falling behind schools that have already reinstated the test.

A student works in a data science class at San Gabriel High School on March 13, 2024.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Zvezdelina Stankova, one of the Berkeley math professors leading the SAT push, described engineering students who come to her office hours unable to solve basic algebra, some skipping Calculus 1 on the strength of high AP scores. “On one hand I will teach complex fundamentals, and on the other hand I teach them how to write the solution of a simple linear equation like 7x − 5 = 9,” he said.

Critics say classroom alarms miss the broader picture of student success.

Freshman retention at UC has hovered around 92% since the exams were dropped and the four-year graduation rate has increased — from 71% in 2020 to 74% this year — said Jessie Ryan, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity. Retaking the SAT would be “the wrong approach to an unexplained problem,” she said.

Eddie Comeaux, a UC Riverside professor who chaired the program’s admissions board in 2020 when it recommended keeping the tests, said the committee had “significant” differences in the test even though it ended up favoring it.

“It’s not that standard tests are good or bad,” he said. “The question has always been about what are we doing as an education system to prepare those students who may have less resources.”