UC's Board of Admissions meets to discuss whether to make SAT and ACT scores an admission requirement

The University of California's Board of Admissions is meeting today to discuss whether to make SAT and ACT scores a requirement in the future for anyone applying to UC schools. It comes as professors across the UC system raise concerns about whether students are coming to schools prepared to do college-level math and reading. To discuss this issue, we want to welcome Iwanze Ugo. He's a research fellow at Public Policy Institute of California. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for having me. Of course. The UC system says about 18% of students enrolled in pre-calculus or calculus failed or struggled greatly in those classes. Does this align with some of the trends you're seeing in your research on college readiness? Yeah, it's an interesting trend. We don't see it as much in the high school. We've seen GPAs and courses that can be stable. But when students show up at the UC, you're seeing elevated rates of students having challenges with lower GPAs and failing courses. And then interestingly, even at the UC, in general, there seems to be consistently strong performance. But when you're looking specifically at student performance in math courses and STEM fields, things like science and engineering, that's where you're seeing more of these challenges Not just with students struggling. So in short, reading and writing pretty good in terms of college readiness, but math and science is where students appear to be falling short. What are some of the possible reasons for this? Well, math in general is typically one of the hardest subjects. We see lower performance across the board compared to English and history, for example. And then also math has this particular character where it's really foundational and if you You know, don't grasp some concepts early on. Those struggles remain with you in a way that's a little more persistent. So with the pandemic, we saw a lot of students having some real setbacks in terms of their preparation. And we've seen those lingering effects, especially in math, persist on into the following years. So do you think the problem really starts in K through 12, maybe in the younger, as early as elementary level? Yeah, definitely. In general, for most every subject, you learn things in third grade and fourth grade, and that builds on what you know in eighth grade. But in particular in math, we see those linkages across years and content being much more significant. So when you have these declines six years ago with the pandemic, we've seen some of those effects persist, especially in math. So how should colleges remedy this? Is returning to a requirement of an SAT Is the T-score a good option, you think? It's one of the options available. You know, Generally, you can think of it as screening, essentially, defining sort of who's ready to succeed and then identifying students that maybe are not and then preventing them from being admitted. But, of course, you know that that doesn't actually address the core issue in terms of students lacking adequate preparation. And it's not the only thing that the UC and other colleges do. Some students are admitted and there are options for additional supports, whether it's tutoring or co-requisite courses, things like that. And then even beyond, What happens at the UC, the CSU has an example of providing information to students when they're in high school, letting them know when they have preparation gaps, and then suggesting or offering resources for them to intervene and address some of those gaps so that they're prepared to succeed on their first day at a university campus. So there's more options in terms of how you address. The readiness that students are having beyond just preventing them from being admitted in the first place. Yeah, it sounds like the real solution to this issue, maybe not goes beyond just requiring the SAT, but really longer term making some significant changes at the K through 12 grade level. Yeah, I would say so. You know, By the time a student, let's say, doesn't do well on SAT and they don't get into UC, that's perhaps one maybe shallow way of addressing the problem. But again, it doesn't fix their readiness in the first place. So if we're addressing the main problem of increasing the number of students that are ready to succeed and do well at the University of California, I think there I think there should be some attention to what you do when students show up that aren't ready, of course, but then in advance of that, how you can support and improve their preparation so that more students are showing up ready to succeed. Do you think the state needs to revisit how it teaches math to those younger grades? That's a good question. Listen, we... We're not as close to the classroom to speak to the specific curriculum and pedagogy. Teaching is a very difficult profession. So I respect the work they do, and I don't quite know how best to teach it. But as you see... Dramatic changes in education and the economy and the workforce more broadly. I think there does be some attention to making sure that the practices are keeping up with how things are changing. Yeah, how to do it is the million dollar question, but it is a problem that needs to be addressed. Real quick before we have to go, do you think the UC system will ultimately decide to bring back the SAT or ACT as a requirement? They went test blind during the pandemic, but has the pendulum now swung back on this? I'm not a betting man. There's definitely a lot of interest in it and a lot of conversation around it. Although I will say there's a lot of, I think, debate in either direction in terms of whether it be the right approach. We have these concerns about Again, addressing students that aren't ready to succeed and then show up and struggle and the resource costs of providing additional supports. But then on the other side, there's the access question, right, in terms of making the University of California available to more students. So where the UC will land, it's not for me to say. We'll be watching closely as well to see what happens with all the implications that we'll have for the state students. Yeah, it's a complicated debate. And we'll have to see in 2027 is when sometime in the spring is when UC is supposed to. We'll make a decision on that. But in the meantime, Uwunzi Ugo, we appreciate your time this morning to talk about this. Research Fellow at Public Policy Institute of California. Have a great rest of your morning. You too. Thank you.