University of California committee suspends standardized test review

Dive Brief:

• A University of California advisory boardsuspended a planned review of the system’s admissions policieson whether to bring back standardized testing requirements for undergraduate applicants.
• Last month, the system announced the academic senate’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools would study the role of the SAT and ACT in admissions and share an update with the system’s president and governing board this month. BOARS had originally planned to convene a working group that would submit final recommendations on the standardized testing policy in mid-2027.
• Ahmet Palazoglu, chair of the system’s academic senate, confirmed Monday that the faculty group was “revising its timeline” for “a comprehensive review of standardized testing in admissions.”

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Dive Insight:

UC eliminated its standardized testing requirement for prospective undergraduate students across its 12 campuses in 2020. That year, hundreds of other colleges went test optional as the pandemic cut off access to common testing sites.

On Friday, BOARS members voted to withdraw its plan for evaluating standardized testing, according to the Los Angeles Times. The proposal would have brought together one working group focused on standardized tests and another concentrated on UC’s high school course requirements for applicants.

Palazoglu said Monday that the UC academic senate remains committed to analyzing the system’s admissions practices and that such a review would be “thorough, evidence-based and informed by faculty expertise.”

Though an update on BOARS’ standardized testing review did not appear on the system board’s agenda for its July 14-15 meeting, dozens of faculty, students and others weighed in on the topic — both for and against reinstating standardized test requirements.

UC Board Chair Maria Anguiano said during Tuesday’s meeting that the review would be a “major focus” of the board and academic senate throughout the coming year.

“The goal of this review is not to rehash old questions or data but an opportunity to take a fresh look at how we define and evaluate college readiness in a rapidly changing world,” she said.

UC’s admissions policies have been a hot-button topic since a faculty coalition at the selective public system began calling for reinstating some standardized testing requirements.

In a June 5 open letter, a group of STEM facultyalleged that UC has regularly admitted students who aren’t prepared for college-level coursework because “current admissions practices do not provide a sufficiently reliable check on mathematical readiness for STEM majors.”

“Over the past five years, we have seen a widening divergence in mathematical preparation levels within the same classroom,” the faculty wrote.

In response to that gap, they said, some instructors have been forced to “reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields.” 

The letter called for the UC system to require SAT or ACT math scores for students applying “to STEM-intensive majors”beginning with the 2027-28 admissions cycle.STEM faculty should also have more oversight over “readiness standards and of admissions policies that materially affect STEM programs,” it said.

As of Tuesday, nearly 2,400 faculty had signed the letter, including seven of the system’s nine mathematics department heads.

More than 900 faculty members who teach the humanities, social studiesand other non-STEM fields have signed a corresponding letter, supporting their STEM counterparts andasking the UC system to also require the “verbal reasoning component” of the SAT or ACT for undergraduate admissions.

“As artificial intelligence becomes more capable, it is arguably more important than ever for students to be able to think through and compose sound arguments on their own, to comprehend the texts they read, and to recognize weaknesses in the arguments of those texts,” the second letter said. “The growing use of AI also makes essays a less reliable indicator of these abilities.