Editors at National Review Online assess the results of an experiment in California higher education.
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.
