High GPA and test optional mask poor college math skills

A new report from the UC San Diego Academic Senate highlights something incredibly troubling about the state of higher education: The percentage of freshmen who test below middle school math standards has increased nearly thirty-fold in five years. the document (PDF) He describes an admissions system strained by policy shifts, pandemic learning losses, grade inflation, and a widening gap between transcripts and actual skills.

Results do not come from critics outside the organization. They are university specific.

They point to a glaring problem at the heart of California’s public higher education system: a growing number of students paying college-level tuition for an education approaching elementary school subjects. At the same time, academically strong applicants (many of whom would have entered in preparation for college-level work) will likely be rejected within a year of Register the order.

The end result is that hundreds (or even thousands) of students may drop out because they cannot solve the problem, which may leave them in debt, frustrated by a system that has not prepared them and is likely to mislead them.

New college students need remedial mathematics courses

Between 2020 and 2025, UC San Diego saw the number of new students who Math placement test scores fell below the college level cutoff from less than 1% to nearly 12%. According to the report, these students succeeded with strong grades in high school. Almost everyone completed Required sequence for UC(PDF) of math courses, many of them took classes beyond that, and a large percentage of them got high grades — on paper.

However, once they arrived at UC San Diego to actually test for the required mathematics course they had to take, they ran into difficulties.

Math II, a long-standing remedial course at the university, was originally designed to address gaps in Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II — content that California high schools must provide. But teachers during the 2023-2024 school year reported something new: Many students couldn’t perform skills typically taught in elementary and early middle school.

In response, the faculty redesigned Math 2 in 2024 to cover material aligned to grades 1 through 8 (yes, the elementary and middle school level) and created an additional course, Math 3B, to make up for the missing high school subjects.

This year more than 900 freshmen were placed in Math 2 or Math 3B, nearly 12% of the class. Before 2021, the number rarely exceeds 1%.

For students, this raises serious financial implications. A UCLA tuition-paying freshman may now spend an entire quarter (and in many cases several quarters) catching up on material he should have mastered years ago. The university warns that these students have high rates of failure in subsequent courses and often take longer to graduate — or never do so.

This means more money, more student loan debt, and more chances of not seeing the potential return on investment for college.

The problem of grade inflation and the problem of optional testing

One of the most surprising data points in the report is the mismatch between high school grades and actual readiness. In 2024, more than a quarter of students enrolled in Math 2 earned a perfect 4.0 in their high school math courses.

The correlation between math GPA and placement scores is only about 0.25, according to the analysis. Students who appear strong on texts often arrive unprepared, while some who lack advanced coursework perform better on placement tests.

Conclusion: Grade inflation is real and high school grades can no longer be treated as a reliable measure of math ability. This is especially true after coronavirus-era grading changes and policy shifts e.g A B 104which allowed widespread leniency in grades.

The cancellation of the SAT and ACT amplified this problem. Without standardized test scores, UC San Diego relied more heavily on inflated transcripts and self-reported course titles, which offered little insight into whether students were able to handle college-level quantitative work. This is one of the main reasons why many elite schools have already ended their test-optional policies.

Non-academic criteria and direct admission

Last year, UC San Diego received 160,150 applicants – meaning its decision to accept unprepared students was not due to low numbers of applicants. Within the applicant pool there are certainly a lot of prepared students.

So how do these students get accepted? This comes as a result of the push to admit more students from under-resourced high schools, a long-standing system-wide priority (which has coincided with a significant rise in academic gaps).

UC San Diego now enrolls more students from schools classified as “LCFF+” (those schools with at least 75% of their enrollment made up of low-income, English language learners, or foster youth students) than any other UC campus. Nearly a third of its freshmen in California come from such schools.

Faculty noted that the goal of expanding access is important, but the ability to catch up to college standards is limited. As the working group explained, accepting students at a much lower level of readiness “risks harming these students and straining limited educational resources.”

“[These admission practices] “Risk the risk of harming these students and straining limited educational resources.”

Impact on students prepared for college-level mathematics

The growing number of unprepared new students not only impacts those who are unprepared, but also creates downstream effects on students who arrive prepared.

Faculty must devote more time to teaching remedial courses, limiting their bandwidth for higher-level teaching. Departments that rely on calculus (biology, psychology, and engineering) report high rates of students repeating core courses, which increases pressure on scheduling and advising.

For those who were denied admission, the report’s findings may raise inevitable questions: If a university accepted hundreds or thousands of students who needed elementary-level math remediation, were the best-prepared applicants being excluded?

Adding to this concern is the fact that UC San Diego received a record number of applications. Families reasonably expect a selective university to enroll students who are ready for college-level work, not those whose transcripts indicate readiness but whose skills do not match.

What this means for students and families

For families, the results underscore an increasingly important truth: A high GPA does not guarantee that a student is prepared for college-level mathematics.

Students studying math-heavy majors may need (or want) independent verification of readiness — by taking standardized tests that can give them a fair baseline.

Parents may also want more clarity from high schools about the criteria behind their grades. Text that seems strong may not match actual skill levels, especially after years of interrupted learning and grade inflation.

The university, for its part, faces pressure to reconcile access goals with academic expectations. As the report bluntly states, expanding opportunities without protecting standards can undermine the public mission of the university itself.

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