Top Takeaways More than 1,400 University of California faculty have signed an open letter calling on the system to reinstate the ACT or SAT as an admissions requirement for science, technology, engineering or math students. UC stopped requiring the standardized exams in 2020. Since then, the system has seen an increase in the number of admitted students who are unprepared for college-level math. Some faculty and other critics are not in favor of bringing back the exams, arguing they prevent many low-income and Black and Latino students from enrolling. About a dozen first-year UC Berkeley students gathered one afternoon last fall inside a classroom in Evans Hall, where math professor Zvezdelina Stankova held office hours for one of her calculus sections. The students came for calculus help but struggled to answer a middle-school level algebra problem: solving for x from the equation 7x – 5 = 9. “I told everyone to drop their pens and watch,” Stankova said. “We had to go through it step by step.” Across the University of California, math faculty say they are increasingly teaching first-year students who are unprepared for college-level math and unable to survive coursework for UC’s rigorous science and math majors. Some faculty members are now calling on UC to reinstate standardized tests as an admissions requirement for freshman applicants in science, math, technology and engineering programs. More than 1,400 faculty — mostly from STEM programs — have signed an open letter making that demand. “Over the past five years, we have…
